1) How would you define your personal practice?
For years my practice was mostly “short bouts of feeling driven movement exploration”. I would spend a lot of my available time noticing and observing things about different body parts while I move, or while I don’t move. I still do that in whatever I do.
Only recently I started adding a bit more “discipline” into the mix. Discipline which earlier I couldn’t imagine myself doing, because it was too repetitive and boring in my wandering mind. For example, I never did strength training before in my life, but now adding it in, it opened up a completely different perspective of my own body. And mind. I start seeing value in doing the same thing over and over again. And so much value in getting stronger per se.
I’m sure my answer to this question would again be different in just a few months time. Which I guess is a normal thing?
2) What turning points have you encountered on your movement journey?
Turning points mostly come from learning and experiencing, as you could imagine. Be it learning about biomechanics, about the nervous system’s impact on our movement, or about physiology’s impact on our overall movement capacity, strength and calmness. Each of the turning points have come as a new level of understanding how I am and how I could thrive even more in my own body, and each of those has led to my work with people being changed and upgraded.
The most impactful change I have experienced is the one which is still ongoing, from the work I have been doing with MovMed, exercises designed to help your body get through stress effectively and with least consequences. Starting it over a year ago, it has immediately had such an impact on the functioning of all my bodily systems and just the general sense of calmness that stays with me that whole time. It’s work that made me feel denser, bigger and stronger from the deepest core inside out, and I felt it being a big missing part of all my work till that point. I started practising strength training (mentioned above) after several months of MovMed work, because I felt an unbelievable urge to lift heavy/heavier. That’s never happened to me before, it was a full 360 degree change to what I was doing before. I feel like I am now learning to let myself fully experience what the body is capable of.
3) What role has injury played in cultivating your current niche?
Not sure if I have a niche yet, but since it’s mentioned here in terms of injury, I can say that exactly “injury & recovery” is something that interests me a lot. Maybe acute injury recovery will at one point become a niche I will cultivate more.
I feel that injuries I had, however small those might have been, taught me a lot. Spraining my ankle and recovering from it by constant exploration in subsequent days is what taught me how to help people who come to me who have done the same. The same is true from neck pain, plantar pain, groin pain, low back pain, any muscle strain, knee injuries or whatever else. So, my injuries are a big part of my work – in a sense of being able to understand a bit better what the person in front of me is going through.
4) Do you consider yourself a teacher? Why or why not?
I do. I do, for selfish reasons, because I enjoy explaining things which I know something about. And I do, for unselfish reasons too (I guess), because others might find some value in things I explain to them, bring it home with them, and change some things in their life for better (as I later hear is the case).
5) What has been your experience with physical education, both from formal schooling and from knowledge you’ve picked up elsewhere?
Well, I enjoyed every PE class while I was in school. Especially high school, when I had the best teacher, who is an example of what a teacher in general should be: fit and healthy even in later years, knowledgeable and interested in many things, unbothered by other teachers’ drama and doing his work the best he can in the interest of the pupils. In that sense, PE was definitely one of my favorite subjects, probably one of the reasons to choose to study kinesiology – which should have led me on a path to become a PE teacher myself.
But, I never made the decision to go work in a school, because of “the way the educational system is”. I would love for the system to change – to educate young people better on how to care for their own health, to engrain better habits in their day to day life which should then stay with them later. To be more in line with their interests and wishes, to be tailored more individually, so more of those young souls could feel self-accomplished during all the formative years. It would be amazing if the main goal of the educational system would be to build up confidence and strength in youngsters.
I felt like I could do none of those things if I entered the system, thinking it would just chew me up and spit me out – thus I decided to work outside of it, creating a safe space of my own. Through it I am still aspiring to do all of the things mentioned above.
6) How do you involve your mind/emotions into your physical routines?
I observe them.
7) What are your personal aspirations regarding movement?
I’d love to jump more. I will.
8) How can people find/contact you? Do you have a site or social media handle to share?
You can find me on instagram at @matea_sed and on my website m89.online.
Matea’s Recent Blog Posts
The Breathing Switch
