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Talk About Mental Health & Well-Being… Why Not? Mark ‘Charlie’ Valentine suffered life changing mental illness, before beginning a journey to recovery and wellness; the darkness of PTSD transformed by the light atop mountains and beyond. Mark is now joining forces with Seb Budniak, to make up the ‘White Fox Talking’ team. Through a series of Podcasts and Vlogs, ‘White Fox Talking’ will be bringing you a variety of guests, topics, and inspirational stories relating to improving mental well-being. Find your way back to you! Expect conversation, information, serious discussion and a healthy dose of Yorkshire humour!
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E59: [Adventure Mind Series] Harnessing Urban Movement - Charlotte Blake's Vision of Parkour for Mental Wellness
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What if the urban landscape around you could be a tool for mental wellness? Join us as we explore this groundbreaking concept with Charlotte Blake, the visionary behind a charity that uses parkour as a therapeutic approach to mental health. After discovering parkour’s profound impact on her own mental well-being while living in bustling cities like Reading and London, Charlotte embarked on a mission to share this dynamic exercise with others. We promise an enlightening discussion on how parkour redefines adventure therapy, making it accessible in urban areas and offering a refreshing alternative to traditional exercise routines.
Charlotte's innovative approach delves into the complexities of mental health measurement, urging us to look beyond numbers and embrace the qualitative nuances that truly depict one's mental state. Through the lens of ecological dynamics, she examines how race, gender, and social class play crucial roles in mental health diagnoses. By focusing on abilities and fostering open conversations, Charlotte illustrates how parkour can empower individuals, instilling a sense of hope and capability that translates into broader aspects of life. This episode challenges the norms, urging a deeper understanding of personal experiences and their impact on mental health.
Transforming the perception of parkour from a youth-driven sport to a versatile tool for all ages, Charlotte discusses its benefits for older adults in falls prevention, confidence rebuilding, and balance enhancement. With stories of personal growth and empowerment through strategic movement, this episode highlights parkour as a powerful vehicle for mental well-being. As we consider its potential in social prescribing and educational curriculums, we emphasize the need for accessibility and the importance of play and adaptability. This conversation will leave you inspired by the therapeutic power of engaging with your environment through movement.
Esprit Concrete Website
Hello and welcome to the White Fox Talking Podcast. I'm Mark Chalivantan and at the controls is Seb. How are you, hello? Who are you waving to?
Speaker 2:To you on the camera how have you been? Okay, yeah.
Speaker 1:Keep it busy, very busy. It's not like you.
Speaker 1:Well, it's the busy time of the year now, so it is a busy time of the year, but every time seems to be a busy time of the year for you. Every term seems to be a busy time of the year for you. I think the listeners are getting a theme. It's busy. I think I'm going to start a listener petition about Seb's self-care. In fact, I'll take you out on a forest bathing session. That sounds interesting. Yeah, that's what I'm doing. It's my new thing Forest bathing, nature therapy.
Speaker 2:Well, funny, you should say that I found a perfect podcast guest for that.
Speaker 1:Have you. Yeah, oh, brilliant, it's not you. Not me. Well, I'd better promote my new business, my new venture. No, it's fascinating, mate. It's fascinating, and yeah, obviously it's all these things that I've been banging on about anyway, but I will have a proper certificate in tree hugging Fantastic.
Speaker 2:Enough about you. Who's in here?
Speaker 1:Well, yes, this is part four of our Nature Minds series. Yes, this is part four of our Nature Minds series and it's took a little bit of getting together, but fortunately our guest was in Leeds and we welcome to the studio Charlotte Blake. Welcome. The White Fox Talking podcast is sponsored by Energy Impact.
Speaker 3:Hello, welcome. Yes, sorry about the ongoing delays.
Speaker 1:No, that's been fine. It's one of these things that we're fine with just getting together because we're all very busy. Yeah, that's been fine, it's one of these things that we're fine with, just getting together because we're all very busy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it sounds like everything's lined up because you're here, you're in Leeds and you're in the studio, so thanks a lot for coming. Could you give the listeners and viewers a brief introduction of yourself and possibly a little bit about what we're going to be talking about in relation to Adventure, mind and mental health, mental wellbeing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, so, as you say, my name is Charlotte Blake. I am the founder of a charity called Esprit Concret FYI, which was called Freer Instinct, and we do parkour for mental health. I'm actually up in Leeds for my Viva researching parkour for mental health. Yeah, there's a, there's a theme going on here, so I have been engaged in event, the adventure mind conference, for the the last few years. They've very kindly asked me to to deliver workshops using parkour as a means of bringing adventure therapy into the individual's lived environment, so making it more accessible, more inclusive for those within urban environments who may not be able to get to nature-based areas or undertake nature-based physical activity, as a means of bringing it into the individual's lived environment.
Speaker 3:So for those that don't know what parkour is, some people might have heard of free running. Basically it's kind of two names for slightly different variations of the same thing. Parkour is effectively running from point a to point b using the most direct route possible. So running, jumping, climbing, balancing, free running is the more performative aspect of that. So that's where you see the. Can you do a backflip, mate? No, I can't, and it for me. I came into parkour many, many moons ago as a means of. I loved hiking, I love climbing, I love surfing, I love anything nature-based. But I grew up in Reading. I lived in London for a long time. There aren't many mountains, there aren't any sea, so for me it was a means of bringing nature into into my lived environment and it kind of progressed from there as a means of actually I can see the impact of this on on my mental health.
Speaker 1:How could, how could we benefit and support, support other people this all ties in with movement being the theme of mental health for the, doing for the. What was it? What was it for the mental? I can't remember the name of the organization, but it's promoting movement. This year isn't it.
Speaker 3:Yes, it is yes no mental health foundation.
Speaker 1:Can we, should we go straight into that and find out why movement is so important? On, yeah, on the. On improving mental health, sustaining mental health definitely, definitely.
Speaker 3:My thesis comes at it from multiple different directions. So obviously, when it comes to physical activity and mental health, there's the endorphins, there's the, there's the hormonal response that everybody knows about. You feel good after you've done it, you know, even through a spin class, where you're thinking, oh my gosh, I hate this so much. You get that buzz afterwards if, yeah, look what I've achieved. But there's, especially with when you combine that with the adventure therapy, with engaging with your, your environment, you're moving your body in a different way to how we normally would would move it. So, with a lot of gym-based exercises, yes, you are getting the endorphins, you're getting the, the physical benefits of it, but it's very two-dimensional movement. You pick up a weight, you put it back down again. You're running on the spot. It's very two-dimensional, whereas when you're out in nature or when you're doing parkour, you're moving your body in a very, very different way. You're having to respond to stones, you're having to go underneath things, you're moving your entire spine, you're moving your entire central nervous system.
Speaker 3:When you start to combine that with play, the kind of framework that my thesis uses is an ecological dynamics framework. So it's understanding that how we engage with things, how we perceive things uses multiple different sources. So it's our eyes, it's our touch, it's our taste, it's our smell, it's our whole body experiencing something. So the more elements of these perceptions we can get into play, the more we can start to have both a physical and mental impact on what we're doing and what we're achieving. So movement, especially, allows us to see things from multiple different perspectives. Whether that's physically what we see in front of us or mentally what we're thinking about, what we're concerned about, it allows us to see it from multiple different perspectives.
Speaker 1:So is this the sort of thing where you draw a difference between exercise and activity? This is definitely activity.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I mean, it is obviously a certain type of exercise, but this is, I would say it's definitely activity, as I said before or started to allude to before.
Speaker 3:We focus in the sessions delivered by Freer Instinct, we focus much more on the play element of it, because it's finding what is going to emotively engage the individual, but also what might emotively trigger the individual that we can start working on.
Speaker 3:Something may cause somebody fear and it could only be a rail that's about a foot off the ground You're not in any actual physical danger but your whole central nervous system is going. I don't like this, and with fear responses, they're generally something that we have developed and shaped over time, depending on our upbringing, our internal beliefs, our history of trauma. And if we can almost evoke a sense of mild fear within a controlled situation like a parkour setting, then we can start to reflect on okay, well, how can I approach this in a way that is going to lead to a much more successful outcome? Where is this response coming from? What is triggering this type of response in my emotive response to this situation? So you can really start to have an internal dialogue with both yourself, your environment and your movement when you're engaging in that kind of one-to-one dialogue with your environment.
Speaker 2:Sounds to me like it's a psychological exercise as well as a physical exercise, because you have to think on your feet.
Speaker 3:Definitely.
Speaker 2:And the more you do it, the quicker you get at things.
Speaker 3:Yes, so, as I said before, the framework that I've used within my thesis is ecological dynamics, and one of the reasons that I chose that is they focus on direct perception. Most other models, don't worry, I won't get too geeky on this. I saw that.
Speaker 2:Oh no.
Speaker 3:Most other models will look at the body and the mind and they are separate but interacting on each other. But with the ecological dynamics framework, with direct perception, there is no difference between mind, body and environment. It's all kind of acting on one another. And so when you, when you start to appreciate that and understand that, it becomes this bi-directional feedback, I do this, I feel this, you can respond to it instantly, rather than a lot of cognitive behavioral theories where it's right, okay, I feel fear in this situation, so I'm going to think about other responses I can have. Actually, you are doing it instantly within within parkour, or within sports, that, or activities that evoke emotions, that part like parkour does or like adventure therapy does. It's that bio-direction of. Okay, well, if I tweak this right, I'll do it again. Oh, it's had a slightly different emotional response. We were talking about that in the car on the way here, weren't we Charlie, in terms of your EMDR and how every time you can kind of go back to it.
Speaker 3:You're like right, like right, okay, well, I've had this response to begin with. If I tweak that, then I could have that response next time. And it's almost like there's an expression that people won't remember what you said, what you did, but they will remember how you felt. And with a lot of what we do in parkour, it's very much that if we can change the underlying value and belief system through changing how we feel things, actually that's much more likely to have a more instant response than. Oh well, I know that this is true, but logically I know this is true, but if I think about it a different way, then over time I might start to believe it. Actually, feeling that and invoking that has a much more bidirectional response or instant response even.
Speaker 2:I've got to follow up here with another question.
Speaker 1:Go on, go ahead, Go on. I'll take five.
Speaker 2:How do you measure this?
Speaker 3:With difficulty. So all of my research is qualitative, primarily because it's at such an early stage in terms of the ecological dynamics framework. In terms of pragmatic research, methods are starting to become much more recognised within healthcare research but there is still a lot of focus on quantitative measurements. But ultimately it's to do with the individual, without getting too much on my soapbox. There's so much diagnostic confusion between different mental health conditions to the point where, depending on somebody's race, gender, even social class status you wouldn't think that class was still too much of an issue in our society. But even depending on their, their social background will depend on whether they get a diagnosis of ADHD, bipolar or schizophrenia, because they have very similar kind of diagnostic criteria even though they're very different things. So diagnostically it's quite difficult to put a label on somebody's mental health, but at the same time we have to recognise that mental health is something that we live with. So in terms of measuring the change within somebody's mental health, the route that I've gone down is their own perceived changes in mental health rather than right.
Speaker 3:Here's a form fill it out what you find with that. And again, this was something we were discussing in the car on the way here. Sorry, I keep referring to that. What you find as soon as you ask somebody to write something down, they then start to kind of default to the social norms that are expected, whereas if you ask somebody to write something down, they then start to kind of default to the social norms that are expected, whereas if you ask somebody to talk about that and they're comfortable talking about it once they're in their rhythm they are more likely to discuss things that are truer to them. Rather than measurements of oh, there was 0.1 change in this, so it is hard to get a quantitative measurement on that, but I'm sure over time, as our understanding of this area becomes better, then there will be some way we can measure that at the moment?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I suppose just trying to, because there's no level. Start is there with anybody, as in where their mental health is and where each day that you're with somebody, even things down to their nutrition that they've had, it's all going to play a different effect, isn't it?
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, definitely, definitely their nutrition, their previous history. When I first came into mental health, I worked in a forensic unit which was a medium, secure forensic unit, but basically everybody who was in that unit was there under the Ministry of Justice. Whatever they had done, they'd done a result of whatever illness they had had and you could say, oh well, they did this because of their schizophrenia, they did that because of their bipolar. But actually when? And one of the reasons why I chose another reason why I chose the Ecological Dynamic Framework, was because as soon as I looked into their previous history, as soon as I looked into their backstory and their notes, it was almost kind of really frustratingly apparent how they ended up on this trajectory the family they were raised with, the culture, the decisions that they had to make. I often reflected if I was in their situation, with that entire background, would I have made different decisions? And I cannot genuinely say I would have so. Again, with the ecological dynamics framework, it's looking at every single part of the psychological, the social, the embodied every single part of the individual. The social, the embodied every single part of the individual's environment, not just the. Oh, I vault over a wall. I'll jump over this. I'll jump over that. Every single part of a person's environment and thinking what aspect or what aspects of these have combined to produce this outcome. And when I was interviewing people and speaking with them, every single time I spoke to somebody, whatever their thoughts were, whatever their delusions were, were associated to something that had happened in the past or something that was going on. And actually, if we start to not necessarily try and fix those, but if we start to understand how they work in those, we can start to get the individual improving, not forgetting that, but improving beyond that. And what we found in the sessions that we were researching as part of my thesis was there were some people that were so stuck in this moment that cognitive behavioural therapy and things like that weren't working because their emotions, their visceral feelings were still attached to this moment through parkour. A lot of people think, oh, parkour, it's antisocial, it's dangerous, I can't do this, I can't do that. So they'd attend the session thinking, well, I can't do anything.
Speaker 3:Generally, what our coaches would do is find something that they could do. We had a woman attend in a wheelchair. We had somebody who was blind. It's about finding what that individual can do and then building it up from there and actually what you'd find in the space of a one hour session is this feeling of hope going from what I can't do anything even outside the session, like I can't do anything because of this belief about myself or that belief about myself. Giving one tangible experience of I can do this allows them to then build on that and be like well, I know what this feels like now and now I can start to apply it to other areas, whereas if all they've had for years and years and years is can't, can't, can't, can't, can't, how do they then try and evoke an understanding that they can do something other than experientially? You have to show them even one small bit of I can and build it within their environment.
Speaker 3:We had one woman on our inpatient sessions who, just after one session, started just seeing more around the hospital prior to the parkour intervention. She was like I'm stuck here, I can't do anything, and even just the temporary environment of being on ward, having undertaken something, that puts a more positive relationship on that environment. She was like, well, I've on the on the wall that I didn't see before. I can see things that I I can do in the area that I couldn't do before and all we were doing was jumping around a car park. It's not the the amazing experiential perk of going up a mountain or anything like that, we're just jumping around a car park. But it's that personal emotive response of I can actually do something and I can therefore grow that into other areas so to me.
Speaker 2:When you said parkour for the first time, I was like this is a young person's sport yeah but the way you're explaining it. There's no real age limit to it, is it?
Speaker 3:not at all. No, I I think that's one of the. Generally, when most people think of parkour, they think of the performative, you know, the casino royale, the jump london yeah, they think of free running and I often use the comparison of kayaking.
Speaker 3:You have lake kayaking and river kayaking and it's nice. You're like, oh, there's a bird, but then you also have white water kayaking. The two are very, very different, but they're still both kayaking With parkour. Yes, you do have the performative aspect of it, but just because you do parkour doesn't mean you have to do that. There are sessions that work with older adults as a falls prevention strategy. So it's working on balance. It's working on how to fall but also how to get back up again.
Speaker 3:One of the biggest injuries in older adults is falling and breaking a hip. If that happens, they lose a lot of their mobility. While it heals, they lose a lot of their own confidence once they've done it, because it's like, well, I can't even trust my legs anymore. So through the older adults parkour sessions they focus on right. If you can sense you're going to fall, how can we fall safely? How can we fall with minimal damage? And we do that a lot in parkour sessions of all ages as well.
Speaker 3:If you're going to do something that you haven't done before, the first thing you want to know is how do I bail? So then it also puts a different psychology, whatever age is on failure being bad. Actually, failure is just part of the process. Failure is part of the learning process. Okay, I'm trying this new movement, probably gonna muck it up slightly. This is how I get out of it with least injury.
Speaker 3:I will try again and again with older adults. You okay, so? Okay, so I've fallen, I've landed in a much safer way. This is how I get back up again and then you can learn the balance, the proprioception, or relearn the balance, the proprioception, to prevent that happening again. So some of the people that I've taught, even at the Adventure Mind workshop a few years ago, they came up to me afterwards and said this is the most inclusive thing I've ever done, because it is about finding the individual's entry point. If you think of your comfort zone like a circle, there are so many things that go right. Your comfort zone's here, we're going to go here. So your comfort zone just goes no, I don't think so and shrinks slightly, whereas if you go, here's your comfort zone, we're going to go just slightly outside of it. Then your body goes okay, I'll negotiate that far with you, and then, once you've negotiated a little bit more, you can actually get there. But your body just needs to know that that's safe first before it gets there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can't leap towards it. You just need to take a step at a time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, definitely, definitely.
Speaker 1:I think that's something that is very relevant when I've been teaching climbing as well, because people will try to go for that big thuggy sort of move, but if you work to it in little increments and then the body sort of adjusts to it and the mind adjusts to it. This is a thing and you mentioned earlier about this thing, about the mind and the body being separate. And there can't be a separation, can there, surely? Surely, that should be resigned. Now to the Victorian medicine book.
Speaker 3:You'd think so and, as I say, research is aligning with that more and more. But there are, in practice, a lot of my research, as I say, is pragmatic. It's like, okay, so how can we apply this In practice? There is still, there's always a delay between research and practice, isn't there? So there is still that mindset of we need to do this in order to affect the mind or we need to do this in order to affect the body, and actually you do one, you do the other as well. They aren't separate. It's not. It's not something that's just consequential, it's an actual aspect of it yeah, I'm just thinking back.
Speaker 1:So, with you saying there's some like older people learning to fall, and I'm just thinking back to I've probably got up on a bit I said you know about the my childhood and them days of no gadgets and stuff and just out playing and and it'd be a similar sort of thing. I would imagine with this, with the plane climbing trees and you know, riding around car parks on bmxs and learning to fall off and learning to fall into nettles and things, do you think we've lost the ability to play a lot a bit?
Speaker 3:I think there are some aspects. Yes, I have to admit, I've got a four-year-old and a six-year-old and they're constantly going. Mum, look at me jumping. I'm like, oh, I've only got myself to blame.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I suppose that's a stress.
Speaker 3:I now realise all my mum's like, charlotte, be careful. I'm like it's fine. I'm like, oh, obviously quietly, because I secretly I'm like, go on, you can do it, you can do it, just don't break yourself. I think we've socially children's side. You know, there are some groups of people where they will encourage their children, there are some groups of people that have a tablet. But irrespective of where you come up as children, as adults, it's almost like right, you've done your playing, now we're all done, you're a grown-up and actually our society is evolving so quickly that actually we're not done playing. We need to be able to learn and adapt to our ever-changing environment and this is one of the reasons why I feel like parkour is a means of bringing adventure therapy into the individual's lived environment.
Speaker 3:I mentioned earlier about the biophilia hypothesis and a lot of the evolutionary hypotheses like that involve we evolved with nature. The urban environment triggers a stress response in us. You think we've only been living in an urban environment for the last hundred years. You know, it's really not that long for our 10,000 year old bodies to have gotten used to. And all those evolutionary concepts are like right, let's get out of the urban environment and into nature and then we'll feel better. But what you notice is that a lot of adventure therapies as soon as you return back to the urban environment. It's hard to put those skills into the different environment, whereas actually, if you can learn those within the urban environment, we develop a much more positive relationship. That's not saying that nature therapy shouldn't be done. Of course it should be. It's amazing. But if we can adapt better to our urban environment, have a much more positive relationship with our urban environment, it becomes less stressful.
Speaker 3:We sounds really cliche, we kind of take our power back, and what I've noticed about a lot of the research that does involve adapting to our environment. It's about building design, it's about bringing nature into the urban environment. But what you find with that is the concepts about the environment are no ball games and don't step on the grass. So as soon as you put these extra nature environments in it, it's like well, there's another place I can't go. Actually, what we've got to do if the government is going to, like the recent mental health charter says, increase the amount of nature we have in urban environments, that's great. But we need to do something that gives us permission to engage with those spots again, like park or like the other nature-based activities that you can do on grass and water, whatever aspects of it. They're bringing back into the urban environment. But there has to be something that changes that. No ball games, don't step on the grass, don't do this, don't do that mentality that we've already got ingrained in our unconscious beliefs about the urban environment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one sort of image that conjured up there was when people were skateboarding and they'd start putting these little lumps on the seats and stuff so people couldn't do the slides across them. And I suppose there's a good up and down side to that so that people could sit down without getting splinters. But I suppose this has been a part of, like you say, a society where it's like don't do this, don't do that. And then we've also got the litigation side where people are like you can't do that there, because if you get injured then somebody's going to get sued, or again.
Speaker 3:I think that's where the the perception of parkour comes in. There's actually a movement within parkour uk and parkour earth where they've developed a card that says right, these are kind of the places that legally we can go and these are the places that legally we can't go, and I think it's understanding that most parkour practitioners will err towards the. I'm working either within my capability or just outside. The majority of injuries in parkour are repetitive injuries like knee strain, ankle strain. They're very rarely impact injuries. You're much more likely to get an impact injury from well, rugby rugby is just one great big impact injuries or from football or from sports like that with.
Speaker 3:With parkour, because it's that gradual, progressive aspect of it, the injuries tend to be more repetitive injuries.
Speaker 3:But also what you find is that actually by engaging with the environment in that way, the individual gains a much more positive relationship with it, to the extent that if a dresser or somebody who does parkour goes to somewhere, they'll do a litter pick first.
Speaker 3:They will check to see if something is stable before they, before they jump on it. You know they, if they go somewhere to train, they want to keep training on it. One thing that came through quite clearly in the discussions I was having as part of my research was that training areas became like trusted friends. As soon as somebody would be like, oh, I really like this training. If they were having a bad day, if they were feeling stressed, they would go straight to their favourite spot and just have a bit of a dink around and you don't want to break that area. But equally it gives a familiarity where you can start to kind of test things in a safe space without causing those injuries. If you injure yourself or break an area you can't keep training. So it's again matching the practice of parkour with the perception of parkour, I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I suppose you just mentioned there there's safe space and I think anyone with a mental health condition is possibly seeking a safe space out. Yeah, and then that familiarity going back to that and having it like a comfort, but yeah, I'll really tune into that. So can we look at basically the benefits, how this works and you can get as geeky as you want? Yeah, because there is an awful I think there is an awful lot going on, isn't there? Just by running, jumping about, rolling about, they've got this and then we've got all the, all the exterior influences that we're not possibly not aware that we're gaining definitely, definitely.
Speaker 3:The first study within my research tried to map out what the psychological impact of parkour was, because there were multiple studies before that that said this is one of the best. This is parkour, this is what it is, and it's got this incredible psychological response, but there wasn't that much that actually went into depth of okay, well, what is it and what is it about parkour that's triggering this psychological response? So my first study was interviewing tressors who self-reported a positive mental health benefit or positive psychological response from parkour specifically. So I could understand, right, if there are these benefits, what are they and where are they coming from? And what we found was that actually there's kind of like a continuum. So have you heard of the illness wellness continuum? I?
Speaker 1:have now.
Speaker 3:There you go. It briefly plots along that. So if you've got kind of chronic illness, symptom-free at one end difficulty they would tend to, they would find that their physical ability was directly related. So that goes back to that bi-directional feedback that I was discussing earlier. If they were having a stressful day, they would not be able to do things that they might have been able to the previous day and that can either positively or negatively feed into their performance. They could either think right, okay, well, I can't do that because I'm feeling stressed, so I'm going to work on something else. Or they could be like, well, I can't do that. That obviously means I'm rubbish, I'm obviously as stupid as I think I am, and then they would deteriorate further because they would get into this kind of negative mental cycle and discussion.
Speaker 3:What we found was if somebody is not feeling well and they go back to their familiar training spot and they play around with stuff they find that can point, they find that hope, and what they're then able to do is start to, within the same training session, build up the intensity and size of the movements they're doing, and what we started to notice was that it was much more playful, much more creative and their executive function started to improve. One of the main symptoms of depression is lack of, or reduction in, executive function, which is I just don't have the energy to get out of bed, whereas actually once you start with something small that the individual is able to do, build up from there the playful creativity does something within the brain that helped to create greater executive function. So obviously there's further research that has to be done into that, but right the way through to so you've got symptom management. Then, in terms of kind of day-to-day, people found that this experience of things that they can do, playing around with situations that they found slightly scary, enabled them to prevent themselves from getting into that high level mental health difficulty area. So they play around with their fear, they play around with their capability and it kind of needed regular and daily engagement.
Speaker 3:So, unlike adventure therapy, where you go off you do this incredible immersive experience, where you have this majorly transformative experience and then come back into the urban environment, with this one it was kind of regular daily or weekly engagement that allowed them to keep practicing those skills and then that helped them develop this theory of if I practice this and I can get better at it.
Speaker 3:What else can I practice and get better? So there's another study that highlights parkour as kind of a culture of effort and it makes it sound like it's really hard work. But actually it's if I practice something I can get better. If I can get better at this, what else can I? So it becomes that from just that sensation of hope to this sensation of actually anything is possible, even if I'm in a rubbish situation now there's all this other potential that I can achieve. So with the illness wellness continuum, it's not necessarily about where you are in terms of whether you're mentally unwell, whether you're in high level wellness, but it's about where you're facing on that continuum that parkour really can affect at every single stage and kind of adapt towards what your mental health needs at that point. Sorry, that was a lot of waffling there, wasn't it?
Speaker 1:No, that's great. It's great, I think you know obviously listeners will know that I'm a wee Seb now sort of banging to this thought of applying yourself and just being able to, even if you're just moving incrementally, which is, I think, what you're talking about, isn't it? I think people get the impression of parkour as free running and that Daniel Craig scene running up a crane and diving and see these clips on social media of running across roofs.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Which you're like. Well, I'm never going to be able to do that, but then you've already mentioned about a lady in a wheelchair.
Speaker 3:Yeah, a lot of the work that we do within the charity is ground level work. It's playing with rails that are a foot off the floor.
Speaker 3:It's playing with curbs even you know, trying to get a precision from one side of the road to just the curb, because to land it perfectly on a curb is actually quite hard. You think it's just a flat thing, but actually if you stop there and not move, it's kind of like. Example I often use is if you were to go and reach for a cup of coffee off the table or something. When you're a baby you're just like and it would come flying. But as you get older, your eye hand coordination gets better. And the same thing with parkour, but on a much bigger scale you're using your entire body as your hand and the whole world as your teacup. So the more you practice, the more you are able to achieve different things.
Speaker 3:And, as I say, it doesn't have to be the going up to the top of a building. It could be. I need to get under this rail, so I'm going to do it this way or I can do it that way. I can problem solve in multiple different ways in order to get to where I want to be. And again, something that's experienced in that way through parkour people think actually, how could I problem solve these other things in different ways as well? So it stops people getting that kind of tunnel vision of this is the only way to solve something, or it reduces the likelihood of that tunnel vision of this is the only way to prevent something. If I can think of all these different solutions in parkour actually I'm getting stressed because there's this situation. I think that's the only way to to resolve it. Can I look at this in a different way?
Speaker 2:it sounds like a massive strategic game to me effectively.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, it's. It's you learning how to navigate and move through your environment in a way that resonates with you. I was going to say benefits you, but resonates with you, I think, is a better word how would people start parkouring, parkouring, parkouring.
Speaker 3:I like that I suppose I started in a class just because I've really enjoyed learning as a group, having that instruction, having that guidance and I think for a lot of people almost being given permission. It would be so easy to just go we'll go outside and find a rail. But actually our own kind of people are going to look at me weirdly. It's a valid feeling, because these are things that we've had taught out of us for years. You know how many three-year-olds get onto a wall and just walk along it. But I was walking along all the other day and someone's like oh, you don't see that often. I'm like, okay, but I've got the, I've got the confidence to do it because I know I'm. I've, I've had the multiple years experience of you know practicing this stuff and engaging in parkour. But for somebody coming at it for the first time, having a guided session where you are mentally being given permission to do it can actually be a really good starting point, just to learn the movements, know that you're getting it right in that type of way.
Speaker 3:As I say, one of the key things that we teach is how to bail if you're doing something that you're not necessarily comfortable with. So if you are going out and doing something for the first time, you think, oh my gosh, this is really scary, I don't know how to do it. Having somebody handhold you through it can be a really good way of learning it. On the flip side, there are so many YouTube videos out there of learning the basis that if you are comfortable or there's a local park or park to you where you can just go out and have a bit of a dink around, for some people again, that's their entry point, that's where they feel most comfortable engaging in something. So, yeah, I suppose classes are one way, self-exploration is another.
Speaker 2:I guess it's a really cheap, slash, free way of getting exercise and psychological exercise Definitely Physical and psychological.
Speaker 3:Definitely, as I say, as long as you are aware enough not to get into that oh I can't do this, I'm obviously not as good as I was yesterday as long as you don't get into that mental negative loop and if you are finding that your ability isn't as good one day, you're using that almost as a reflective tool to be like okay, what am I worried about? Am I worried about the movement? Am I bringing an argument I had with my friend into my practice? As long as you're using that, that reflection, then it can be an incredible tool for managing your, your mental health. And yeah, it's a cliched example that you need nothing more than a pair of trainers. Yeah, to practice you walk out your front door. There's a curb that you can walk along to practice your balance. You can do precisions on it, you can do multiple different things just using the curb outside your house.
Speaker 1:Definitely. I think I'd probably get into trouble just wearing a pair of trainers. But that's very liberal thinking. I've already mentioned Seb's got German history, so he's probably more up for that than myself. So, yeah, I mean, there's not really any specialist equipment is there, apart from finding somewhere to practice. And I was just thinking then when you mentioned it. You know this, I think if I was going, rather than going to a class, if you just thought about going out, I would have this fear in the back of my mind of somebody watching and then, maybe, you know, jumping off some steps, doing a forward roll or something like that. And what if I got it wrong and everybody around were just laughing? Yeah, but I suppose that's been sort of drilled into us, hasn't it? As a you know? But this, this thought that by failing you're learning yeah, yeah, that's a.
Speaker 3:That's something that a lot of people struggle with when they first come to parkour because, again, they associate it with this casino royale, this superhuman, amazing stuff, and actually the the day-to-day practice of parkour is really boring. It's trying, it's making mistakes, it's failing, it's really not that picturesque to watch but it's all learning.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's all it's all advancement. Even you know making a mistake and not doing it again is it's.
Speaker 2:It's quite mesmerizing to watch when I used to work in the city center at lunchtime so you could see the youth running around and just jumping everywhere and doing little tricks, even if there weren't anything big like backflips or anything. But it's just really mesmerizing to watch and seeing people achieve these steps and being happy and glowing about it. Also, if they don't achieve it and they fall over, then they laugh about it unless they hurt themselves.
Speaker 3:But yeah, and it's. It's that shift in perception of I've failed, I've got it wrong. That is a bad thing, actually. I failed, I'm gonna get up, try again, I'll learn it again next time, that maybe don't do it quite the same way. And it just means that if you go to a job interview or if you try and learn a new skill, you have that basic awareness that it is not final. A mistake is not final. It there is that opportunity to. Okay, so I didn't get that job interview, but what did I learn from that? Okay, well, they asked me this question how could I rephrase that question next time? Well, actually, I had a job interview the other day and it was a room full of nine directors. I was like, oh, this is a learning curve, you know it's. It's having that, that experience that, yes, you may get it.
Speaker 1:Yes, you might not get it, but you get something from it, even if you don't achieve the movement you should have jumped on the table and done some balancing, yeah I'll just I keep getting I don't know why I keep getting back to this image of BMXs and stuff back in my day, back in the era, and I suppose people that couldn't escape the city that were going to and doing something like this skateboarding, bmxing, parkour. Now there are still trees, there are still bits of planting around, hopefully, so they are getting a bit of nature there. Rather, do you think? I've been reading about fractal densities and all this lot for my nature therapy and it's like, wow, there's a. You know, there's a scale to, to the, to the lines on buildings. That's not great for us, but if we're looking at many different way, sorry, can you repeat that?
Speaker 1:yeah, so what I'm thinking. What I'm thinking yeah, what I'm thinking is because is because we do get the odd tree planting in some areas, like leisure areas where people would be sat, because there's a place near the town hall where there's a place to sit a big chessboard and there's a couple of odd sycamore trees and birch trees and stuff like that. Now, if this is a place where people are practising, because there's bars there that you lock your bikes to, then are they getting a bit of nature from that as well? Oh, yeah, definitely.
Speaker 3:Parkour's one of those things that you practise it in the environment. So you can go out into nature and practise parkour and you can practise it in the urban environment. So yeah, I suppose because a lot of the stuff we do in the urban environments, even in car parks. Next to the hospital there was a line of trees.
Speaker 3:So, we did a lot of climbing trees, hanging from trees, swinging from trees and again it's that tactile change in texture. Over the one side of the car park you would have the ice. The intervention that I was studying was done in January and December, so it was an ice cold scaffolding bar. Effectively, just wipe the ice off, you've got the texture of an ice-cold scaffolding bar. Juxtaposed with wood always feels warm. The warm but roughness of the trees and working in comparison to them, you do get that kind of mixture of urban and nature together.
Speaker 1:I suppose, so how popular is parkour.
Speaker 2:Is it an Olympic sport yet, or should it be?
Speaker 1:Well, after that breakdancing, it should be, shouldn't it? Let's face it, yeah.
Speaker 3:Now you've got me. I generally stay away from discussions in competition, if I'm honest, primarily because that's not where my passion lies. Some people really enjoy the competitive aspect and that's where they get their purpose, that's where they get their motivation from, and I'm all for that. That's great For me. I find competition quite anxiety-inducing. It takes away the mental benefit that I get from parkour Sorry, I'm wobbling on my chair again. So it takes away the mental benefit that I get from parkour. And yeah, I suppose, from a competitive point of view, if that is where somebody gets their motivation and their reason for doing it, that is where somebody gets their motivation and their reason for doing it, then that's great understanding the political issues that go between the international gymnastics and the global parkour community. I'm gonna step back from commenting further yeah, I suppose there is.
Speaker 1:I never thought of that. It is gymnastics, isn't it? Street gymnastics, is it?
Speaker 3:oh, they offended all the parkour community you might have oh sorry I think obviously there is a perception of it as kind of oh, just a whole load of backflips, but then, once you get into the actual technicalities of it and the philosophical underpinnings of it, it's much more about the person's engagement with their, with their environment. So whilst competition can be useful I mean, there's competition in climbing, as you say, there's competition in break dancing there is a way to measure quantitatively and qualitatively somebody's ability in parkour. For me, I think, as long as that stays true to the philosophy of parkour rather than becoming just an outside spectacle, then I guess from your point of view as well.
Speaker 2:With your PhD, you're more there for the benefit of the person and their wellbeing rather than winning a gold medal.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, as I say, it could almost be used like a reflective tool. On the day that you might be a little bit more stressed or dealing with a lot more emotional load, that will have a direct response on what you are physically able to do. And, equally, if you're feeling mentally better, then that will have a direct response on what you're physically able to do. So, yeah, my concern with as soon as you bring that into a competitive environment is do you lose that analytical aspect of it, that self-reflective aspect of it, and is the individual then more likely to feed into the? Well, I can't do this. I could do this yesterday. Therefore, I'm not good. Therefore, I'm not going to get a gold medal. So yeah, for me, I I prefer not to engage in the competition thing but that's great, isn't it?
Speaker 1:because it doesn't have to be a competition for it to lead to benefits yeah definitely so. Yeah, do you think parkour could become something that could come under social prescribing for mental wellbeing?
Speaker 3:We've done it under social prescribing. Actually, yeah, the funding's quite hard to come by, which is the hardest thing. I believe somebody spoke about that in the Adventure Mind conference last year actually that the social prescribing framework is there. The issue is getting the money to be able to do it. One of the things that I try and aim for with the, with the charity, because we are working with disadvantaged people in areas of deprivation, removing barriers of participation, so obviously if it's on, if it's on their doorstep, but also the financial barrier to participation. So if we can get the funding, that means that somebody can attend for free. Then in my head, that is what social prescribing should be about. Children don't have to pay for their tablet medications or their antibiotic medications. They shouldn't have to pay for this For a parent, if it's a choice between I can either put a pound in the electricity meter or I can send my child to a parkour class, that should never be a decision that anybody has to make. So I've always tried to aim for these sessions to be free to the young people or to the participants attending them, and we've had some incredible results.
Speaker 3:We were working with some young people in Bristol a little while ago and one of the young girls there was. She'd been on the CAMHS the children adolescent mental health waiting list for 18 months at that point and she attended our session. She was so stressed and so anxious, she was disengaging from school. She was getting various different kind of difficulties socially, health-wise. Within a couple of sessions with us she went on a school trip that her mum didn't think she would go on because she was disengaging from school. Not only did she go on that school trip so it was a week nature-based physical activity she led a group of her peers through the forest. They were all blindfolded and she was leading them. That's an amazing transformation in confidence and her mother directly said that it was a direct consequence of attending our sessions that she was able to develop that self-confidence to be able to do that.
Speaker 3:She's now re-engaging in school. She's doing amazingly. At the point that her mum was telling us just she's doing amazingly. At the point that her mum was telling us this, she was still on the CAMHS waiting list. So there does need to be a bit of a shift in A what mental health support is out there for young people, but also making it accessible and making it practical, making it effective. And, you know, if we can see outcomes like that, where we are bringing adventure therapy into the lived environment but then also being able to apply it back out into the nature-based therapy, you get that full circle definitely yeah, we can't get too political, can we, seb?
Speaker 1:You can, I generally do. It's just that you know the environment that working with young people um, generally young people that have got some issues, and then that, yeah, the waiting lists and the waiting lists are to basically speak to somebody that they might not want to speak, but when they can go out and they can physically grow into their environment, that's such a perfect example that you've given there. You know, just by changing that it might be an ingrained philosophy in their head of I can't, I can't, actually I might be able to, actually I have, so I can, I can, and that will you know. It's just changing that little mindset a little bit, isn't it? By just, you know, getting out and doing something well different from what they have been doing.
Speaker 1:Definitely, definitely when would you see your research going relating?
Speaker 3:to parkour and mental wellbeing. Obviously, I run the charity Esprit Concrete FY. Fyi. The conversations around my thesis first came up when I first set the charity up, because there was at the time very little research on parkour and mental health. Actually, I think that still very little research on parkour and parkour and mental health. One of the things that I highlight in my thesis is that there is still this mind-body separation within healthcare and actually if we don't start to realise that they are one and the same, you know, we've had all this research come out about mental health, mental illness, and yet mental illness is still increasing actually in society. That's a fact we can't deny, even during COVID. Now I know COVID was an extreme, but incidences of psychosis and depression absolutely skyrocketed and we're still dealing with the physical and mental fallout of COVID even now. So for me, I would like this is me getting on my soapbox, isn't it? You can do, you're welcome. I would like more public health services to recognise that there is no mind-body, it is just one and the same, and to begin to incorporate practices like that.
Speaker 3:Whilst I specialise in parkour, one of the kind of trajectories that you see if you're using parkour as a therapy is. There are multiple populations that do not want to talk about things, whether that's male population that's always had the stoic. You know, we don't talk about this stiff upper lip, you don't talk about that. There are cultures from different countries where, if you talk about what you're feeling, you will be shunned from the village and then they come over to this country, to somewhere where they should feel safe, but those underlying beliefs still come with them. You find that immigrant populations are most likely to be affected by mental health or mental health difficulty, but they are also most likely to receive the poorer care because they're almost being forced to talk about things or act on things that socially and culturally they do not want to talk about.
Speaker 3:Whereas if you can get somebody engaging in something like parkour, where they get to emotively experience something before they have to talk about it, you engage a lot more people and there doesn't need to be a. If you look at the recovery model, the biopsychosocial model, there needs to be a willingness to engage in order for it to work. But if somebody is just right, we're going to do this, they don't need to believe that it's going to work for it to necessarily have an impact on them emotionally. They can be like, well, I'm just going to do parkour, it may be a therapy, it may not. If they feel a benefit afterwards, then you can start to then be like okay, so let's talk about what it is you're experiencing. Oh, you've experienced this over here, and it becomes kind of a gateway exercise into then being able to start to explore those other emotions that they're experiencing.
Speaker 3:There's a study by Torquia where she combined parkour with counselling psychotherapy, and one guy said if somebody told me to go to therapy, I just wouldn't have engaged. But because she brought in the parkour first, used the kind of playful, creative aspects that I was talking about in the beginning, when somebody's experiencing mental health challenges, they focus on playful, creative, lower intensity movements. Started on those, then started to incorporate the cognitive behavioral therapy aspects of the counseling. He was more likely to engage in it because he actually had an experiential understanding of what it was he was feeling. So I forgot what question I was answering, sorry. So, yes, that is where I would like to go and more.
Speaker 3:I I know there are types of is where I would like it to go. I know there are types of embodied therapies I would like it to inform, to add to those types of embodied therapies, to help support it become more mainstream.
Speaker 1:And to follow that up, what would your thoughts be on? I know which way it's going to go. It's a leading question. Should sports like parkour be included in the school curriculum, which would then hopefully prevent mental health issues or help prevent mental health issues, because then we're not applying them as therapies?
Speaker 3:Definitely.
Speaker 3:I mean, we've got a long way to go because there's been again, there's been studies into how parkour is taught, in terms of how it's perceived. If parkour was in one study I can't remember who it was by if parkour was taught by a parkour coach, so you're getting the underlying philosophy, you're getting the core point of parkour then it was more likely to have a psychological impact than if it was just taught as a sport by a PE teacher who'd done maybe a half a day workshop on it, who was just teaching it in the same way that they teach football or teach you know, you're going through the motions, you're just doing this. It's with parkour. If you're understanding and applying that person, environment relationship, that's where that benefit comes from. If you're just like, yeah, vote over that box, practice harder, you start to lose the, the essence of of what you're trying to achieve. It's an experienced parkour coach will find the entry level for the individual not focus on the. Today we're going to do a cat leap, yeah, yeah. So yes, I agree, how it's done is important.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I suppose I thought you'd agree, but yeah, that's the sort of thing I hadn't really thought about. Yeah, I suppose I thought you'd agree, but yeah, I hadn't really thought about it, anyway. So what would your top tip be for someone that's listened to this and thinking I might try that?
Speaker 2:Do it, do it, that's it yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, for me. I really like classes If I'm learning something new. That's just the geek that I am. Whenever I go to a class, I'm like can you show me that from a different angle, please? So either find your local class, have a Google, go along, find your local team, see if you can train with them, if you would like some guidance. Otherwise, there's so many resources on YouTube and things like that just to get the visualisation of what it is outside of that spectacle that we constantly see in the media. Just getting an understanding and visualisation of the fundamentals of what parkour is can be a really useful starting point definitely.
Speaker 1:Anything to add Seb?
Speaker 2:No, I've used up all my questions. Oh, have you?
Speaker 1:You went over quota actually today, didn't you? They were good, though they were good. Well thanks, yeah. Avlesh, you have anything to add? I think we need. You went over quarter actually today, didn't you? They were good, though they were good. Well thanks, yeah.
Speaker 1:Unless you have anything to add, I think we need to wrap up because it is getting late yeah, no, no, I think I've spoken enough no, no, honestly, it's been absolutely fascinating, which I knew it would be, because I've seen you speak a couple of times, I know you're very passionate about it. Thank you for coming in.
Speaker 3:All the best thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 1:All the best for tomorrow, although you'd forgotten about that for an hour, hadn't you? So I'm glad that we've acted as a distraction from your stress for tomorrow. But good luck with your PhD. What a great podcast. Good luck to all them, people that are going to go out and try it. Shall we go down to Bath and have a, why not? I've already broken most bones, so I'll be cool. Cool on that note, then. Charlotte, thank you very much. Thank you, and if you'd like to support us and help us keep the podcast going, then you can go to buy us a coffee, or you can click that on our website, whitefoxtalkingcom, and look for the little cup. Thank you, and look for the little cup, thank you.
