Finding Your Way Home; The Secrets to True Alignment

Podcast Short - Movement Expert Alex Coleman on building trust in your profoundly capable body

• Anthea Bell

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Gorgeous listeners, welcome to this week’s episode of Finding Your Way Home

On this week's Podcast Short, we’re joined by Alex Coleman - among the “insiders” in the movement space. A dedicated athlete, Pilates teacher and movement specialist, Alex’s career has been built on bringing her rather impressive roster of clients back to full functionality, physical and emotional health. Body up and mind down. 

In this excerpt, Alex discusses the profound importance of movement discipline - and what that structure, repetition and progression over time has taught her about her body, it’s capabilities and what it merits on a day to day basis. So many of us are guilty of neglecting the skin we’re in - from too little movement to too little light, nourishment, human contact. As you’ll hear, Alex has arrived at a blueprint that allows her to find peace, centre and empowered strength both in her stillness and her physicality. In today’s episode, she shares the “how”. 

A beautiful and thought-provoking listen - offering inspiration on how to live a deeper, more connected life; how to identify your own wants and values; and how to identify when your environment or lifestyle no longer fit the person you’re becoming. 

To find out more about Alex

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Sending love, wherever this finds you.
  
 Anthea x

Anthea:

Welcome to Finding Your Way Home, the secrets to true alignment. I'm your host, Anthea Bell, movement teacher, mind body coach, and lifelong spiritual seeker. This is a podcast about the depth, weight, and profound healing power of connection between mind and body, spirit and soul, and from one human to another. Together with an incredible range of inspiring guests, we'll explore just what connection and alignment mean. How to get there in a world full of the temptation to conform, and how great challenge ultimately can lead to life changing transformation. Get ready for groundbreaking personal stories, conversational deep dives, and a toolkit of strategies to build not just your inner knowing, but your outer world. Let's dive in.

MacBook Air Microphone-3:

Gorgeous gorgeous creatures. Welcome to this week's episode of finding your way home. We have a short today, one of a new series of episodes we're bringing in for this season six to draw some of the gorgeous little gems out from the archive. Tiny. Excerpts and episodes to inspire, to nourish, to offer you that little insight into how those on their own journeys of transformation. Have really done that, how they've moved from where they were often. Navigated really intense challenge or self-development to arrive in this place that they now find themselves with. A deep sense of self, a deep sense of connection to others, and really having manifested the vision for their life that they had hoped and desired for way back in the day. This week's episode is with a profound movement practitioner. Her name is Alex Coleman, and she's a little bit of a guru and a kind of hidden secret in the realm of movement, Alex started her career with movement very early on. And as she explained in this episode, the discipline of moving into deep self connection on a physical and somatic level was one that she was given at a very early age and that commitment has served throughout the rest of her life to. Allow her opportunities and the necessity of coming back home. And for the past 15 years, she's been guiding some beautifully well-named figures learning how to move and learning how to love this gorgeous vessel that they're in. The tenderness with which she approaches herself and our clients really comes through and it acts as a beautiful inspiration for those of us on our own paths and coming to a place of love with the physicality that we live with them. I hope you enjoy it, please. As always let us know what resonates from the episode. What you'd love to hear more of, if you want to be in touch with Alex, we can make that happen. Just have a peak in the show notes and you'll find all of the ways of getting in contact with her. And from my heart to yours, I send so much love and care on this wintery day. And, uh, I really look forward to connecting with you soon. Enjoy my darlings.

Anthea:

six years old, I started taekwondo. And, uh, my mum often talks about this story, uh, that I walked in there and I saw the black belts. And they, they're like teenagers at that point, like, you know, they're a bit older. And I just went, Oh my God, I'll never be able to do that. So at six, maybe I wasn't like that. Maybe I was like, I don't, I didn't have that confidence. I didn't have that sense of just, and my mom said, yes, you will. If you want to do it and you just train and that training lifestyle, I've always had it, you know, like, you know, Taekwondo three or four nights a week after school and you're training for your belt system. I think the taekwondo was so pivotal for me in my life because of the training, the self respect that it teaches you, you know, you wear a uniform and, in that sense, you come in presenting well, and you bow when you come in and you're training for the next year. belt and there's a lot of respect and creed, you know, that goes into this art of movement. That's been foundation to, like, my physical and mental way of being, I think. I remember going from like a girl to a woman. And stuff changing like that and going, oh, like, that's wider. Yeah. Uh. But I've always been very physical. I did like martial arts from a young age, which I really think my parents for, and, and basketball was a massive sport for me. Uh, I was out in the street rollerblading all the time. I was always very physical. And so if I look at the relationship with my body, it's always been about using it, uh, using it in a healthy sense, you know, like, um. I don't like to say being active because it just, uh, makes you think about something like, you know, fitness classes, but just being, and then same with pregnancy, you know, I remember the day that I had this thud and I was like, Oh, I definitely want to have kids in my life. I'm also so curious about pregnancy and watching my body do that and I want it to do it. I want it to activate. I want the hormones to do what they need to do and the expansion and the contraction of. Nine months of pregnancy and coming back and the breastfeeding. My relationship with it's always been like, to use it and to use it how it should be used in my eyes. I don't like stagnation. Whenever I felt stagnated in my life, emotionally or physically, I don't feel like I really don't enjoy that. So I've always had like a sense of like me and my body doing this life together. it sounds as though you instinctively trust your body, which I would not say is necessarily the norm. You know there's that phrase self efficacy, I believe myself capable of doing xyz tasks and there's not too much lack of confidence or self belief noise that gets in the way. The same is very true of the body, but I don't think that a lot of people walk around with an instinctive trust of this wonderful thing Belief and action is what you're talking about and the necessity of both. I remember being taught about eight years ago when I was really struggling with my mental health actually. I remember being taught that your actions can lead your thinking. And it was so profound for me at the time because I'd always thought that I needed to wait until I believed myself to be able to do something in order to try. No. Start doing the thing that someone that believes themselves capable of that would do. And then you get there. Yeah, I think so. I think so. And maybe in the very beginning I, I didn't believe or I don't know, I was six. But when my mom said, well, you, you can get there, you just train for it. And you just kind of put one foot in front of the other, don't you? And you just go, well, okay, then apparently I'll get there. And you just keep going and, uh. That's why now maybe I have, I have a sense of, well I can, I'll do it and uh, it's okay, we've done it before, we've trained, and, and in whatever sport that I've done or anything, you know, you, you train for it and then you can do it. It's quite simple maybe, actually. and also the simplicity of having someone that you really trust believe in you. So strong, strong mother, would that be fair to say? My mum? Very strong. Very strong to the point that I, I, I, I'm literally about to share this on a podcast. I think we might even put them her name in this baby's name, uh, because of how strong my mother is. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. What a privilege. Is she still over in, in Perth or is she back in the UK? No, she, she moved back. I mean, this is the whole story, maybe for another episode, but she actually, um, decided, to move back to England. my mum was having a whole lot of life stuff happen around the time of COVID and, um, I, I was pregnant with Ocean just after. Lockdown finished and, but Australia had very strong rules about travel, especially Western Australia. And for her to come and visit when Ocean was born meant that she had to come for three months. So she kind of prepared for a three month trip. It was off the back of a hip replacement. she'd quit her job because she had a whole lot of stuff, realizations, and long story short, she came and stayed. She actually lives up the road now. That's amazing. And then you've got your sister in London. Yeah, my sister's always been to and fro for about, I don't know, 10 years now. Um, she got, she locked down in Perth. Uh, but then as soon as that kind of lifted, she was out again, she was off, so, but she's now decided to stay in London, and uh, my mum's here, my dad's still there. Okay. Mm. Oh, we've uh, we've tangented, but I love that. Mm, yeah. I was going to ask you, when we were still on the topic of the body, and this is quick fire, can you list off for me the things you believe about your body? uh, it always knows best. it's always trying to talk to me, whether I hear it or not. Being inactive is a good thing, too. It's okay. just taking moments in each day to go slow and Contemplate this thing that we've got going on at the moment of this busy, full life. you had a question, in the pre notes about challenges. you know, we always put these like, you know, I can do it and I can do more and I can, you know, I can achieve and I get this constant kind of forwards motion. I think I feel is on is unhealthy. It's a bit toxic. We're a bit too far that end. So I really can appreciate that my body needs rest and not just now in this sense of because I'm pregnant or I'm I've got a baby. Two year old or when it like it always needed rest and actually on times of my life where I wasn't giving it rest. I really Had a hard lesson from my body so I you know, I believe it needs rest and and probably more than I've Realized sometimes. I imagine that's very consistent for a lot of people and you must see that a lot in the people that you teach so the question that I was asking alex ahead of time for today was do things need to be hard? in order for us to achieve anything? Does it have to be hard in order for it to be worth it? And that is a dialogue that we see a lot, and we definitely see it in relation to the body, with all of the ways that workouts even are marketed. I mean, so much of it now is oriented, obviously, towards the want for people to look a different way or to weigh a different weight. or whatever it is. But also in some senses to become a particular kind of person. And it makes me a little sad because It picks up on people's vulnerability, in a way that maybe they're not aware of, that they're being manipulated is maybe too strong of a word, but that there's something being accessed in them that isn't quite healed, yeah, it's very interesting. There's just a notion and I've been literally thinking about this recently. This notion of more is better or, you know, more satisfying or something. But, you know, I'm looking at it in my two year old. He says, more, mommy, more, more. And I'm thinking, God, that's interesting because is it sold? Like, are we, you know, boot camps or this or that? Like, get fitter, stronger, faster, harder, you know. Uh, but then I'm literally watching this human grow right now. And there is a thing about more, again. Again, do it again, more, bigger, you know, and is that like a, part of our ego? Is it a part of our makeup as a human being? Is it something that we evolve to, uh, later in life when you realize less is more, which is something that I really believe in, uh, and you become a bit more maybe refined I'm noticing there's lots of, um, Apps and now even social media are using this competition style post you know, this continual more and uh, hit that next thing I don't think it's necessary I think that's playing into a certain thing that we have, naturally, in us. A sense of, I don't know what it is, competition or motivation, or, Do you know what it is? I think there's a couple of things that come up for me. The first one is, this memory of, um, people describing football as the religion of the 21st century, that it was something that people could congregate towards in community and they could be passionate about and they could have faith in. And I think movement has maybe taken that mantle in our generation because it's put on the pedestal in terms of this thing of becoming. and there is also a reality that. In some respects, we're given a lot of challenges in life, and in some respects, we're not necessarily given that much that unifies us into big challenge. We've got, all of us, a lot of force and passion and fire and love and faith inbuilt in us, and we don't always have the direction to channel that in. And I think especially if people are feeling maybe not... not purposeful in a way that's truly aligned with their profession or within their love life or whatever it is. We all want something that we can put our energy into and also feel proud of ourselves for, it is very infectious to be like, Oh my God, I'm finally that person that's able to do that. And then the other thing you're talking about is with your little one, the more thing in its purity, It strikes me that you are living this life in Cornwall, which is very rich and very busy, and loving life in that context in a way that's very pure. And if you're living in a city and all your experience is small pockets of green, covered in shops and streets, and if everything is oriented towards externalized pleasure. the more thing is much more common there, and it's a lot more, and it's a lot more insubstantial. So, of course, we constantly need another bit, because none of it's really hitting true. I really agree with that. and actually watching someone on a journey of movement. that first question, how many should I do, you know, at home? There's this sense of. If I do more, I'll get better. And then that slowly strips away. The more the client, um, becomes more fulfilled and happy in the way they're feeling in their body, physically, maybe the pain's, gone. they're feeling more toned in the places that they wanted just because functionally they're, they're moving better. there's a more curious questions that's literally the equivalent of being in an area like this valley that is just home. actually, you know, it's fine. You don't need the external, you know, you don't need more. like for me, the London stuff, it's so fun popping back to London but you know, like two, three nights is enough. I find it quite dense now.

Gorgeous listeners. Thank you. So. So. much. For your ears. I hope. You enjoy today's. today's. episode. To find. More about our. Featured guests. Have a look in the show. Notes.