Heart of Motion
The Heart of Motion Podcast is an exploration of the heart, soul and science of movement - and what it means in our lives.
Movement connects us more deeply to ourselves, to our bodies and to the things and people that are most important to us. Beyond a fitness routine, why do you move? And what moves you? When we can look past the hamster wheel of ''fitness" - we start to realize that when we really live the lives of our bodies - life can be a whole lot more fulfilling, and a whole lot more fun!
Host Susannah Steers is your guide on a quest to understand how we can move better, feel better in our bodies and connect more deeply to our people and the world around us. Join her for some conversation, interviews with experts, and conversations with everyday people about what movement means to them. You might just find movement feels a little different on the other side...
Heart of Motion
Dancing Through Life with Fiona Drewbrook
What connects the disciplined world of ballet with the adrenaline rush of mountain biking and the expressive art of pole dancing? For physiotherapist Fiona Drewbrook, it's the intensity, precision, and pure joy of movement that ties these seemingly disparate practices together.
From bleeding into pointe shoes while maintaining perfect form to conquering three mountains in a single day on her bike, Fiona brings the same all-in approach to every physical challenge she undertakes. Her journey from professional ballet dancer to physiotherapist reveals how early movement education can shape our relationship with our bodies for life.
Susannah and Fiona explore the misconceptions about ballet ("it's not just tutus and looking pretty") and how the discipline prepared Fiona for both extreme sports and her healthcare career. The conversation takes a fascinating turn when Fiona describes discovering pole dancing after years away from dance—finding in it something profoundly healing: a movement community that genuinely celebrates all body types.
This appreciation for diverse bodies directly influences Fiona's approach as a physiotherapist. She emphasizes building trust with clients, providing education, and helping people develop agency over their physical health. "If we can give people the tools where they can learn how to self-manage their conditions, I love that," she explains, noting that movement education now builds resilience for our later years.
Fiona's story offers inspiration and practical wisdom about finding joy through movement at any stage of life. As she aptly demonstrates, our bodies are made to move—and celebrating that capacity might take us to surprising places.
Where to Find Fiona!
Fiona Drewbrook - On Instagram
Book a Physiotherapy Appointment with Fiona Drewbrook
Fiona Pole Dancing - On Instagram
I'd LOVE to hear from you! Send me a text!
Heart of Motion Podcast host Susannah Steers is a Pilates & Integrated Movement Specialist and owner of Moving Spirit Pilates in North Vancouver, BC. She is passionate about movement, about connections and about life.
Through movement teaching, speaking, and facilitating workshops, she supports people in creating movement practices that promote fitness from the inside out. She loves building community, and participating in multi-disciplinary collaborations.
Along with her friend and colleague Gillian McCormick, Susannah also co-hosts The Small Conversations for a Better World podcast – an interview based podcast dedicated to promoting the kind of conversations about health that can spark positive change in individuals, families, communities and across the globe.
Social Media Links:
Moving Spirit Pilates Instagram
Moving Spirit Pilates Facebook
Susannah Steers Instagram
Welcome to the Heart of Motion podcast. I'm Susanna Steers and I'll be your host as we explore the heart, soul and science of movement as a pathway to more active, vibrant and connected living. Nothing happens until something moves, so let's get started.
Susannah Steers:Hello everyone, I'm so glad you're here. I've been looking forward to this day for a very long time. Today, I have the pleasure of introducing you to one of my favorite people.
Susannah Steers:Since I met Fiona Drewbrook in a dance studio many more years ago than I'd like to admit, I've known her to be the kind of person who is all in in her life. She works hard and she plays hard, and I think that outlook has taken her to some very interesting places. Much of Fiona's life has been centered around training, movement and learning about the human body. In her childhood and teen years, she dedicated herself to ballet training, which is where we first met, and if you know anything about ballet, you'll know that that training can be pretty intensive.
Susannah Steers:After high school, fiona moved to Boston and then to Toronto to continue her ballet training and to dance with Ballet Jorgen, canada. At 21, she decided to hang up the pointe shoes and pivot to a career in healthcare. She returned to Vancouver to complete a Bachelor of Kinesiology and a Master's of Physiotherapy at UBC, and she's now working as a physiotherapist here in Vancouver. In both her professional and personal pursuits, fiona is quite literally a mover and a shaker. I know you are going to love her story. Welcome to the podcast, fiona,
Fiona Drewbrook:thank you.
Fiona Drewbrook:Thank you so much, Sue. I'm so excited to finally speak to you.
Susannah Steers:It's fun to connect right? Absolutely. Let's maybe start with the ballet, because dance is what brought us together those many long moons ago. Can you tell us a little bit about your journey in dance?
Fiona Drewbrook:Well, first, of all, we were connected through dance, and so Sue actually taught a intro to anatomy for dancers at the studio and that was really what sparked my whole life journey of where I've ended up now. So thanks, Sue. You're the reason I'm a physio now.
Susannah Steers:That's so fun.
Fiona Drewbrook:Yeah, learning I mean it was more the essentials of anatomy, but I just loved the fact of learning like everything that's in our body and to be able to imagine that that is actually inside of me. It was wild. It's quite groundbreaking for my little 15 year old brain.
Susannah Steers:Yeah, I remember some interesting moments. I think we had a - d o you remember the anatomy jeopardy game we played one day?
Fiona Drewbrook:Yes, yes!
Susannah Steers:Well, let's start there. The anatomy was part of that pre-professional dance training that you had, so you know, it's pretty serious when, as a dancer, you're learning about that stuff. What did your days look like? There was a lot going on back then.
Fiona Drewbrook:Yeah, there was. So there's a couple of different schools in Vancouver where you can do half-day programs. But I kind of arranged it at my school because we fortunately were on a semester system, so I went to school just in the mornings and then at lunch I would go to dance and train for the rest of the day six, seven hours and then did the rest of my high school by correspondence. So it was a lot of work, it was really stressful, but I absolutely loved it. I wouldn't have wanted it any other way. Yeah, unfortunately. I mean, at that point in my life I really just wanted to dance. That was all I wanted to do. So high school wasn't quite as big of my priority at that point. But of course my mother kept me in line and was like no, you still have to do all of this.
Susannah Steers:But it's a lot because, as you say, I mean, you're dancing for six or seven hours a day. You're dead beat at the end of it and, oh yeah, now I've got to do my homework before school tomorrow morning.
Fiona Drewbrook:Exactly, it's really just: school dance, school sleep, school dance, school sleep. But really the dance part of it was that was all I wanted to do. That was so much fun to me. I was excited to go to dance every day, show up early, do your stretching and warmups and then you go home at the end of the night and you go and try to do some school work and try to stay off YouTube watching more ballet videos.
Susannah Steers:You moved to Boston. You were in Toronto dancing all the time and I guess around 21, you decided to shift gears and you and I both transitioned from a dance career to kind of a movement focused health profession. I know that transitions from dance to normal life can be a bit of a thing. What was that shift like for you?
Fiona Drewbrook:It was a difficult transition, for sure, In my process of leaving my dance career too. It was by choice, but also not by choice. My contract wasn't renewed at the end of my season dancing because I was too tall for the company, and that was an ongoing battle that I had through my entire I mean short dance career.
Susannah Steers:It's a real thing. Your body isn't right and when you're struggling against that all the time, I was always too muscular.
Fiona Drewbrook:Especially when it's something like that, where it's out of my control, I can't do anything about it, I'm just told to do it. Okay, I guess I'll go try something else. Then it's not something I can change, there's nothing you can do about it. Yeah, it's really wrenching when you've worked your whole career to be here and then all of a sudden they're like well, actually sorry, we don't have any guys that can partner with you, so you don't have a place here anymore. So that was really difficult and I definitely I just lost a lot of motivation.
Fiona Drewbrook:At that point I didn't really know where my life was going. Dance wise. I always knew I wanted to dance for a ballet company, but I didn't really have that much interest in teaching, to be honest, which has actually shifted a little bit now. I might consider it at some point. But at that point I didn't want to choreograph, I didn't want to teach, I just wanted to dance and that was it. So at that stage I was like, well, maybe it's just time to wrap it up. I knew I'd probably end up going back to school anyways at the end of my dance career. So why not just do that now, bite the bullet, get it done and start my career a little sooner, and I made it.
Fiona Drewbrook:We're good.
Fiona Drewbrook:But that transition was definitely difficult. Being in the ballet industry is a very strange place and maybe changes your expectations for how real life works to some degree. Can you say more about that? Yeah, I mean, in a ballet company it's all based on how hard you're working, making yourself seen. Show people that you're working hard all the time. Show people that you are eager and wanting to do the best. It's a little bit like you have to be obsessed in order to be successful and the bar is always going up.
Susannah Steers:There's no end point. When you get there, then you have to do the next one, and then the next one.
Fiona Drewbrook:Absolutely. It's never ending, never ending. There's always going to be somebody working harder than you, and that is what's in your head all the time. You have to work harder than that imaginary person who is apparently working harder than you, so it's just never enough. So, transitioning back to school, I was definitely very obsessive about being the best and I needed really good grades. I needed to show like I kind of carried that over but then also really struggled with transitioning to sitting all day in a classroom and then going home and sitting to study and that was so hard and I wasn't like my movement education up to that point was dance and I didn't really need to do a whole lot outside of that because I was dancing a lot. It was a very physical.
Susannah Steers:Six or seven hours a day...
Fiona Drewbrook:Exactly. You didn't want to be doing more than that. But transitioning to school, that was really hard because I was like, well, ballet classes are really expensive. I'm on a student budget, I also don't have time to go downtown to take these drop-in classes all the time, and so that was hard. I kind of had to figure out some different ways of moving and different sports to kind of jump into to keep active, and I wanted to explore some other sports as well. But just keeping moving was a little bit of a challenge because I didn't have a good education in the gym or anything. I was not confident in the gym whatsoever, which is also something that's kind of important to me now as a physio, because a lot of people don't. They don't teach that in schools. No, no, they don't. We're going to teach you this the rules of I don't know football, instead of how to actually move your body well, yeah, how to live in your body and how to move it well.
Susannah Steers:What does moving well mean to you? Now, post-ballet, you're in your career. What does it mean to you in your life, maybe in your work or in your own body?
Fiona Drewbrook:Yeah, I feel like there's different answers for each of those. So in, let's say, in my work, I want people to be able to move in a way that is meaningful to them and to be able to do that pain-free. So if that means they want to go train for a marathon, great. We want to work towards building up the tolerance of their body to be able to take those loads and keep that endurance through that entire time so that they can do that pain-free or relatively pain-free.
Fiona Drewbrook:I feel like a marathon would always be painful in my brain
Susannah Steers:On some level.
Fiona Drewbrook:But yeah then to me I have various sports I've collected now, just being able to A) move your body in like an optimal way. I feel like I should use some sports as an example, like figuring out when I'm skiing. I like to focus a little bit on techniques and like movement efficiency so that I - and disclaimer, I'm not, I'm no great skier, I'm pretty average - but to figure out the movements and like to analyze the technique of skiing so that you can try and keep speed and that confidence with the speed, while also moving downhill as fast as I can.
Susannah Steers:Because it's fun.
Fiona Drewbrook:Because it's fun, it is so fun. Yeah.
Fiona Drewbrook:And that's really where everything comes back to. I just want to do it because it's fun.
Susannah Steers:Yeah. Yeah, it's funny you're saying this about your skiing technique. I'm in the pool regularly and for me it's kind of meditative in that I can really feel when I get the strokes right, when I'm supporting my body well, your body kind of lifts and you're just gliding, as opposed to the times when I'm a little less organized and you know, maybe my back's tight or whatever, and then nothing is quite as well coordinated and so I'm spending my time kind of feeling into those places while I'm swimming.
Susannah Steers:People say they get bored swimming and I think, "really
Fiona Drewbrook:Totally, and that's totally what it is with skiing too, because there's so much waiting of the skis and then there's almost a period of weightlessness in between turns, which is so, oh, it feels so good. But you're right, some days there's just days where your body just isn't moving super well or the snow is super weird, of course, so things change depending on the day, but when you can get it, oh, it feels so good.
Susannah Steers:Well, I feel like maybe something in your dance training informs the process that you're describing right now. I mean spending so much time working on the smallest little activity of the foot, or how you're lengthening your leg or recruiting that one specific thing. That changes everything, at least in terms of your own activity. I don't know, maybe that helps you working with patients too, but it does kind of create a lens through which you experience movement.
Fiona Drewbrook:Absolutely, absolutely it does, and regularly when I'm skiing, mountain biking, dancing, whatever, I come back to actually cues that you've given through that anatomy and movement court. There's a lot of imagery that you used in how you Educated Us too, which I really appreciated. I'm very much a visual learner and I tend to use random imagery too with clients, whether that works or not sometimes. I tend to use random imagery too with clients, whether that works or not sometimes. Sometimes they're like Fiona, what are you talking about? That's so abstract.
Fiona Drewbrook:Yeah, that is, but it really helps. Thinking of like the little fish hooks and a slight string tugging up your spine and little cues like that where I'm like, oh yeah, if I just engage my little fish hook, things suddenly become a lot easier when you do that movement or it just gives a little bit more stability through your core, where of course, that's the center of all your movement, your limbs attached to your core. So having that nice and stable when you're moving then allows you to use your muscles a little bit more efficiently through your extremities as well. So, yeah, I think, right from childhood really and through teen years really was when I obviously started taking ballet more seriously, but through that movement training when I was younger definitely translates into everything I do now, and really my whole life is a vault.
Susannah Steers:Well, I mean, it's getting to be summer season, spring season now, so probably you're transitioning out of skiing and into another passion for you, which is mountain biking, and into another passion for you, which is mountain biking. Yes, I remember running into you up at the End of the Line Coffee shop in North Vancouver. I was coming out of the trails after my little morning walk and there you were hanging out with your pals in the - I think you'd just done the first mountain, you'd just done Mount Seymour, so you were on the way to do the Triple Crown, that's what it's called right?
Fiona Drewbrook:Yes, the triple crown. Exactly.
Susannah Steers:Now. As I understand it from some of my mountain biking friends, that is no small feat.
Fiona Drewbrook:It's a big day, for sure. I did it with such a great group of friends too. I made a couple people join for just certain segments too. But yes, it's a big ride. I should have double checked all the elevation and everything, but it's a big day.
Susannah Steers:And it's all in one day. Three mountains in one day, right?
Fiona Drewbrook:Three mountains in one day. You start in Deep Cove, you go to the dock and you dip your tires into the water in Deep Cove. Got to do that the start and end! And then you ride up Seymour, ride down. There's various trails that you can ride. Fortunately our friend had done the route before actually, so we kind of followed his lead and did the trails he recommended. But yeah, ride some trails down Seymour and then ride up Fromme, ride some trails down Fromme, big big traverse, and then up Cypress all the way, and then we come down one more big trail there, finish in Horseshoe Bay, dip your tires in right at the end.
Susannah Steers:Wow, wow, I think I would die.
Fiona Drewbrook:You would not. You'd be great. It's fun. You eat a lot of sugar through the day Just to keep you going.
Susannah Steers:Keep the energy up!
Susannah Steers:Well, how did you get there? Because, okay, I mean, I know ballet can be really exciting when you're in it, right, and you're in those moments. But a lot of people are not going to put ballet and hardcore mountain biking and skiing in the same package. So what do you think? What is it about those sports particularly that drew you in? Was it intensity?
Fiona Drewbrook:It is. I think it is. It's intensity, and I think, too, there's this perception around ballet that it's like you know what little girls do with their tattoos and it's really soft and pretty, which is you have to make it look soft and pretty, but inside, when you are on stage and you've got four blisters and you're bleeding into your pointe shoes and you still have to put your whole body weight on your shoes and then jump on pointe, it's really intense. You learn to deal with pain and work through it and look pretty while doing it and you are working your muscles so hard all the time. It is so intense and to have done that like your whole life, since childhood too, like it's really a high level sport. And I think there's this perception around ballet that it's maybe not quite as hardcore as it is, but it is honestly so hardcore, seriously. Yeah, it really is. Yeah, you've lived through it too. You know what it is. So I think it actually kind of translates.
Fiona Drewbrook:Well, I don't think people realize how intense of a sport it is that mountain biking is kind of similar and skiing is kind of similar and now pole dancing also kind of similar. There's a lot of pain and skin pain, very different forms of pain, but it's still painful and you just do it. I think my obsession with making the movement as beautiful as I can and as flowy and keeping momentum through movement all those kinds of principles translates well to each of those sports. With ballet, you want things to be flowing around the stage and you want to be using momentum in an appropriate way. It's the same thing with mountain biking. When you're going down a trail, you want to be end goal, going as fast as you can make it. So you're trying to figure out how you can angle the bike and maneuver your body on the bike to maintain that momentum as you go around corners or even gaining speed around corners. And again, I'm a very mediocre mountain biker at the end of the day. But that's that obsession and like movement analysis, that I really really love.
Fiona Drewbrook:I get really excited about, yeah.
Susannah Steers:It's fun when you can do it at that intensity. It comes back to those feelings - or maybe I'm projecting - but it comes back to those feelings, you know, when you're fully "in it on stage and you're doing all the things and you're a hundred percent invested in what. You're fully in it on stage and you're doing all the things and you're 100% invested in what you're doing. And it sounds to me like maybe that's part of your experience when you're riding your bike.
Fiona Drewbrook:Absolutely, yeah, absolutely. Just makes me forget all my other issues in life, so turns your brain off, focused entirely on what you were doing. Plus, you have to with sports like mountain biking, where you have to be, where your brain has to be engaged, or something might go wrong.
Susannah Steers:You don't want to lose the plot when you're hurtling down the hill and on the rocks.
Fiona Drewbrook:Not at all, which I think is also meditative and just brings your attention to that. You have to engage your brain. It's kind of like a yoga practice of sorts, where you have to be focusing on the movement and it's that presence that I really like and then getting to enjoy it with friends.
Susannah Steers:Which is even better! Okay, so now I want to talk about pole dancing, because I have been watching all your fantastic pole dancing stuff and I realized you did your first competition recently and I was like, oh man, I would love to have been there to see that.
Fiona Drewbrook:I wish I'd invited you! I felt so bad in retrospect. I I was so nervous! though.
Susannah Steers:I mean, this is another one of those things that people don't often recognize how much strength, flexibility, fluid control pole dancing requires. I've done a little bit of pole dancing and it's hard. What drew you to it, and does it compliment some of the other things that you're doing?
Fiona Drewbrook:Absolutely so. I had a friend who started before me, a girl who I did undergrad with, and I saw videos she was doing and I was like, oh, this is interesting. I'd done one pole dance class, I think, when I was on tour with the ballet company. That was kind of like a promotional thing, I think, for the studio. I didn't really enjoy it that much. I have always struggled with upper body strength so I didn't pick that part up very easily at all. But I saw what my friend was doing and I was like, oh, actually, this is basically kind of a combination of ballet and rock climbing it's bouldering on one piece of metal. I was like, okay, ballet and rock climbing, like it's bouldering on one piece of metal, okay, this is kind of cool.
Fiona Drewbrook:When I finished school as well, when I finished for physiotherapy, I wanted to find another movement practice, like dance that, because I really miss dancing and I didn't dance for I guess six or seven years. When I was in school. I kind of quit cold turkey and I think it was healthy for me to kind of have that separation just from healing, from some body dysmorphia and other kind of things that are natural with the industry as well. But I really missed it, like the movement and that analysis and the femininity of movement as well, the delicateness and attention to detail. I wasn't really getting through mountain biking and skiing, which were really my only sports at that point.
Fiona Drewbrook:So getting back into a dance space, I was really excited by one, where going back to a ballet class at that point in my career is a little bit depressing when you haven't been doing it for so long and you reach a level where you actually have to be dancing that six or seven hours a day. You have to be in it all the time in order to maintain that level. I couldn't just put pair of pointe shoes back on and be able to do five pirouettes again. So getting into an adjacent dance form where there's a lot of transfer of that movement skill but also is completely new and I'm learning something different and I don't have to be hard on myself for not being at a certain level where my brain expects me to be at. We're always too hard on ourselves.
Susannah Steers:No kidding.
Fiona Drewbrook:So I could create that kind of safe space for myself to explore a new movement and learn a new skill without and still enjoy that movement transfer of dance, without having that perfectionism to quite a new degree, because I was completely new and I had no upper body strength.
Susannah Steers:Well, it sure looks like you've got some upper body strength now, seeing you hanging upside down and I just wow, look at that girl.
Fiona Drewbrook:It is a constant work in progress those the little arm noodles are. They're trying hard. It really is so fun though, especially coming out from ballet too. It's a very different industry in pole dance, where truly it was really healing actually for me, in terms of body dysmorphia, in seeing how, truly like at its core, every single body is celebrated every single body is so genuinely celebrated.
Fiona Drewbrook:It's not just like oh yeah, you, you can do this like you're accepting. It's like seeing that representation of different bodies some of the most beautiful pole dancers on instagram like have more voluptuous bodies and are different races and different and gender celebration and it's just such a diverse population that seeing that truly, truly celebrated was really eyeopening to me and really healing. To be like, oh yeah, like everybody's body is beautiful, every shape is incredible, like should be celebrated, you can have more of like a belly pouch and that is so feminine and like.
Fiona Drewbrook:I love that. Every single body has something about it where I'm like that is hot, yes, beautiful, and you can still move it and celebrate that body. You don't have to change anything about it. It's not about fitness and burning calories and being skinny. Your body can be whatever it is in that state right now and you can move it in a beautiful way and everyone will love it and support you for it. Yeah, that was that, was that, and that's so much about the industry where I am so on board, I love it.
Susannah Steers:Oh, I get it. It sounds fantastic. It's certainly what I see when I look online. And I guess that brings me to some of the things you've talked about with me in terms of your treatment philosophy and how it kind of centers around strong communication and empathy and body positivity and all of those things. Could you talk a little bit more about that and maybe how that approach might make a difference in someone's recovery when you're working with them?
Fiona Drewbrook:Totally.
Fiona Drewbrook:Just kind of a side note on that. I think there was a study at some point where the best outcomes from a physio and client relationship are just when they trust you. That is like the number one indicator of whether they will have a good journey and recover well from their injury is if you trust them and have a good relationship.
Fiona Drewbrook:So really that needs to be the center of any relationship with a client that I have, and it's totally okay. Of course there's different personalities. It's okay. If that isn't really clicking, that's totally fine. We can refer to another one of my colleagues or someone else. Finding someone that fits for you is really number one. So in that too I also want to make sure that that patient feels seen and has all of their needs met through the lens of whatever they're going through and what they need at that time, which is different for everybody, and everyone's coming from different backgrounds where they might have trauma in different areas of their life. Different things might be kind of triggering to them. They're going through different struggles, varying levels of stress, activity.
Fiona Drewbrook:I think really just recognizing that everyone is genuinely everyone's trying their best, nobody's like oh, I know this is good for me, but I'm not going to do it.
Fiona Drewbrook:It's like, oh I know this is good for me and I should, but maybe there's some barriers that I'm facing that aren't really letting me get there, whether that's like a mental thing, if that's just feeling not comfortable in that space or maybe not comfortable in their body, and if I can make a difference in supporting that transition or helping support them to perform these movements, that might help them be able to practice these movements more efficiently or make it more accessible to them and just diminish those barriers.
Fiona Drewbrook:That is kind of my number one in helping somebody recover. Of course and not everyone has those barriers Some people are already super active and they just want to get back. So well then, sometimes dialing things back to and educating people, maybe this is too much for your body right now. We actually need rest, and this is there's different forms where we can get rest. We can load other areas of your body to maybe fill in some gaps in the meantime so that when it's had time to rest and we're going through that rehab process, when you eventually return to that sport you'll be even stronger than you were when we started. So it really depends on the person and what they need but I think at its core, keeping really patient-centered is top priority for me in my practice, for sure.
Susannah Steers:It seems to me that education is a really big part of your practice. I think that's something that we share, right, because once somebody knows it, then it's theirs. It's not something they're coming to somebody else for information about. They have the information and then they can make the choices they need to make in their process. Definitely, what are some of the most common things that you find yourself educating your patients about?
Fiona Drewbrook:I love incorporating anatomy into education so that people are understanding what is going on in their body, like what is hurting, what's causing this issue. And then I'd say probably most injuries come from a load intolerance. So a lot of people it's just too much, too soon. So you went and ran a marathon and your body wasn't quite adapted enough to it. Maybe we needed a little bit of a longer training period leading up to it and the body takes a lot of time to adapt to those loads when we are increasing super fast. But other injuries too, like if you're sitting at your desk all day and you're in one position.
Fiona Drewbrook:Our body really likes movement. So if we have too much load kind of in one position, our body's going to get grouchy. We need to kind of change position regularly and it's not necessarily about holding one good posture. Somebody on Instagram told you this is how you're supposed to sit, or have your shoulders shoved back behind your ears or something in some strange position. Hold this one rigid position all day. It's the movement. Yeah, it's still dependent on the patient and kind of what injury or what they're going through, but number one is just movement through the day. I think is most important. Yeah, keeping regular movement, changing position often.
Susannah Steers:Yeah, that makes sense. Those are things I talk to my clients about all the time too. You got to keep moving.
Fiona Drewbrook:You got to keep moving. Probably initially learned that from you.
Susannah Steers:Well, the whole idea of autonomy I find is really interesting because I think a lot of people especially perhaps if they're not moving a lot, you know, if they're not moving intensely during the course of their day sometimes they depend on other people to give them information about their bodies and they're not really thinking about what's happening. And I find when you start to see them get some autonomy and start to have some confidence in understanding what's going on for them, it's a really interesting shift in their physical health, but also in a whole bunch of other ways. I'm curious how you might help clients become more self-sufficient and confident in managing their own physical health.
Fiona Drewbrook:Totally, and I think this actually comes back a little bit to a point that you said as well, where, like education, like that is a really big priority, where I love giving so much education so that people can have agency over their movement and their bodies and feel like they have the tools, where maybe in the future they come across a little bit of pain and they're like, oh, actually, maybe I have these skills already where I can kind of try some different movements and see if that helps things so that they don't have to be so.
Fiona Drewbrook:People are busy. If we can give people the tools where they can learn how to self-manage their conditions as well, I love that; which sounds counterproductive because I'm a physio and I rely on people coming to see me. But if we still like, if we can give people that agency and that power and confidence in themselves to be able to manage their bodies well, that's going to go so much further in the long run and really at the end of the day, there's always going to be people who are injured. So if we can help people be healthier now, load their bones, load their muscles, build that muscle mass that is going to be really important. When they are 80 years old and they fall and don't break a hip because they have been doing movement and loading their bones, they don't have as much osteoporosis and other comorbidities and diseases that affect their bodies later in life. If we can give them the tools and the confidence to be able to move their body well now we're really training for when they're old and hopefully not breaking their hip when they fall.
Susannah Steers:What is your favorite way to unwind after a long day of helping other people move better?
Fiona Drewbrook:Probably more movement! I don't really stop moving.
Fiona Drewbrook:My favorite days that you have um some pole dance classes at my studio that are a little bit later at night, like 9, 30, 8, 30 I guess is latest class. So if I can finish a day, even on my later days, and and take a class at the end of the day, it's really lovely and some of them are very they're very meditative flows that we're going through too. So it's really a chance to kind of check in with your body at the end of the day what's feeling a little bit sticky and icky and what needs to just kind of wiggle those little bits out and then pair that with music and trying to make everything flow. It's really calming as well and exciting too. Sometimes it's hard to fall asleep after because I'm like, yeah, let's keep going.
Susannah Steers:You remember what I said at the beginning about you're being all in? Yes... still there.
Susannah Steers:You're practicing at Gastown Physio, right? So people can find you there. I'll put links in the show notes. Is there anywhere else people can find you? If they'll put links in the show notes, is there anywhere else people can find you if they would like to learn more about you or see some of your pole dancing exploits?
Fiona Drewbrook:For sure. I mean, Instagram, you can always connect to me through Instagram and I yeah, I also work at VGH as well, which hopefully we're not reconnecting through there. It's an older population that I'm I'm working with at VGH, but, yes, I hope not to see people there, ideally. Please don't come to the hospital.
Susannah Steers:But if you do, you'll be really glad to be in Fiona's hands.
Fiona Drewbrook:Here we go, we'll work together and we'll get you back to where you need to be.
Susannah Steers:Thank you so much for spending some time with me, Fiona. It's always, it just, it warms my heart to catch up with you.
Fiona Drewbrook:Me too. I always, I'm always so joyful after speaking with you and having a chance to connect and truly like. Everything in my in my career has come from my early days and learning anatomy and learning how, oh yeah, I can kind of feel things in my body and I have this awareness of where my spine is, and transferring that from Pilates as well into the ballet setting and now into other forms of movement has been really impactful in my journey through my career.
Susannah Steers:Oh, that's wonderful to hear.
Fiona Drewbrook:and also just being a mentor too. I really appreciate you as a person and your support over the years, so thank you so much
Susannah Steers:Back at you, girl, and I want an invite to that next pole dancing competition!
Fiona Drewbrook:100%. I can't believe I didn't mention it to you. I don't know what I was thinking. Brain was out to lunch.
Susannah Steers:Well, take care, Fiona, and I hope to see you again very soon.
Fiona Drewbrook:Absolutely. Thank you so much, sue. Bye-bye, much love, bye.
Susannah Steers:I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Subscribe and, if you love what you heard, leave a five-star review and tell people what you enjoyed most. Join me here again in a couple of weeks. For now, let's get moving.
