Attuning, without forcing or controlling.
I’m a scholar and a practitioner of embodied and relational well-being. Beneath everything I do is a rather Taoist approach: deep trust in, and support of, the inherent self-organizing principle of life, oriented toward health, development, integration and vitality.
- 15years of bodywork practice
- 18years of contact improvisation, including teaching at Texas A&M University
- 10years of relational and intersubjective facilitation
- McGillMaster’s thesis on embodiment, relationship and whole-systems well-being
My training runs back to Ida Rolf and Milton Trager.
I attended IPSB, the International Professional School of Bodywork, where at the center of my training in a variety of modalities I completed the Structural Integration program in 2011. The school emphasizes awareness, movement, and an orientation toward pleasure.
- Ida RolfStructural Integration
- Ed MaupinA longtime friend of Ida Rolf’s, and one of the longest practicing practitioners of her work in the world. A founder of IPSB, and the lead teacher of its Structural Integration program.
- Milton TragerThe developer of Tragerwork
- James StewartA longtime friend and student of Milton Trager
John
I received both teaching and the ten sessions from Ed Maupin, and I studied under James Stewart. Through years of practice, the two lineages have woven together in my work.
Rolf named the objective of the ten-session series “Expansional Balance”: the unfolding of the spring-loaded response to gravity that our bodies evolved for.
“His hands have a knack for finding what’s happening under the surface…”
I’ve practiced relational facilitation for ten years.
Alongside bodywork, I’m trained in a number of interpersonal growth and healing practices, and I’ve led and assisted groups in them.
- I’ve practiced contact improvisation for eighteen years, including teaching at Texas A&M University.
- I’m trained in Circling, a relational meditation and communication practice. I co-led the world’s first Circling and contact improvisation weekend workshop, at Earthdance Creative Living in Western Massachusetts.
- In 2022, The Connection Institute tapped me to help lead a five-month group coaching training in Austin, Texas.
- I assisted in UnTriggered, a workshop on nervous system co-regulation, in Asheville, North Carolina.
- I’m also trained in Internal Family Systems therapy, and in a variety of breathwork called Integral Breath Therapy.
“John has an exceptional understanding of the human body, and where we carry stress, tension, strong emotions, and joy.”
My research looks at how relationship shapes health.
At McGill University I completed a thesis demonstrating how the quality of our relationships to our own embodiment, to other humans, and to the more-than-human world, is a core determinant of human health and function.
It integrates findings from many disciplines: interoception, embodiment, mindfulness, the neuroscience of perception, psychophysiology, trauma, interpersonal neurobiology, self- and co-regulation, neuroplasticity, developmental psychology, attachment theory, ecological economics, and complex systems science; toward an understanding of whole-systems well-being, from person to planet.
I also have a Bachelor of Science in Ecological Restoration from Texas A&M.