Monika Volkmar Bodywork

05/22/2026

When I was starting out as a personal trainer, I could see that people had a lot of trouble squatting. Their technique needed help, and their bodies looked really unbalanced and asymmetrical. A lot of my clients also reported that squats historically felt bad, or they wanted to improve their range of motion.

And, noob that I was, I did the industry standard things that I was taught "worked".

I was taught that I should just coach them to squat better by getting them to focus CONSCIOUSLY on how they were squatting.

So I told people to push "evenly" with both feet.

And to look at their knees in the mirror and make sure they were both going the same direction (over pinky toes, naturally 🤮)

And to look at their shoulders in the mirror and make sure they were staying level.

None of it really worked that well to create lasting, meaningful change.

Then I learned a completely different way of helping people squat.

What I learned from studying movement with Gary Ward in his Anatomy in Motion courses is that lasting change comes from helping the body find a better UNCONSCIOUS strategy, not consciously forcing it to move differently.

After studying AiM, I began to incorporate Gary's movements into my clients' warm-ups and movement prep with the intention to unconsciously help their bodies find their own best center

Then we trained things like squats and push-ups, without me micro-managing their form. Just the technical basics. And I trusted their body had access to the raw joint mechanics for them to use without conscious control.

This was a big 180 flip in my paradigm for working with bodies. And its been really lovely to embrace it.

In my work with clients I use what Ive learned through AIM to I help people trust that they can be their own best therapists through guided movement explorations that make complex biomechanics simple and empowering, no matter whether they already know anatomy or just want to feel better in their body.

To hear more about Gary's philosophy of movement education, check out this full conversation on my podcast, Movement Detectivery. Listen on Substack, Spotify, Youtube, or Apple Podcasts.

Let me know one thing you took away :)

05/21/2026

Ohh boy, this conversation with Gary Ward was a long time coming. Gary is one of the most influential movement educators I’ve had the privilege to learn from on my own personal and professional journey, and , as you'll hear, he is a gifted communicator.

Gary is a movement educator and creator of Anatomy in Motion. Gary dedicated the past few decades of his life to understanding the truth of human movement. He now teaches his model of closed chain joint mechanics online, in-person, and works with folks ranging from high level professional athletes to the average person recovering from a hip replacement.

As he describes in our conversation, the FMM started as a realization that when you change how the foot moves on the ground, it affects everything else in the body, and he would not stop until he’d mapped the movement of every bone, joint, and muscle in the body through the 0.6-0.8 seconds it takes to complete a footstep.

This map helps countless movement and manual therapy practitioners like myself, make sense of peoples' layers of compensation patterns that are keeping them stuck, and provides a framework to build creative, customized movement solutions

In our conversation, Gary and I discuss:
- Why it is so important to make sense of someone’s injury history timeline to understand how to help them most efficiently with their chronic pain
- Why its not about strengthening and stretching, but helping the body to unconsciously find its own best sense of centre by helping it access the movements it is missing.
- Why knees are so misunderstood in the evidence-based models of movement because it doesn’t account for the movement of the foot in the closed chain.
- How head positioning can be at the root of toe pain (and just strengthening and mobilizing toes isn’t the solution)
- Why foot pronation is one of the most high-value movement in the human body because of how it wakes up so much potential for the rest of the body.

I really loved getting to speak with Gary. I hope you took away something useful for your own journey with your body!

Check out the interview on Substack, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts under Movement Detectivery.

PS If you can tell me the minute in this episode at which I say "a**l sphincter", you win a prize. DM me ;)

04/02/2026

This is me age 13 in a Nutcracker performance. I am just on the cusp of dance becoming un-fun.

I'm starting to feel mild lower back niggles. I'm starting to question whether I needed to lose weight to be successful in dance (and life).

I was still happy and healthy and loved dancing because it was FUN to move.

I have regrets about many choices I made when I was dancing. One of them is not listening to the voice that said, "this isn't fun anymore and I want to stop".

It was a loud voice, and I suspect the intensity of my injuries were proportionate to the energy I used to silence it.

I wrote something new on Substack about the journey from here. When I stopped having fun.

It's called "What if 'Just Having Fun' is The Best Way to Prevent Injuries?"

Read here if you dig it: https://monvolkmar.substack.com/p/what-if-just-having-fun-is-the-best?r=p5zo9

Maybe there's something in here you can relate to if you've ever pushed yourself to continue on a path you didn't enjoy, ignored pain signals that led to injury, and just want permission to have fun again :)

Movement can and should bring joy.

See ya, gonna go try to do something fun.

02/05/2026

Last week I interviewed the newly PhD minted Dr. Melissa Biscardi about all things concussion rehab and prevention. Go on, call her Dr. Biscardi. It makes her uncomfortable ;) ...

In this clip Melissa highlights that the negative consequences of concussion can be mediated through a movement practice that prioritizes the mobility and strength of the neck and spine. Things like AiM and ELDOA can help by giving the body the capacity to better decelerate the jostling of the skull and help us be more resilient to concussive injury. Pretty cool s**t.

Melissa shares heaps of good insights from her years as a concussion clinician, as well as a sufferer of concussion herself.

I learned a lot in our conversation and, as a craniosacral therapist who touches skulls for a living, I was validated to hear Melissa mention how helpful CST is in the treatment process. It certainly was a game changer for me as an experiencer of many sub-concussive knocks to the head.

You can listen to the full interview with Melissa on Substack: https://monvolkmar.substack.com/p/interview-with-dr-melissa-biscardi

and Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3kT4H9S2QDvIZCLsKsjFVP?si=2Az2Bp2ESnKtlyitV4WGhg

01/20/2026

Alrighty it's time to share the first Movement Detectivery podcast of 2026. I realllllyyy enjoyed having this conversation with my friend and fellow body detective Ajna Samadi.

Ajna and I originally bonded over our eerily similar life-paths: We both studied dance, moved to Toronto, danced professionally (she more than I), got injured, stopped dancing and started studying Thai massage, realized there was more to helping bodies out of pain than just working on muscles, and discovered the joy of studying anatomy, movement, and the mind-body connection as a way to help others.

I wanted to speak with Ajna because of how well she is able to articulate her understanding of how our psyche affects our bodies. How unconscious beliefs, agreements, and behavioural patterns can be factors that cause and perpetuate our pain symptoms. Factors that aren’t always addressed in conventional manual and movement based approaches.

I think this interview will be beneficial for you if you are interested in somatic-based approaches to working with chronic pain that acknowledge that there is more going on than joint compression, muscle tension, and “bad” posture (though these are real considerations, too).

In our conversation, Ajna and I discuss:
- How pain is often an “alarm system” alerting us to larger patterns in our lives that need attention.
- How our symptoms may be manifestations of many broad, uninvestigated themes in our lives: Belief system, damaging values, lack of authenticity, and agreements we didn't know we made.
- Ajna’s discovery of the Dhyan Vimal Institute for Higher Learning, and how implementing the knowledge she’s gained through her studies have informed her personal and professional practice.
- The ABC meditation, which she feels to be one of the most effective, foundational ways to begin to build awareness of our reality an become less affected by external triggers.
- How our bodies need truth for well-being

And much more.

To listen to our entire conversation (in which Ajna is clearly a more eloquent speaker than myself) visit my Substack page: https://monvolkmar.substack.com/p/interview-with-ajna-samadhi

or Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2qp6MywiOwCKpSYyh5Vs3d?si=YxJG0yKKS-CRjOXJMiHYRA

Let me know what you think :) Thanks for the chat, Ajna.

12/11/2025

Helen Hall is best known as a movement coach in the UK specializing in helping people improve their running efficiency, but I know her as a movement detective extraordinaire.

She’s come to understand that our early movement development has a massive, yet underestimated implication in many pain and movement problems.

Helen has helped me tremendously with my own body. We met in 2019 in London when I was there for an Anatomy in Motion course. She invited me to come over to her clinic to have an assessment with her newly acquired, high-tech motion a**lysis treadmill X-ray device (Doris). The impact of that one session was transformative for me.

She asked me a question that truly changed the course of my personal and professional movement explorations: “Did you crawl as an infant?”. This led me down a fascinating path of studying infant reflexes, or, as Helen prefers to describe it, early movement development.

Helen inspired me to learn more about the impact that infant reflex development has on our options for movement as adults. Understanding our early movement development can help to make sense of why people get stuck in chronic pain cycles that don’t resolve in a linear way, in spite of doing everything that logic suggests should help.

In our conversation, Helen and I discuss:

- What are some tell tale signs that investigating early movement development might be a missing link?
- How concussion impacts our movement development
- How Helen uses the most advanced motion sensing technology currently available in her clinic to help athletes with in depth movement a**lysis
- So many stories of peoples’ mysterious pains understood through Helen’s holistic, movement based approach
- Is there a link between early movement development and ADHD?

And more.

My favourite part of this interview was when Helen validated my goal in life to be average, as she states, “With initial movement development, the ideal would be average. Because from that average it offers that little developing person maximum movement potential".

Cheers to being average.

I hope you enjoy this interview with Helen Hall.

Listen on Substack: https://open.substack.com/pub/monvolkmar/p/interview-with-helen-hall?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=p5zo9

or Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3wtucc5DKzfUQN4GQM3SQM

Let me know what ya think :)

11/06/2025

Please enjoy this interview with Margy Verba movement specialist and instructor for Anatomy in Motion in the USA.

On top of being a friend and aspirational role model for how to be when I grow up, Margy is one of the first people I think of to ask whenever I have a biomechanics question because I know she’ll be able to answer in the level of detail of a PHd, even if her final conclusion is “I don’t know”.

And in a world where everyone seems to have a quick fix and definitive answer, hearing someone as intelligent and thoughtful as Margy say "I don't know" is refreshing and commands my respect.

In this clip from our conversation Margy is describing her "garage door" a**logy she uses to describe the role of joint mobilizations and their importance in the work she does with her clients.

In our conversation, Margy and I discussed:

- What is massage therapy good for?
- Her experience with a total knee replacement.
- What makes knee replacements so challenging to recover from compared to other joints?
- Switching from “muscle-centric” to “bone-centric” thinking
- Margy’s transition from the computer world to pilates and movement
- How to start taking ownership of your body’s needs if you’re on a budget

And so much more.

I really enjoyed speaking to Margy, and I hope you do too. Check out our full conversation on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/3wtucc5DKzfUQN4GQM3SQM

09/03/2025

"Beneath all the programs I'm running, all of the theories, there's something going on here, and I can't feel it..."

Corey Hess is a structural integrator and movement educator in the Seattle area with a special expertise in Non-Directed Body Movement.

In this clip from my interview, Corey speaks to me about his very first experience with Non-Directed Body Movement in a class with Marilyn Beech.

The idea was to simply stand there and start to pay attention to the experience of being in your body, without controlling it or having an agenda to "fix" or "do" anything. Simply attwnding to any sensations arising in the moment and allow whatever movement spontaneously may begin to happen.

As Corey describes in our conversation, this experience was not only pivotal in his personal quest for solutions for a hip issue, but revolutionized how he decided to work with others in his own bodywork and movement teaching practices.

I first encountered NDBM in 2019 when I started having some of my own weird experiences of spontaneous movement, so I was extremely excited to talk to Corey about his work teaching NDBM. Non-Directed has become a movement “practice” that I've personally found to be one of the most effective, respectful, and honest way to deeply connect with my body and being in motion.

In our conversation, Corey and I discuss:

- His time studying in Japan in a Zen monastery
- Osteopath Dr. Marvin Solit and the origins of Non-Directed Body Movement
- What is NDBM, what can it do for you, and what is a class like?
- The parallels between craniosacral therapy, osteopathic techniques, and NDBM.
- What is the role of deliberate exercises and stretching and where does NDBM fit into a movement practice?
- How to consider working with traumas from the birth process, like C-sections, etc

And so much more.

If you enjoy what Corey as to say and want to explore NDBM, get in touch with him and ask about his classes. He teaches 5x/week on Zoom, teaches internationally, and has a really wonderful global community of curious movement explorers.

You can listen to this interview on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/3wtucc5DKzfUQN4GQM3SQM

I hope you enjoy this conversation. Thanks, Corey for sharing your wisdom and experience with us.

09/01/2025

Please enjoy the latest interview I did with structural integrator and movement educator Corey Hess!

I wanted to speak with Corey about his area of expertise: Non-Directed Body Movement.

NDBM is a practice I stumbled into in 2019 and it transformed the relationship I had with my body and my movement practice.

I am very grateful for Corey making the time to answer my questions and share his experience and wisdom working with NDBM for the past 20 years.

Corey gives an introduction to what NDBM is, how you can start, and how it has helped him and his clients with their bodies.

NDBM is a little weird and out there, but such a profound way of connecting and exploring our bodies in motion. I hope to raise awareness of this practice for anyone looking for a new way of interacting and communicating the with deep unconscious patterns our bodies develop over our lifetimes.

If you are open to letting go of the conventional fix-it, problem solving, and controlling ways of working with your body, and instead, exploring something a little more... Rebellious, creative, and unexpected, I think you will enjoy hearing what Corey has to say.

I hope you enjoy this conversation and entertain the idea of giving NDBM a try for yourself :)

https://open.spotify.com/episode/7MSw1CXAKVx3Gm41VyUCNr?si=GsfMTx6tRZWVafseEeG4KA

Movement Detectivery · Episode

08/08/2025

Please listen to this interview with Jordan Shane Terry

I remember a few things about when I first met Jordan about 9 or so years ago.

One, he got stuck with me as a partner to learn foot mobilizations in an AIM course, and good luck with that cause these feet are like little cinder blocks.

Two, I overheard him having a conversation about fairies, or some type of entity from another dimension.

Three, he knew a lot of things about a lot of things and I was a little intimidated cause I didn't know many things about anything back then (still don't, just more okay with it).

Anyway, the conversation I had with Jordan was full of fun facts about why the body does what it does and how to help it move and feel better from the perspective of someone who has a lot of different perspectives.

Jordan has SO much to share and I barely touched the top of my list of questions for him. In our conversation we discussed:

- How fascia touches everything
- Alternating joint theory
- Potential problems with Neurolink from a craniosacral perspective
- Power vs. Force, the “scale of empowerment”, and how different emotions affect fascia
- How the cranium and our spine move with our breath (and thoughts!)
- How Jordan’s jaw injury and scar was affecting his hip pain
- Injury Recall Technique
- Paired bones and “reactors”, and what is the mechanism behind them

And so much more.

On a sad note, our internet connection was a little shaky, and there is a whole 20ish minute chunk I had to omit because the audio wasn’t usable. Apologies. Hopefully, with my excellent editing skills, you won’t even notice the awkward transition I had to cut (but if you can tell me which minute it’s at, you win a prize!).

As you’ll hear, Jordan clearly has a lot of insight into the workings of the human body, and I hope you enjoy this conversation.

Here's a little clip from the conversation where Jordan brought up some fun facts about the impact the first Neurolink had on the movement of the brain and it was news to me.

Check out the full interview on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/3wtucc5DKzfUQN4GQM3SQM