#33: Jeannie Di Bon

Awareness Over Mechanics For Pain

Listen to this episode: Spotify | Apple Podcasts

Description

“Our connective tissue is everywhere so this collagen-based defect of hypermobility (sometimes diagnosed as Ehler Danlos Syndrome) can affect everybody differently.” And thus starts our interview with movement therapist & hypermobility expert Jeannie Di Bon. She has built her life’s work, both personally & professionally, around living with and minimizing pain and instability within a body that gets accustomed to bracing or guarding in one direction while potentially painfully overextending or dislocating in other joints. Ever do ‘party tricks’ with your body as a kid or watch kids around you do ‘party tricks’? Then this podcast is for you. We walk through her six important principles of living within a hypermobile body: breath, relaxation, proprioception (including both nociception and interception), stability (vs mobility), balance and posture finishing with touches on the science of tensegrity, meaning finding the dynamic pressure to remain aligned from the inside. We then dive into the tenets of her Integral Movement Method (IMM) which brings people through an iterative process of unwinding, exploring, assessing, refining, and reflecting.


Jeannie Di Bon’s work so unique and powerful in a mechanically-focused movement therapy world because her recommendations are not focused necessarily on the movement or any particular string of exercises. Her process is to build awareness through movement- it’s not about the movement but the awareness. The goal is that we all become more conscious around what our body is doing and what it should be doing to remain functional and pain-free.

Bio

Jeannie DiBon is a movement therapist specializing in hypermobility, Ehler-Danlos Syndrome, Chronic pain and Mast Cell Activation Syndrome. She has over a decade of experience in supporting clients with pain management through movement and is the author of two books (Pilates Without Tears & Hypermobility Without Tears) and contributes to media including Huffington Post, The Mighty & Thrive Global on the topics of chronic illness and disability. She comes to this work honestly, rooted in the experience of chronic pain living within her own hypermobile, bendy, unstable body. Her way out was through moving inward and paying attention to subtle movements. Her formal training began with Pilates and grew to include courses on biomechanics, anatomy, neuroscience and lifestyle medicine. From this and thousands of her own clients, she’s developed the IMM, the Integral Movement Method, which is a ‘no pain-no strain’ strategy of embodiment, literally, being in one’s body. The IMM is endorsed by doctors and physiotherapists and has helped people around the world through her books and video courses. She founded The Zebra Club online as a comprehensive collection of movement solutions for people with hypermobility, EDS, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, post-surgery and in need of injury rehabilitation, low back and other chronic pain. She continues to see clients privately and you can find more about her and her programs at her website: https://jeanniedibon.com/