I am Gary Ward; founder of Anatomy in Motion and creator of the Flow Motion Model ™. I'm the author of What The Foot & I teach, treat, travel and parent!
This work came about out of a deep curiosity of mine to understand HOW things move. As an all-round sportsman, I loved football, tennis, golf, swimming and skiing. Of later years I spend the majority of my time rock climbing both indoors and out. As a skier I was lucky enough to be introduced to the world of feet and taught very specifically how to fit a ski boot to a foot. I learned about and worked with feet over seven ski seasons developing an instant fascination for the rest of the human body. I qualified as a Personal Trainer and Sports Therapist and eventually began questioning the status quo of education in this area.
Countless courses to help with back pain or how to work out “correctively” kept coming up blank until I began bringing the feet back into my work – why was nobody else talking about feet?
As a Personal trainer, all of my work was done stood upright on the mats. When I put feet together with the rest of the body in this upright environment, I instantly recognised that they played an important part in the movement potential of the upper body. Change the feet, change the upper body. I discovered that feet actually move. Feet are not designed to be stabilised and locked down in orthotics. We can create that movement in our feet and this miraculously, somehow, changed the possibilities for movement higher up. Alleviating the stresses that the upper body was experiencing. Movement in our feet is of paramount importance for the liberation of our human body. I investigated the movement relationships from the feet upwards until I had mapped out the whole gait cycle; what I now call the Flow Motion Model™. The journey of every single bone through three dimensions for the duration of a single footstep. To my mind nobody else has done this. I aim to publish it as soon as I can – a work that has been ongoing for nearly four years now.
This has lead to some interesting times. New ways of educating bodyworkers. New lines of work for people in pain. New possibilities for assessing your own body and thus the possibility of taking ownership of your own body and no longer having to rely on the outdated practices that are common in our industry.
We don’t seek to heal the problem. We seek to create an environment in your whole body that creates the opportunity for healing to take place. On a much higher level – moving from a local level to a systemic level. To heal the whole system through movement alone is the goal and I believe is also a very distinct possibility. Integrated movement has the possibility of taking pressure of your whole system.
In this online education area you have the opportunity to take ownership of your body’s physical (and systemic) wellbeing while also learning the truth about human movement and using the principles on both yourself and your clients.
I urge you to take responsibility and ownership of your education as well as your body. It’s your finest guide for learning about the subject of anatomy and is also the vehicle you were given to explore life with.
I hope to enable you to wake up parts of your body you have long been trying to awaken and to thrive in a body that you not only understand but come to respect in a whole new way as well.