We recently connected with Larissa Parson and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Larissa thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. If you had a defining moment that you feel really changed the trajectory of your career, we’d love to hear the story and details.

Back in 2017, when I started teaching core & pelvic floor classes. I didn’t think I was doing anything so radical, until I met Emily (not her real name, of course). Emily had been taking my class for a few weeks, but wasn’t making any progress toward her goals of increased core function.

Usually, after a few weeks, people started to have a stronger sense of their bodies, started connecting with their core.

But not Emily. I offered her a 1-1 session so that we could just focus on her body. And what I found was that her struggle wasn’t physical.

The struggle was in her mind. Her mind was totally disconnected from her body. She was convinced that her body was broken and would never heal.

So guess what? It was really hard for her to connect to her body.

She didn’t feel at home in her body. Emily didn’t feel like her body belonged to her. Her body belonged to her kids, her spouse, her job.

Her body was a problem to be solved, not a place of joy and connection.

Emily’s disconnect with her body was a reflection of systemic problems–she’d internalized the idea that her body was broken if it didn’t fit specific standards, and it wasn’t up to her what those standards were.

It was great to help people learn to move with more ease and better function, but what I really wanted was for them to feel like their bodies belonged to them, like their bodies were home.

I became outspoken about body liberation and joy, and made sure that people knew that they could show up to class in the body they actually had, regardless of whether they were athletes or couldn’t get up and down from the floor.

When the pandemic hit, I spent loads of time learning about trauma and the body, and how our bodies are the home for justice. I started writing more and more about how joy and justice are bodily experiences, and how vital a joy practice is to feeling whole, not broken.

Then, on a walk in July 2021, my friend and future podcast partner, Elizabeth, said to me, “I’m noticing you’ve been more strident about joy lately.”

And that’s when it struck me. Joy and liberation did not need to be the secret sauce hidden in my classes.

They needed to be front and center in my practice.

Movement is a tool to help us access what joy feels like.

Movement is a starting point to deepening our self-trust. The real goal is to free ourselves from the cultural programming that makes us think our bodies are problems in the first place.

Your body doesn’t need to come back to you. You need to come home to your body.

So now, that’s what I teach my clients to do: to find a sense of joy in their bodies.

Larissa, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I made up the title of embodied joy coach to describe what I do. I help my clients move toward radical self-love, body liberation, and joy, so they can live delight-filled lives. I do this through group coaching, 1-1 support, and movement classes. The problem I solve is the very idea that your body is a problem. Because your body is not a problem.

A little about me: I am a queer, Black, biracial former high school English teacher, and a mom to twins. I’ve been a competitive swimmer, a runner, a yogi, a dancer, a weightlifter. As someone with chronic illness (Crohn’s disease), I understand how complex it is to just live in a body. My experiences in my body directly inform how I approach working with my clients: our bodies are constantly changing, and how we feel in our bodies is influenced by what we watch and read as much as by how we move every day.

I’m an ardent believer in the idea that connecting to your body gives you the emotional and physical intelligence to feel when something’s not right. And when you’re able to actually listen to your body, you’re able to live from a place of autonomy and sovereignty–and joy.

My primary offerings right now include the occasional workshop or retreat, plus an intensive 1-1 program that helps clients move from thinking “my body is a problem” to a sense of actually loving their bodies just as they are. And that program then transitions into a group container for ongoing support and accountability.

If you really want to understand where I’m coming from, listening to the podcast I co-host, Wondermine, is a great place to start!

Training and knowledge matter of course, but beyond that what do you think matters most in terms of succeeding in your field?

Outside of any training I’ve done, having a strong sense of my values and which clients I work best with has been most helpful. This means that I work with perfect-fit clients whom I don’t need to persuade of the perspective I’m working from; instead, we can just work on what they need.

If you could go back in time, do you think you would have chosen a different profession or specialty?

If I could go back, I might consider a therapy degree–not because I’m not qualified to do the work I do, but rather because it would have been easier to build up a therapy clientele and income. I had to dig pretty deeply to get a sense of worth in the work I do, and to charge accordingly. Not that working as a therapist wouldn’t have had its challenges, but I might have had more trust in the worth of my time per hour, fater.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.larissaparson.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/larissa_parson
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/dynamicwellnessnc
• Other: Podcast: www.wondermine.net

Image Credits
Allie Mullin Maria Brubeck