Parkour Visions – Mental Flowers

Me being playful — Me showing my serious anthropologist side.

Hi everyone. Just a little self-promotion, plus some promotion for a great organization:

I have been asked to speak this Friday, July 20, at 7:20 pm about play and parkour, at the 3rd annual Parkour Summit hosted by Parkour Visions in Seattle, WA.

As some of you know, I received my MA in Anthropology this past winter, which focused on play and parkour. My play research has included studies of human-gorilla interaction at Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, the primary physical play behaviors found in all primates (including traceurs), and how traceurs redefine and interact with space in new and creative ways.

Full disclosure, I have also been an advisory board member for the Pacific Northwest Parkour Association (the nonprofit behind Parkour Visions) since 2006, when it was having board meetings in my kitchen and I would feed all the board members banana coconut pancakes.

I have been asked by Parkour Visions to discuss my findings about parkour and play, why play is vitally important across the human lifespan for physical and mental health, what human play looks like, and how parkour reflects and answers the need for lifelong play.

There will also be lots of other great speakers talking about how movement plays into health in other ways than just strong muscles, including gut health, mental health, and long life, and ways to incorporate movement and play into ones lives. See a list of speakers here. The talks will be after a community dinner, so if you’re interested you can also bring $5 or a plate of something healthy (think fruit or meat) starting at 5pm, and mingle with the speakers before the talk.

The summit also includes an invitational competition of some of the best traceurs in the world, which is free to the public, on Saturday morning, so if you can’t come to the talk please come by and check out these amazing athletes. There are lots of other events taking place, so check out the itinerary and see if there’s something that sparks your interest.

I look forward to seeing you there!

Movement study using Parkour athletes reveals orangutans’ climbing secrets (mentalflowers.wordpress.com)

After working for literally YEARS on my Master’s thesis (I’m still SO excited that I graduated this past quarter and am an official M.A.), I come across this video, which pretty much sums up my years of work in two and a half minutes. It showcases two students from Parkour Visions in Seattle, WA, explaining why they like parkour, mostly because it lets them play again. Upon seeing this I had two thoughts: “well done” and “dang!”

My parkour buddies also showed me this video recently, which in approximately 9 minutes explains the whole reason I wanted to do my thesis in the first place. The video is actually a pitch for funding a documentary called “Seriously!” which interviews a lot of play experts on the subject of play, including many people I cited in my thesis, and why play is important for our survival. In this case, my reaction was wanting to send it to my thesis advisers and scream: “See? See?!”

Ugh.

Anyway, it is a very nice video, so enjoy: