Playful Nature Podcast by WildStrong

WildStrong

A Podcast that explores connection through movement, nature & community, with Gill Erskine & Andrew Telfer from WildStrong. A mix of discussions on questions that come up a lot during our movement courses and classes and some long form chats with people we admire. Music by our long time supporter, Mary Erskine @meforqueen

  1. #35. Becky Dunphy. Learning to trust your body

    FEB 5

    #35. Becky Dunphy. Learning to trust your body

    In this conversation, Andrew sits down with physiotherapist and first-year PhD student Becky Dunphy to explore what changes when you stop treating movement like a neat mechanical problem. Becky traces her journey from a “black and white” early-career physio mindset (find the faulty part, prescribe the fix) toward a public health lens shaped by COVID-era NHS strain, inequality, and the reality that bodies don’t behave like textbooks. We go into how an “injury” makes sense on the surface, but when you widen the frame to stress, sleep, workload, and skipped meals, you start to see why the body might protect itself — and why a purely biomechanical explanation often fails people. From there the conversation moves into Cognitive Functional Therapy and the practical art of helping someone “make sense” of pain, reduce fear, and rebuild trust through experiential learning. Becky also challenges the idea that there is one correct way to move — pointing to everyday labour, the Paralympics, and sport itself as evidence that humans self-organise brilliantly. The deeper risk, she argues, is when credentialism and “optimal form” narratives become barriers that stop people moving at all. The episode closes with Becky’s current research focus: peri- and post-menopausal women with multiple long-term conditions (especially osteoarthritis), and why the gap in strength training may be biological, social, and structural — not a motivation problem. She ends with heuristics for exercising with pain: aim for tolerable discomfort, watch the after-effects, and keep it functional.

    59 min
  2. #33. Gill & Andrew Short. Pain, recovery and rebuilding confidence.

    JAN 14

    #33. Gill & Andrew Short. Pain, recovery and rebuilding confidence.

    In this short (ish) Gill & Andrew chat, they tackle one of the biggest topics they get asked about every week: pain, recovery, and coping when your body doesn’t feel like it used to. They start by talking through the three broad pain categories: nociceptive (often linked to acute tissue injury), neuropathic (linked to nerves), and nociplastic (often chronic, where the alarm system can become over-sensitive). The central idea: pain is an output of the nervous system — a kind of alarm — and alarms can be loud, imprecise, and shaped by context. From there, they explore the tension between a more reductionist “biomechanics / something is structurally wrong” story and a biopsychosocial model that includes biology, beliefs, stress, sleep, uncertainty, prior experiences, and cultural narratives about injury. The episode finishes with a practical recovery frame: two levers — calm things down and build things up. Calm the nervous system, reduce threat, create a plan, and adjust load temporarily. Then gradually reintroduce exposure, “flirt” with the edges of tolerable discomfort, and build capability over time — in ways that are meaningful to you, not imposed by a guru. The takeaway is, recovery isn’t “getting your old body back”. It’s building a new relationship with the one you have now. Links for more on this: Greg Lehman – referenced as a key pain educator; “pain is an output of the nervous system” framing. Peter O’Sullivan – referenced in relation to persistent pain work and rehab approach. Todd Hargrove  - Episode 22 – referenced re: “regaining territory” / explorer-map metaphor; also mentioned as a previous podcast guest. Nil Teisner – mentioned for the idea of “flirting with pain” (finding tolerable edges rather than avoidance). Tom Morrison – Episode 14 Joanna Myers – Episode 12 Jarlo Alano  - Episode 28 – mentioned for the “rusty hinge” analogy.

    38 min
  3. #32. Gill & Andrew Short. Nocebo, Pain, and Practitioner Power

    JAN 2

    #32. Gill & Andrew Short. Nocebo, Pain, and Practitioner Power

    Be careful what you ask for folks! A lot of you asked for more from Gill and Andrew together, here's our first shot. A bit of a chatty one - we have a Part 2 to this coming shortly on pain and moving with pain. What if some of the advice meant to help us actually makes things worse? In this episode, Gill Erskine and Andrew Telfer unpack the nocebo effect - the lesser-known counterpart to placebo - and how it shows up in everyday healthcare interactions. From back pain diagnoses and scary scans to guru dynamics and over-reliance on “being fixed,” they explore how language, power, and belief can quietly undermine confidence, resilience, and recovery. Drawing on real experiences with physiotherapy and chiropractic care, as well as research discussed by clinicians like Peter O'Sullivan, this conversation looks at why pain isn’t a simple mechanical problem - and why building agency matters more than quick fixes. This isn’t about attacking professions or telling people to stop seeing practitioners. It’s about learning how to spot unhelpful narratives, ask better questions, and find support that helps you build capability for the long term. Blog article: ⁠The Stories That Shape How We Move ⁠ Avoiding nocebo and other undesirable effects in chiropractic, osteopathy and physiotherapy: An invitation to reflect This is a paper that we often talk about in class. It looks at the disempowering and ‘nocebo’ effects that certain practitioners can have on their clients.Link to the Todd Hardgrove episode of the podcast.

    34 min
  4. #29. Dr. Charlotte Marriott. Why We Need Nature to Feel Well

    11/30/2025

    #29. Dr. Charlotte Marriott. Why We Need Nature to Feel Well

    This week, Andrew speaks with Dr Charlotte Marriott - NHS Consultant Psychiatrist, Certified Lifestyle Medicine Physician, medical educator and nature-based coach. Charlotte works with people living with complex mental health challenges, while also championing evidence-based lifestyle change and accessible, community-led movement. Together they explore why health is simple but society makes it hard, and how nature, physical activity and social connection transform mental wellbeing. They discuss the pitfalls of optimisation culture, smartwatches, hustle wellness, and the systems-level barriers that shape our choices long before willpower ever enters the picture. Charlotte shares stories from her NHS practice, explains how movement changes the brain, and makes the case for designing environments - not just interventions - that help people thrive. In this episode:• The six pillars of lifestyle medicine, without the guilt• Nature as a core mental health intervention• Why enjoyment may be the most important metric in movement• The dark side of trackers, optimisation and wellness grift• How movement boosts brain health, mood and memory• Social determinants of health and the limits of “better choices”• Real patient stories: from ready-meals to boxing gyms• Why the first small step always matters the most. Books, articles, projects that came up in conversation and you might find interesting: 1. Losing Eden: Why Our Minds Need the Wild — Lucy Jones 2. British Society of Lifestyle Medicine (BSLM) 4. Nutri-Tank (Nutrition in Medical Education) 5. SHAPE Programme – Supporting Health and Promoting Exercise 6. Bee Network – Greater Manchester Active Travel

    1h 3m
  5. #28. Jarlo Ilano. Making movement meaningful to you

    11/06/2025

    #28. Jarlo Ilano. Making movement meaningful to you

    Andrew sits down with Jarlo Ilano, Physical Therapist (MPT) since 1998, former Orthopaedic Clinical Specialist (OCS), Certified Therapeutic Pain Specialist (TPS), co-founder of GMB Fitness, and martial-arts teacher of 20 years — to explore how people actually learn to move, heal, and keep moving across a lifetime. Jarlo traces three decades in physiotherapy: from a rigid, structural, biomedical model to the more nuanced biopsychosocial approach that recognises the interaction between body, mind, and context.He explains how good clinicians and coaches blend both — the bio still matters, but so do people’s stories, expectations, and environments. That shift, he says, makes practice multimodal and genuinely human. The conversation ranges through: Why evidence-based practice often misses lived complexity. The tension between efficacy (in controlled trials) and effectiveness (in the real world). How clinical equipoise, belief, and placebo/nocebo effects shape recovery. Why contextual effects aren’t noise — they’re the real environment of movement and health. From there, we explore GMB’s evolution from gymnastics to movement culture, the design of its Elements programme built on locomotion, auto-regulation, and reflection, and how scaffolded play and minimum effective dose thinking help people rediscover capability and confidence. Takeaways Good practice balances biological, psychological, and social realities. Play needs scaffolding: constraints + feedback → learning without frustration. Functional independence — floors, stairs, shopping, confidence — is the best progress marker. More on GMB Fitness Here WildStrong Webinar on Using Games & Play to Teach Movement Transitional Movement: Where Strength Becomes Skill (You CANNOT Skip This)

    1h 19m

About

A Podcast that explores connection through movement, nature & community, with Gill Erskine & Andrew Telfer from WildStrong. A mix of discussions on questions that come up a lot during our movement courses and classes and some long form chats with people we admire. Music by our long time supporter, Mary Erskine @meforqueen

You Might Also Like