Mr Garson Karrel is a professional fitness trainer and musician who has been responsible for designing and helping to implement a weekly “Flow Fitness” training program at Braemar College since the autumn of 2019. The student-focussed fitness program encourages teens to become aware and responsive to their present state-of-being, and to work towards holistic health with a spirit of compassion, for themselves and those they train with. The weekly training sessions teach a series of low-impact, equipment-free exercises that can be integrated into a guided “fitness flow” that becomes a form of dance, accompanied by music and verbal cues from the trainer.

Garson is currently pursuing advanced certification in an exercise modality known as “Animal Flow” – a “bodyweight, ground-based, primal movement series”.

In this episode, we delve further into the nature of this type of fitness training, in direct contract to the traditional canon of western fitness training and athletics that many will be more familiar with. We hit on such concepts as multi-vectored health, the power of communal activity, the hazards of traditional sports, and the process of turning passion into profession.

If you like what you hear, and want to learn more, you can check out Garson’s Instagram page @garsonkarrel, or if you’re located nearby you can drop by on one of his training sessions at FLYT Club Toronto.

And if you’re interested in exploring the connection between exercise and the brain further, consider reading Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, by John Ratey, M.D.

If you haven’t listened to our previous Podcast click here