Gravity is the therapist. Gravity is the tool ... I am an engineer.
Hi, glad to have you here, my name is Mladen Grabovac and I am the ebodyment projects' residential Structural Integration educator and therapist. It's true, I am indeed an MSc engineer, accompanied with a degree in pedagogy and didactics - and here is a story behind my personal SI experience and approach.
I was born in Croatia, the home of Nikola Tesla and Rudolf Steiner, I'm always proud to say, as their work influenced my education through life. Outdoors, sports and physical education are pivotal back home, so I started my part of bodywork career as a competing swimmer and through recreational diving, with later the inclusion of water polo and surfing - where water sports - became my background for sport and remedial soft tissue therapy license. Out of the water my real love of movement was parkouring through the back yards of Zagreb town building quarters. Through family ties, from 16 years old I have been educated in Hatha Yoga, the philosophy and asanas - which provided me an insight to change to my life intentions.
My holistic view of life, I have been applying in most practical terms. What that means is that today, by my initial vocation, I am an engineer with background in mechanics, physics and electronics, and I have pursued my love of movement and flying, which the jumps, swimming and diving were for me, and became MSc in Air Transport Systems and Management from Cranfield University School of Engineering. After also finalising my economics degree I spent most of my early time working as a consultant strategist in aviation and sustainability sectors in both London and Brighton for companies like PA Consulting and PwC.
My life changed when I became a father, today a proud one of 3 younglings, and in pursuit to enrich the experience and change our lifestyle, we as family dedicated a couple of years just to children - full time - and after some traveling we ended up living in Kauai, Hawaii. I dedicated to my childrens’ development and used an approach to their education coming from Steiner pedagogy and Waldorf schooling, as well as Montessori pedagogy, and along with my children's growth I became dedicated to the physical development of their early years as a growth of their health and energy capacities which would support their strong mental or cognitive abilities in their future. There on Kauai I have also, for the first time, received my SI 10 series from Kauai SI Guilder, Chris Shay with the then still alive Emmett W. Hutchins (let his dear soul rest in peace) - that I'm most thankful to and with the great gratitude for his work. Instantaneously I have experienced the depth of SI as the intelligence of the embodiment and from that moment I have been dedicated to the study subject. Along the relevant structural related and metabolic health improvements benefits through normal every day activity, the real benefit I scoped was in experiencing the full kinetic energy of the body – and the start of a new relationship, where I found many metaphysical theories thought in western yoga to be actual basis of physics and laws of physics of the physical environment, of our environment, as well as of the human resulting from the environment as a persistence on this planet and in this universe. If you follow current science, as I do also by profession - one can see that we perceive, as a civilization, that today our greatest scientific achievement is precisely that we know (can calculate) our position in space and time since the universe has been created. The founders of yoga as a philosophy, and more actually a science, were wise mathematicians and astronomers, just like Newton, Tesla, and Steiner.
I was anewed, with a real physical (v. metaphysical) perception and empirical knowledge that I was sensing and looking to understand. I’ve seen that my personal evolution has only begun, something we're all experiencing here, and I am very excited and passionate about it and feel very connected, very content. As a father I felt, to a minimum obliged, and as a person of good intention I felt at least responsible to pursue the education and start to contribute in any way I can to help myself, my surroundings and every fellow man through the embodiment we are all experiencing. As I’ve changed perception of my life priorities, as a certified Sport, Remidial and Soft Tissue Therapist L3 with ITEC and L5 with BTEC with master Joseph O'Dwyer, I propelled soon after to become a certified Structural Integration practitioner attending my certifications in the US with master Nilce Silveira at the Guild for Structural Integration and master David Davis of Crestone College of Structural Integration, direct students of Ida Rolf, Emmett Hutchins and Peter Melchoirall, all of them today my dear and beloved mentors and friends.
Effect to my personal injury: From a broken collar bone to Dyslexia
Have you ever read The Master and his Emissary, by Iain McGilchrist? Dr. McGilchrist discuses specialist hemispheric functioning of the brain, and quite interestingly hemispheric polarity effects on person’s life and even the world we live in. For part of it, he discusses also the functions and character of the left or right brain hemisphere through studies on patience with hemispheric functioning pathologies.
If you would ever asked me if I have broken a bone in my body, I would most certainty say – I never did. However, right at my birth my collar bone was broken and this injury affected me throughout my life – but it would still take me time to remember that fact even after telling this story today or how many other times. Obviously I was too little to remember the injury and I was only told about it later in life. But the injuries like broken bones are those of major effect – and therefore easy to note the need for compensatory adjustments in body movement to assess for the injury. We often do not though. Throughout life, since childhood, we sustain a number of injuries that we still carry but equally cannot remember because there was no visible blood or break – and who cared when we would rather continue playing as soon as possible. Throughout the course of my life for recovery and maintenance I was always in need to stretch and extend my injured side, that has been entirely affected by this one broken bone - and so since early childhood I was directed to specific sports, like swimming and basketball, to produce the movements. Due to the relevant early soft tissue injury the developing tensions were always creating shortening in the side of my neck and activities were needed to prevent possibilities for scoliosis occurrence. However; my sides were off and I could not even get a shot at the simplest throw in basketball – and without understanding why and how, I was frustrated; which worked well in my effective defense, but created a psychological situation in my mind as I knew something was off.
My moves that required changes in direction on the ground were unsecured, either in basketball or football, so I did my happy things rather in the air, or water – with a lot of will and effort, to compensate for the silent frustrating ‘underminer’. I looked too 'normal' and athletic from the outside for the general eye to be making such mistakes, or for anyone to see why and to point out to me. It has been a long time frustration and to me a great and unfair displacement of how I felt capable to do more and better and how I should have been preforming versus instead delivering in completely opposite of what my body seemed or looked able of. A big frustration for me and confusion to my coach. Beyond just specific sport delivery, it was all effecting me deep and directly, also in school – where this felt somehow transferred in many relationships with my peers, and even with my father. I can today easily say that a very present, but to me unknown effects of my injury, disrupted and dichotomised my relationships to my friends, my parent and to myself.
The work of the SI 10 sessions addressed this postural unevenness and the shortness along my age spread its effects across the various functional lines of the entire body. After the SI work I suddenly felt anew; and suddenly I’ve gone from “normal” to more even, more balanced, better organized; with somehow secured support across the sides of my body and from it all - with more energy. I have started to feel that I was able to address all these disrupted relationships that were coming along the injury’s misbalance with a new balance and in different ways; from disrupted I started to see ahead of me a path to connect – with myself. I got a completely new expression, even a language to relate with. But in addition, I also experienced something else. I suddenly started to feel a different support to my head from the side and from the floor (the gravity opposite force from the floor through my body, through and up, as I stand or move), which was a normal result. But, in addition I actually felt more space in the side tissue of my neck that the ten sessions work obtained, and I felt that my blood flow of the area was different and enriching. Both, the sensation of greater circulation and the under support resulted in invigorating the side of my head and hence brain so dramatically and still so - that I never cease to notice. I began to suspect that my dyslexia, to which I know completely different relationship, was resulted by the early collar bone injury that caused my neck to tighten at one side resulting in a difference to blood supply between the common carotid arteries, hence the divergence in cognitive skills originating between the cerebral hemispheres. The development of my brain through motoric synoptic patterns from the early age would most certainly express the disbalance shown in physical performance taken that movement is prime to brain development. I would most certainly take it all as mere assumption were it not for my experience after the ten sessions; feeling of greater cognitive balance and decreasing disrupting effects of my dyslexia with greater contentment. My relationship to my entire experience of being, present, future and past - has changed.