The Daring Well Podcast - Holistic Health & Wellness, Mindset, and Personal Growth · Rita Mercer, Wellness, Mindset & Mental Health Expert

Creating Calm & Safety in the Body: Movement Practices to Release Anxiety, Trauma, and Stress with Jo Stewart

·37 min·2 clips

Jo Stewart says deep pressure, swinging, and upside-down work can regulate very different nervous systems.

1. The Daring Well Podcast episode centers on Jo Stewart’s approach to creating calm and safety in the body through aerial yoga and gentle movement. 2. Rita Mercer interviews Jo Stewart, who is the author of Eight Limbs of Aerial Yoga, founder and lead teacher of Garden of Yoga, and co-host of the Flow Artist podcast. 3. The episode asks how aerial yoga can help people feel regulated, supported, and more at ease in their bodies. 4. Jo Stewart says her first exposure to yoga came at age 6 through a Sumi-A painting class influenced by Zen philosophy. 5. She says she began mat yoga at 18 during art school, when printmaking and etching left her neck and shoulders hunched and tired. 6. Jo explains that yoga helped her physically, mentally, and creatively by connecting her to breath and flow state. 7. She says aerial yoga entered her life in her late 20s on a holiday to San Francisco. 8. Jo defines aerial yoga as a looped fabric hammock that can be set at hip height for inversions or lower to the floor for restorative work. 9. She says the hammock can support standing balance, lunges, cocoon-style relaxation, and lower-back release. 10. Jo describes myofascia as muscles plus fascia, with connective tissue surrounding muscles, nerves, organs, and the body as a whole. 11. She says dehydration can make fascia feel stickier and that pain can cause connective tissue to tense protectively around vulnerable areas. 12. Jo notes that gentle sliding, swaying, and supported movement may help those tissues relax again. 13. She says some practitioners think the benefit is physical traction while others think it is nervous-system regulation, and she focuses on the felt outcome. 14. Jo describes a student with vulnerability around floor-based relaxation who found safety in a translucent hammock pose she calls womb pose. 15. She says stillness can trigger freeze responses, while gentle swinging gives vestibular input similar to a rocking chair. 16. Jo adds that deep pressure, inversion, and spinning can regulate different nervous systems, but some people feel nauseated by upside-down work. 17. The episode’s tone is conversational and practical, with Rita Mercer asking detailed questions and Jo answering with concrete examples from teaching. 18. The format moves between personal story, anatomy explanation, and studio practice details, including her six-person class size and 45-minute, 60-minute, and 75-minute sessions. 19. People interested in sensory-friendly movement, trauma-aware yoga, or self-massage for shoulders. 20. People looking for high-intensity fitness or abstract wellness advice.

As heard by us

A warm, plainspoken case for movement that meets the body where it is.

Rita Mercer hosts Joanna Stewart, known as Jo, in a conversation that stays grounded in the small ways movement can help a body feel more at ease.

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Why you'd press play

For when you want movement that feels safe before it feels impressive or performative.

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