Julie Angel

Breath with Julie Angel →

Published February 13, 2024  ·  All posts on Feb 13  ·  

Breath with Julie Angel

What insights can movement and breathwork practices offer about self-awareness, adaptability, and the interplay of emotional, physical, and creative aspects in our lives?

Julie Angel describes her multifaceted approach to movement, breath–work, and life as ‘everything everywhere all at once,’ revealing a seamless blend of creativity, transformation, and minimalism in her practices.

I’m really lazy. I’m a high performance slacker. And so it has to be simple and minimalist in doing it. If there’s any practice where it’s like: You need to buy all of this equipment, and you need to do all of these things, and you need a membership… I’m just like, no no that’ll be a no. All of those things cause friction points for me, and I don’t do them. So I mean there’s a minimalism, a simplicity, a creativity, and an adaptability; which is why to other people it may seem very different that I I wear all these these hats which I’m equally multi-passionate about. But for me I’m like, same same. [ed: It’s all the same.]

~ Julie Angel, 2:50

Julie Angel and Craig dive into the worlds of movement, breath-work, and the emotional landscape of physical practice. Julie shares her holistic view on movement, emphasizing that everything she does—whether it’s filmmaking, practicing parkour, training others, or walking her dog—interconnects through common threads of exploration, transformation, curiosity, and creativity. The absence of division between her various interests, highlights the blending of her professional and personal pursuits that are driven by a consistent creative spark and a quest for simplicity and minimalism in practice.

Julie also introduces the transformative power of breath–work, recounting her journey from being intrigued by MovNat Aquatics courses to exploring the physiological and psychological impacts of breathing techniques. She discusses her discovery of dysfunctional breathing patterns and how addressing these can profoundly affect one’s health, well–being, and movement capabilities.

Julie’s exploration into breath–work is not just a personal quest but also an educational endeavor, as she aims to share this knowledge through her work, showcasing the significant, often under-appreciated role that breathing plays in enhancing movement, reducing anxiety, and improving overall life quality.

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Constraints – with Julie Angel →

Published January 24, 2024  ·  All posts on Jan 24

Constraints – with Julie Angel

What perspectives and approaches can podcast creators adopt from fields like anthropology, filmmaking, and sound design to improve their craft?

Julie Angel describes herself as multi-passionate. She’s a filmmaker, author, podcaster, movement coach and breath-work expert. Julie joins Craig to share her insights on creativity and the transformative power of movement and breathing.

[…] you got to get out of your own way. And for me the sign of a really great conversation, or recording, is at the end of it I’m like— I always ask myself: Was that really good, or like, ‘meh’. And if it was really good, then it’s just like, ‘it was really good!’ Then if someone says, ‘what did you talk about?’ I’m not sure. I don’t know. I was just in it. […] My kind of deconstruction is how did I feel at the end of it. And that’s it.

~ Julie Angel (20:40)

Julie Angel, a filmmaker and parkour coach, describes the intricacies of her creative process and the challenges she faces in her work. She emphasizes the importance of feedback in creative pursuits, advocating for seeking critical perspectives from those who know and love her. This approach, she argues, is vital for maintaining objectivity and ensuring continuous growth in her craft.

Through the conversation, Julie reflects on the nature of creativity, highlighting the paradox of freedom in artistic expression. She recounts experiences where limitless options in filmmaking, contrary to expectations, proved to be daunting rather than liberating. This leads to a broader discussion about the necessity of constraints in fostering creativity, where she points out that limitations often spur innovation and novel approaches to storytelling and artistic expression.

Julie also explores the concept of flow state, particularly in the context of engaging dialogues and creative work. She describes this state as a measure of the quality of her interactions and creative output, where being deeply immersed in the process is a key indicator of success. Her insights extend to the realm of parkour coaching, where she draws parallels between physical movement and mental creativity. Julie underscores the transformative power of parkour, not just as a physical discipline, but as a medium for personal growth and self-expression.

She shares anecdotes and lessons from her coaching experiences, illustrating how parkour transcends physical boundaries and becomes a metaphor for overcoming life’s obstacles. This intertwining of physical and creative agility forms a central theme of the conversation, shedding light on Julie’s multifaceted perspective on life and art.

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Rediscovering movement →

Published October 5, 2022  ·  All posts on Oct 5  ·  ,

Play is a big part of our lives as children, but why do we lose our playfulness as we age? I talk a lot about the emotional and physical aspects of play, especially regarding Positive Ageing and aspects of Parkour. So many people feel like play is out of reach as they approach midlife, even though it’s an innate part of you.

~ Julie Angel from, Discovering the power of play in midlife. – Julie Angel PhD

slip:4ujudi1.

Angel doesn’t write often, but when she does it’s something nice like this. I just want to say that physical movement and play are inseparable—without the former, you’re not really doing the later.

Or, perhaps I just want to say two things; That first thing, and that Angel is the film–maker who created my favorite video to share when people ask me, “what is parkour?” Movement of Three.

Actually, I want to share three things: Those two things, and Julie if you’re reading: OMG the cannoli!

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A terrible mistake →

Published May 3, 2018  ·  All posts on May 3  ·  

Suddenly, a decision I hadn’t even been aware I had made – giving up the thrill of movement for movement’s sake – seemed like a terrible mistake. I felt the same as if I had thrown out my entire music collection by accident.

~ Julie Angel from, Be Brave! “For big results, think small”

I completely agree with this sentiment. By the time I realized how much I had given up, it was far too late for me to recover what I had lost. These days everyone says complementary things about how much I’ve changed, or how well I’m doing. All I’m thinking is, “if only I hadn’t . . .”

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Parkour as a technology of the self →

Published December 22, 2016  ·  All posts on Dec 22  ·  , ,

This entry is part 60 of 72 in the series My Journey

I’m working on a crazy idea as a side project. Totally unrelated, I’m reading Julie’s CinéParkour. I’m just reading along this evening, and I get to this paragraph. This is so apropos of my train of thought these past few weeks.

Mind.
Blown.

Traceurs are active subjects within dominant power relations who use parkour as a technology of the self; an active transformative tool, to create and understand themselves and move away from fixed notions of identity and behaviour. Through a process of critical thinking and self-awereness traceurs problemitise and set ethics by which they adhere to. Parkour becomes a ‘practice of libery’, where traceurs practice freedom as a lifestyle, based on inventions and styles, that create ethics centered around creative environmental interactions and connections, to reclaim the body as an autonomous vehicle, away from the dominant notion of ‘bio-power’ and other dominant discourses.

~ Julie Angel, from CinéParkour, pg 152

‘technology of the self’
‘freedom as a lifestyle’
‘ethics centered around creative environmental interactions and connections’
‘reclaim the body as an autonomous vehicle’

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The inconvenient truth →

Published June 19, 2015  ·  All posts on Jun 19  ·  

The idea of what parkour can be and the current reality of what parkour is are not the same as far as who participates. The issue of gender can’t be ignored in parkour. You hear a lot based around the idea of ‘parkour is for everyone!’, well theoretically yes, but if all you really see is young guys then if you are not a ‘young guy’, it many not occur to you that it could also be for you. Parkour as an activity is not alone in this.

~ Julie Angel from, «http://www.goseeanddo.com/parkour-the-inconvenient-truth/»

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