Directors
Shantelle Svarc
Annabel Hunt
Our Story
Darkside Rising CIC was founded in January 2020, with a mission to innovate adaptive physical activity programmes for women with long-term health conditions. With our own lived experiences of inequity in physical activity access, we wanted to do better for our community.
We began to integrate lived experience with research and professional reflections, driving a new understanding of how to be, relationally, with another person. By tearing down existing systems of oppression and harm within the fitness industry, we could radically reimagine something new.
It takes courage to step away from the dominant fitness narratives that have shaped our lives for so long. It takes a curious nature to really connect with, and listen to, our community, being empathetically guided by their needs.
We are the opposite of what we were taught to be.
We are the anti-gym.
Person-centred
Inspired by the writings of Carl Rogers, we aim to work in a person-centred way. This means:
- Instructors who offer their genuine selves in the present moment. An open, honest and transparent coaching relationship.
- Instructors who offer an unconditional positive regard for you as a person. A sense of warmth and a valuing of who you are.
- Instructors who offer empathetic understanding, listening with deep attention and curiosity to your world view and lived experience. Empathy is not assuming we know how you feel, it is opening a conversation for deeper connection and thought.
- Instructors who centre your choice and your agency within their training practices. A non-coercive relationship where you are free to say no.
- We might be the expert in process, but you are the expert in you. We cannot dictate your own experience to you.
People are just as wonderful as sunsets if I can let them be. When
I look at a sunset, I don’t find myself saying, “Soften the orange a little
on the right hand corner, and put a bit more purple along the base, and
use a little more pink in the cloud color.” I don’t do that. I don’t try to
control a sunset. I watch it with awe as it unfolds.
Carl Rogers
A Way of Being
Trauma-sensitive
This way of working has been longer in the making, necessitating a significant shift in how we view systems of oppression, harm and trauma in our society. More in-depth explorations can be found in the research page, as it was our community focused research that really helped us to understand the need for this work. In brief:
- We recognise the fitness industry as a form of systemic trauma, a system of oppression that commodifies the human body, pathologises natural human variation and creates substantial human suffering.
- As such, we have a responsibility as part of the fitness industry to act in ways that resist and reform these harms.
- To be trauma-sensitive is to be rooted in the neurobiology of trauma, to understand how your nervous system continues to be affected by your experiences.
- We have deliberately set aside organisational models of trauma-informed care and instead prioritised the first-person experience. We are curious as to how you experience safety, how you experience choice and agency. Together, we can create models of care that are personalised to you.
- Our learning and reflections are an ongoing process. We haven’t finished yet!
The body keeps the score: If the memory of trauma is encoded in
our senses, in muscle tension, and in anxiety, then the body must
also be involved in the healing process.
Bessel van der Kolk
The Body Keeps the Score