Move Your DNA with Katy Bowman

Originally intended as time savers, our handheld devices have become time gobblers, and the easiest way to fritter away time is with social media. Katy and Dani discuss many ways—both macro and micro—to help you assess your relationship with your device and then shape that relationship to one that works better for the sort of life you want to live.

Katy and Dani recorded a live-audience podcast at the historic Boulder Bookstore and share thoughts on their whirlwind day of food, fun, family and friends. We wish you could’ve been there with us, but this is the next best thing.

Language—and words—matter. Recent headlines in the news can lead to a murky grasp of how health and wellness are really attained, and what we’re really discussing, for that matter. We’ll talk about recent news that will hopefully prompt a deeper examination of our sedentary culture and how it is shaped by both the biggest and smallest of things.

In this episode: walking with neuropathy pain, breathing while hanging, and tricky technical advice.

Katy and Dani deliver Part 2 of the Babies and Movement episode, and isn’t it a cutie? Katy follows up on some listener questions conceived during Part 1, and then discusses breastfeeding and baby ‘exercises’. Oh, and Did you know you are probably W.E.I.R.D. ? It’s okay…we are, too.

In Part 1 of the Baby Show, Katy discusses baby biomechanics! Did you know that load and frequency affect the stages of development—like how babies from more primitive hunter/gather-type populations develop differently than our modern-lifestyle babies? We‘ll also talk about babywearing and baby carrying, and how this affects both the parent AND the baby.

This episode of Katy Says isn’t just for females! If you’re a real anatomy geek or student of human movement, this show is for you. Because if periods didn’t exist, neither would you! Learn about the movement of menstruation and the whole-body movements that affect it.

In this episode: Shoe wear, knee pain, Cheerios, muscle cars and cultural clarification

What is osteoporosis? What about bone mineral density? In this episode, Katy helps us dig deeper into bone health. You’ll learn more about bone shapes, how bones are built and why your bone robusticity depends on a lot more than eating chocolate-calcium-chew-candies.

Sure, you guzzle lots of kale smoothies and there are no GMOs in your salad. But have you thought about the mechanical nutrition in your diet? In this episode, Katy cooks up a nice batch of food for thought that explains how the food forces in your life affect your whole body ecology.

In this episode: Cracked heels, scoliosis, tailbone pain and arthritic feet

You move your body, and your body is moved by your environment. The eyes are no exception. This episode focuses on two of your most important sensory input organs and how the way you use them has shaped the way they work.

Katy spends some time helping reframe “fat” as we discuss fat and the roles it plays in our bodies, and how the fat we have is simply a response to input—just like everything else in our body.

In this episode: Squatting, Transitioning to Furniture-Free, & Inspiring Older Kids to Move Outside

How well is your body responding to your bouts of cardio exercise? Katy defines what we’re talking about when we refer to “cardio”, and then finds it a place in the bigger picture of natural movement.

Health isn’t just about the numbers, and there are many signs of success when it comes to moving you toward a healthier lifestyle. Katy suggests 5 health goals that have little to do with the scale but a lot to do with your overall health. Make 2016 a year of Moving Your DNA!

In this episode: leg length discrepancies, diastasis recti limitations and squats and pelvic floor health alternatives for a wheelchair-bound listener.

We are all given the same 24 hours but it always seems like it takes a trade-off to fit certain things in to that day. If you want to work out, does it mean you’ve got to drop your kids at the gym’s childcare? Or, you can spend time with your kids, playing Candyland for 2 hours, but will you then have time to fix a whole food meal? Learn how to stack all the things that matter to you so that you can move more and stress less.

Resolutions are only about what you hope to accomplish, but a health recap lets you look both forward and back in order to more clearly define your goals for the coming year and to give yourself some kudos about all that you did in the past year. Join Katy and Dani as we do our own 2015 Health Recap and invite you to join in with your own.

Short, dark days and long, cold night might make you want to crawl under a blanket until April, but Katy makes the case for getting your natural movement during less-than-friendly weather. Learn why it matters not only that you get outside, but that you move outside. Also, we provide tips and tricks for getting the entire household moving before the cooped-up-crazies set in.

We’ve dipped our toes in the water before, but now let’s dive in and define “Junk Food Movement” in the way that we use it when defining Nutritious Movement. This episode is a satisfying culmination of our previous discussions on Junk Food Movement—and will leave you with the tools and understanding to be a more critical thinker when it comes to your movement diet.

Katy Bowman’s 6th book is out—and looks like it might be the biggest yet. Why? Because so many people deal with diastasis recti but have little success with traditional methods. Katy talks about why her book: Diastasis Recti-The Whole-Body Solution To Abdominal Weakness And Separation is going to make a difference.

Over 25 million Americans suffer from some form of incontinence. Most sufferers don’t like to talk about it. For those that do, they are offered few solutions aside from adult diapers, pharmaceuticals or surgery. But incontinence is a symptom of greater movement and lifestyle issues, and there are steps—LITERALLY!—that you can take to begin improving the health of your pelvis and the functions housed within. * Listener Discretion Advised: there is no profanity in this episode, but it does contain (sometimes silly) discussions about sex, poop, and penises, so choose your listening company and environment accordingly.

If you cycle, you’re fit, right? Riding a bike is not a natural human movement, and cycling a lot with little other movement endeavors has the components of a junk-food movement diet. Let’s look beyond the few single nutrients that biking provides and explore a more nutritious movement diet—because doing the same thing over and over again means you are missing a whole spectrum of movement nutrients. Katy answers questions about bone density, kids and bikes, and the biological tax of bicycles.

Do you walk? Is the nutritional value of your walking the equivalent of eating only Cheese Puffs for sustenance? Walking, like every natural human movement, comes with its own host of variables that provide our bodies the loads required for optimal health and expression. Listen as Katy gives a clear and understandable explanation as to why we need to consider both the micro-and macronutrients of walking and how to get more of them.

One of the awesome things about Katy Bowman is how much useful content she produces for our human bodies—and this past summer she was crazy busy writing and releasing books for her Whole Body series, filming DVDs and finishing up the new Nutritious Movement Center Northwest. Following her on Facebook and Instagram is fun, but it’s nice to hear from Katy about all the projects she’s been working on.

Back-to-school time is here! A kid needs a decent breakfast to start the school day, but what about movement nutrients? School can bring movement-hindering shoes and desks, long, sedentary days and repetitive loads to a developing body. Whatever your method of schooling, Katy offers some tips to help both you and your wee charges get more of what their body needs. And, if you’re all grown up and done with school and don’t have kids, this episode probably still applies.

Katy’s Got Skin in the GameYou squat, you hang, you climb, and you threw your couch to the curb—all for the sake of more natural movement. But are your arrector pili getting their movement nutrients? Wait, what ARE your arrector pili? Katy scratches the surface of that oft-neglected but serious player in your whole body health—your skin! Of course, this vast subject needs more than one episode, but this is a good start on a fascinating topic.

Mail call! Katy answers listener questions! From cracked heels to torso troubles, and psoas release for special populations to flaccid muscles, these aren’t your average call-in questions!

Skinny jeans, tight belts, compression undergarments—when your clothing changes your shape, it also changes how you move and the results can be hard on your body. This episode deals with the choices we make in our everyday wear and how the biological tax we pay for fashion can sometimes be high.

So, this guy—Ben—mentions Katy in a tweet. But it wasn’t just any tweet. It featured one of the coolest, most inspiring transformation stories we’ve come across in a long time. Ben had reached a point in his life where change needed to happen. So he made it happen with a few steps at a time, and ended up with a bucketful of benefits that went way beyond his smaller waist size. Join us as we talk about Ben’s cooler-than-cool inspirational story.

The news lately has been filled with exciting body nerd news: After 56 years perched in high heels, Barbie can now wear flats. That’s big news, right? And two days later, NPR featured a story on lost postures and a theory as to why indigenous people don’t suffer from back pain like First-world folks. Headlines ARE grabby, but it’s always wise to dig a little deeper. Tackling a deeper understanding of how our bodies really work is an important step, and this episode features a hearty discussion of headlines that deserve deeper exploration.

This episode of Katy Says focuses on building and leveraging your community—both in town and online—to help achieve goals of healthier, happier living. Whether sharing chores or meals, trading time or goods, or creating community efforts that benefit everyone, all you have to do is ask, and the rest just follows.

A School Without WallsMost kids in America spend 7 hours a day sitting in a chair inside a building for their education. Other options exist for educating children—one of them is Nature School. In this episode, Katy will describe the nature school in her community, and we’ll share what some other schools in the US and around the world are doing to help decrease our “nature deficit disorder”. We’ll also offer resources and ideas to help you and your kids enjoy the benefits of learning outside.

Getting more natural movement can be challenging in our comfortable, modern-convenience society. Katy shares ideas for movement hacks—using your daily tasks and household furnishings—that will get you thinking about your living environment and everyday chores in a whole-body way.

It’s a hot headline lately—Exercise Less, Move More. But what does that mean?Is exercise really bad for you? Or is it possibly just the Junk Food of Whole Body Natural Movement? In this episode, Katy discusses the distinction between exercise and movement. She’ll clarify “exercise-as-junk-food” and explain the nuances of a healthy movement diet.

The suspense is over…It’s Part 2 of I’m All About the BASE! More of your pressing foot questions get answers, Dani channels Meghan Trainor for Katy, and you’ll learn enough about your feet to start to appreciate how much they matter to your overall health.

Feet—where would you be with them? You’d be footless (which is not as cool as footloose). However, most of us treat our feet as if they were not one of the most important players in our whole-body system. Listen to Katy as she serves up a super slab of foot goodness while answering YOUR foot questions.

Join Katy and Dani as they discuss Katy’s latest book and why it’s a must-read for anyone with feet. Whether you’ve got back pain, neck pain or foot pain, it all starts in the foot. This simple, fun-to-read and practical book is worth more than one podcast discussion, but start here for now!

Ever wondered how Katy Bowman—hard-working biomechanist, writer, teacher and problem-solver—takes a break? Here’s a hint: it contains some seriously rugged natural movement, no screens and Erwan LeCorre. Sounds like fun to us! Join us as Katy shares her take on what makes for a good retreat and why scratchy, rough knees are worth your consideration.

No Time? Got Toddlers? Work in a Cubicle? No Moolah for Barefoot Shoes? Katy Bowman, Biomechanist & Problem-Solver Extraordinaire, spends a nice long time helping you clear the hurdles that you may think prevent you from getting more natural movement in your life. Whatever you pitch at her, she’ll probably hit it out of the park. Listen carefully and with an open mind, and you’ll probably find the solution is simpler than you think.

It’s the BALLS Show! Katy and Dani are hanging around, talking about the importance of male dangly bits and why whole body movement matters to the overall health of your man jigglies. Whether you’ve got your own pair or you are simply curious about how tighty whities and modern habits affect testicular health, this show is for you! Be fore(skin)warned, however: while this episode is not explicit, it does get a little hairy(!) what with Katy’s robust use of the word “balls” and the occasional penis pun.

Recorded in Ventura in front of a live audience, this episode tackles breast health--it involves more than you'd think--and involves lots of hand motions (which you can't see, sadly) and will possibly change the way you see how truly involved "the girls" are in your overall health and movement needs. Forgive the ambient noises--this was done on an iPad propped up on foam yoga blocks. That's how we roll. Rugged, Baby...

Have you ever wondered what it be like if you could corner Katy Bowman at a party and ask her everything you've ever wanted to know? Here's as close as you'll probably get: Katy answers 95 of your questions and 5 of mine (hey, I had to get a few in there!) in the amazingly short time frame of 30 minutes. Appease your curiosity and listen in!

Unless you were born, raised and reincarnated repeatedly on top of a Tibetan mountaintop, at some point, you'll end up sitting in a car. Listen as Katy gives some groovy tips to change the loads created while driving. I hope she's passing these on to her toddler, as well...Oh, and please keep your eyes on the road and your hands on the wheel. We care about your safety.Car Alignment, Part OneUn-pimp Your Ride

Gaps are great, when they are SUPPOSED to be there. When they're not, you can spend all day and LOTS of moolah trying to "fix" your abs to no avail. This episode is for anyone with DR or abdominals that just won't respond to conventional exercises. Free admission for anyone who can roller skate or sing a Prince song over and over again.

This episode can help you move past the buzz word and gain a better understanding of your middle. Listen while Katy discusses the importance of a relaxed belly, why your shoulders matter to your core function (WHAT?!) and a brief but discreet interlude about senior citizens'... er, physical relations. Okay, not really, but it was a funny misunderstanding.

Katy answers "Is there a difference between treadmill walking and overground walking?". Everything you've ever wanted to know about the loads you place on your body when you use a treadmill. And pirates who forget their words. Arrrrgggh you ready?? Aye, aye, Captain!Chicago Tribune article about treadmills, featuring KatyKaty Says: Junk Food Walking blog post

You are how you move! Katy's latest book is available and will change the way we view wellness and our abilities to change the way we use our bodies. She discusses the basic tenets of the book and why she wrote it. Did you know she wrote it for you? Visit nutritiousmovement.com/store to get your copy of the book!

Katy discusses her upcoming e-book/multimedia project entitled "Don't Just Sit There" with Mark Sisson, creator of Mark's Daily Apple and author of "The Primal Blueprint". Learn more about a dynamic workstation and what you can expect from her upcoming e-book!