Building a Movement Rich Life

Last weekend, I got to study with one of my all time heroes, Katy Bowman. Katy is a biomechanist and the author of eight books, including one of the most important books I’ve ever read, Move Your DNA.

Here we are on a hike practicing our pelvic lists and gait patterns…I’m in the back observing a slug!

But before all of that — before traveling to the Olympic Peninsula to attend the workshop, before dropping Nate off in the pouring rain at a deep woods trailhead for three days for a solo backpacking trip, before taking the risk to participate in a very active weekend despite life with chronic pain - it all started with my feet.

About three years ago, I joined the leagues of one out of four women who have foot ongoing pain. It was bad. Plantar fasciitis so sharp, so achy, so painful that I couldn’t walk around my house without wearing these bad boys. 

There I was, a 29 year old walking around with geriatricly-thick orthotics engineered to support my feet from caving in, overpronating or really doing anything a foot is created to do.

Nothing about wearing the orthotics felt right or healthy or natural. (Where is the template in nature for orthotics?) But, I was in so much pain that I didn’t have any other options, so I stuffed them in my running shoes and went along with it. 

And then I had a wake up call. My friend Cristina introduced me to Correct Toes, toe spreaders that help rehabilitate your feet to back into the feet you were born with - strong feet! Flexible feet! Feet that function more like a tripod-trampoline, with the big toe strong enough to do a lot of the stabilizing work. (This is not a paid promotion for Correct Toes - although I wish it were!) After about nine months of wearing Correct Toes and transitioning to all minimalist footwear (shoes that are flexible, totally flat and have a wide toe box), my feet healed beautifully. 

That got my attention. What else is possible for my healing if my body can move like it was made to move? What would it mean to restore my body to the functionality of my hunter-gatherer ancestors?

The foot pain, as much grief as it caused me, was a powerful gateway drug to the work of Katy Bowman, the headmistress of “nutritious movement” - the idea that, just like we need a varied, nutrient-rich diet to be well, our bodies also require diversified movements to be well - and that “exercise” is only a tiny portion of those movements.

Which led me to reading tons of her books and devouring episodes to her podcast. 

Which led me to stop exercising and start adding more movement my day.

Which led me to throw those crazy orthotics in the trash.

Which led me to really understand Katy’s central message: OUR BODIES ARE SHAPED MY OUR ENVIRONMENT.

Now, watch this five minute video in which Katy masterfully explains why you are how you move!

GETTING MY CASTS OFF
To me, the orthotics serve as a perfect symbol of a medical paradigm that only looks at the part and not the whole. Your feet are weak and caving in? Let’s put them in casts to manipulate them back into correct form instead of considering the forces and loads placed on your body from your environment all day, everyday.

That means looking at the physical terrain you walk everyday (all flat floors OR sloped, rocky, textured surfaces?), the postures you hold outside of one hour of exercise (slumping over on the couch OR still using your muscles to sit upright on the floor while you watch TV?), and your lifestyle (drive to the store OR carry your child on your back while you walk there?)

By the way, I’ve encountered this “orthotic” effect dozens of times in other areas of medicine as healthcare is siloed into such “‘parts-focused” specializations. I think of the time my neurologist readily wrote me powerful prescriptions for my migraines without asking about my diet. Or, during a two year saga with sinus infections, my ENT pushed several rounds of antibiotics with no inquiry into my home environment, gut health or allergies. Real healing rarely happens when the focus is on the part and not the whole!

My transition to minimalist shoes and the strengthening of my feet led me to consider the other “casts” I’m using to unnecessarily support my body.

Living and working on an organic farm has certainly created a more movement rich environment for my body, but I found that during breaks and in the evening, I was making a habit of slumping into chairs while I ate dinner or collapsing into the couch. I also observed that even my kitchen was set up so that minimal squatting, bending, lifting or any kind of exertion was required. Once I got home, I basically stopped using my body.

Katy Bowman is all about furniture free living - more on that here - and so Nate and I are slowly transitioning our home environment here on the farm into a space with more opportunities for movement. Our bed is on the floor (more getting up and down from the floor that way!). We read and eat meals mostly sitting on the floor (more back strength and more chances to get up and down). I work on my computer lying on a sheepskin rug with a bolster under my hip bones (gettin’ after that prone hip extension). Katy says: “Why style my house in a way that’s gotten rid of so many movements only to have to do them all later, after something in my body is broken?” All of these adjustments to our home life have been easy to play with as we live in a rented house for the growing season. So, when we get back to St. Louis to our furniture-full house we will have to make new decisions about to transition, but I already have the feeling that our bodies will have changed so much by being furniture free this summer that chairs, couches and stools are going to feel like….more casts!

MOVING…WITH PAIN 

Because most the the writing I do is for and about people with chronic complex illnesses, I am excited about sharing Katy Bowman’s ideas about movement to people in pain. I think these slow and methodical approaches to movement can be super useful ways to rehabilitate bodies that have been bedridden or severely limited in their functionality.

Our bodies are made to move, but pain can feel like a red-hot warning sign that keeps us in a state of stagnancy for fear of causing more pain or long term damage. Or sleepless nights, in my case.

In her book Move Your DNA, Katy Bowman offers 40 corrective exercises to counteract the postures and patterns that stem from our convenience-riddled lives (or bedrest-riddled lives). Most of these are gentle and can be done lying on the floor. These exercises are small “vitamins” are intended to build your body up to be able to carry out the larger movements that Katy considers the macronutrients of nutritious movement: walking, squatting, hanging and carrying. 

Many people healing from long term illnesses - myself included - may find themselves learning to use their bodies again for the first time in a long time. Instead of feeling daunted by my weak core muscles and tight hamstrings, I’m choosing to see this as an awesome opportunity to re-enter a movement rich life with even more body awareness and knowledge, even at age 31! These lifestyle changes, the new shoes and the corrective exercises are all ways to not only recover from pathogenic disease but diseases of affluence and convenience that have molded our bodies into states of weakness and deficiency. 

So! Read Move Your DNA. I am loving experiencing life as a series of nutritious movements - the walking to the store, bending to tie my shoe, cutting flowers, carrying buckets, petting kitties, squatting in front of the oven, chopping wood, picking berries, cooking radishes, touching my toes, scooping ice cream, braiding my hair, spraying the hose, doing lunges up hills, nutritious, practical, functional, heal-your-cells, change-your-life kind of movements.

Doesn’t that sound so much better than 30 minutes on the elliptical??