Episode 31: Wassup, Katy?
Description: It’s a Katy Update
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, Twitter and Instagram is fun, but it’s nice to hear from Katy about all the projects she’s been working on.
KATY: It’s the Katy Says podcast, where movement geek, Dani Hemmat joins biomechanist Katy Bowman, author of Move Your DNA – that’s me – not the book, the author – for discussions on body mechanics, movement, nutrition, natural movement, and how movement can be the solution to modern ailments we all experience. Hey, how’s it going?
DANI: Hey. It’s going all right, and I am so happy, because today I am going to pin you down, and make you tell us everything that you’ve been up to. Because when this summer, like, looking at your Facebook and your Twitter and Instagram accounts, I have this feeling that you weren’t holed up, binging on Orange is the New Black over the summer because there’s a lot of content, am I right?
KATY: Yeah. You know? Summer is the time for vacation for most people, but for some reason I’m the most productive during the summer. Like, I will binge watch something absolutely – I am not above binge watching. It’s usually –
DANI: That’s good to hear.
KATY: Yeah, I am totally not above binge watching. Um –
DANI: Wait – what did you last binge watch, just to interrupt?
KATY: Oh, gosh – that’s a good – that’s a good question. I probably binge watched Homeland last year. It’s like, once a year. I can only allow myself once a year. I don’t want – I don’t watch TV specifically because I have no control. Like on Netflix or something like that, where all the episodes are here? All of them? I’ll just watch all of them right now, because I am not a pacer.
DANI: Yeah. Clearly, by your output this summer, so.
KATY: It’s like a book – who reads books 3 pages at a time? I can’t watch a show one episode at a time.
DANI: Oh, okay.
KATY: But yeah, I have been doing a lot. A lot.
DANI: Well, do you find every summer’s always the most productive? Like, that’s your high time for getting it done?
KATY: It was this summer. I don’t know. I can’t even really – I can’t even remember – last summer was like, Europe – a lot of touring and stuff. But this summer just happened to be – I mean, we’re going to talk about all of the things, a lot of components, because, like –
DANI: Excellent.
KATY: It’s good – it’s exciting. But I think what we will see, as I explain them, is a lot of them just happened to all hit right now. Like, it’s been the perfect storm of product development, even though many of them have been in development for some time. They’re just, like, all the final details just seem to be hitting from June to November. I have never worked more in my life than I have from June to November.
DANI: Well. What have you been doing, then?
KATY: Oh, you know, hanging out.
DANI: Excellent.
KATY: Well, gosh. Um, you can just go through Face – you can go through Instagram and see what’s she doing now? What’s she doing now? But uh, yeah – I would say what’s the first – what’s the biggie?
DANI: Well, the most – the biggie – I don’t know what the biggie is, because it’s the biggie to you, maybe still has not been revealed? Or I don’t know.
KATY: The biggie is the rebranding.
DANI: Okay.
KATY: And I did reveal that a little bit through our newsletter, so um, the rebranding is – for a long time I’ve had multiple what people would call brands. What business experts – not me – would call branding, right? You would have – there was the Aligned and Well DVD series, which was filmed maybe like 6 years ago? And then that had its own brand for the series, but then that name kind of fell over onto my social media, right? So my Facebook page was called Aligned and Well.
DANI: Mm-Hmm.
KATY: But the brand that’s been around longer, where I spend the bulk of my time is actually the Restorative Exercise™ Institute. That’s – that’s where our training program is run through, and you know, where you came to the material –
DANI: Right.
KATY: And that’s been – I mean, I’ve been working with Restorative Exercise™ for 12 years, so that’s like the larger body. And then there was Katy Says, right? This podcast is Katy Says, and that was just the – really just a geeky name for the blog, for those of you who read Alignment Matters, it’s written in I think the foreword or the Introduction where I put, Katy Says was just a small blog that I started for you guys who had been through the certification program.
DANI: Which was pretty small at the time, right? When you first started it?
KATY: Yeah. It was – it was like, people would come from all over and they would train with me for about a year. Not every day for a year, but it took about a year for you guys to all go through the certification program, but there’d always be all these questions, and there was, I don’t know, maybe somewhere between 50 and 80 students, and so I would just answer the questions and post it on this blog. It was never a blog written for – for the masses. I certainly never sat down and went, I’m going to start a blog! And I still – I still am slightly incompetent, just -
DANI: Oh, my gosh.
KATY: Well, I meant – it’s just not – everyone’s like, I don’t monetize my blog. It’s not – it’s nothing like that. It was just me writing articles to further explain in between classes. People would come for a week and for a weekend and be there all day for 3 days, and then they wouldn’t come back for a month, some of them, and so it was just this fill-in-the-gaps. And then everyone would always explain something that they didn’t quite understand with, “Well, Katy says…” and so it was just like a tongue in cheek kind of name, and now that’s another brand, because now there’s – you know, half a million people who search, “Katy Says,” which is crazy!
DANI: Right.
KATY: I wish I would have named it something more awesome.
DANI: Oh, now. Katy Says is great.
KATY: Well, it’s fun.
DANI: It’s what we all use on our spouses when we’re trying to tell them –
KATY: Exactly!
DANI: Well, Katy Says…
KATY: And that’s why no spouses like me. They’re like, why doesn’t she shut up? Katy? How about Katy Shut Up? That’s the name of my blog! …says everyone’s spouse.
DANI: We should search that and see what comes up. Katy Shut Up.
KATY: No! Katy Stuff It. Or Muzzle Katy Says. These are all dot-coms that are available, I’m sure. Anyway, um, so it was very confusing because there were all these people who come to Katy Says. They read a blog, they have no idea about the DVD line or the Institute, and they would just ask these questions, and for some reason, it’s very challenging to get people who came in through a particular thread, whether it was Restorative Exercise™ or Aligned and Well or Katy Says, or they read something on Facebook. They were just never really aware of all of the other information that was there – and there is so much between the three brands. There are so many products and articles and books to read. So it was just hard for me to kind of manage 3 different portals of information, like I was nourishing Aligned and Well and I’m constantly doing – answering questions on those and doing PR for those, and then the Restorative Exercise™ Institute – that’s a particular educational channel. And then there was just like the general thing like this podcast. Maybe people came through the Joe Rogan show – I have someone who has been following me on Twitter for the last year – or I guess it wouldn’t have been a year, probably like 7 months coming through the Joe Ro-
DANI: From Joe Rogan?
KATY: Coming from the Joe Rogan show, who just was like, I had no idea you wrote a book. I just ordered it.
DANI: Oh, awesome.
KATY: And so, you know, that’s – there is no real, central way, and everyone was like, I’ve just been waiting for your next Tweet, I didn’t even know there was this other stuff. And I tweet once a day or a couple times a day. So I just thought it was time to have one, cohesive thread that when you pulled it, everything that I’ve already created over the last 12 years was available so that you could start searching for the information that you’ve been waiting for the next podcast – it’s like, oh, I hope she does a podcast on X – like, chances are? I’ve already written 5 blog posts on it. Like, all the questions that we get that people ask, you know, you and I go through these questions, it’s like, these are all answered. It’s like, someone is just sitting there waiting, like, I hope she answers my question! It’s like, I already have! It’s in one of these 3 threads. So – Nutritious Movement is the single thread now where all of these will fold into and when you come – no matter what you come in through, a blog post on Facebook or one of our new DVDs, which we can talk about, you will find a catalogue that you can start searching for your information.
DANI: That’s awesome to have it all centralized. It’s kind of bizarre to me to consider that somebody might only know you in a certain way, like, through Twitter or just through the podcast, because some of us try and consume everything –
KATY: Yeah.
DANI: - that we can get our hands on. So it’ll be interesting and fun for the people that only know you in one regard to explore more of your work and your content. I mean, I’m happy for them and boy, are they going to be tired when they start going through this. You produce a lot of content – you really do.
KATY: But it’s not organized well, you know. Because I was never producing content for the sake of making a database of information for people to get better. It’s like, the blog is like my notebook. The blog is like, oh, I wake up and right now I’ve got this thing on eyeballs and I’ve got notes on a piece of paper, and pictures that I’m trying to draw, and I will eventually write a blog post about it, but it doesn’t go with any particular theme. I’m not writing it for this person with myopia wondering how it works, it’s just something that I’m interested in. And so Alignment Matters was the first kind of consolidation and organization of five years of chaotic blog writing, you know, where it was organized and then – I’m trying to do that same thing with everything that I’ve ever produced and try to organize it so that it can be more user friendly, because again, I think that people are coming because they’re like, I – I get it. I want to know, now where do I go? And it’s like, well, here’s 3 different websites and 3 different search boxes, so it just wasn’t working. So that’s – we’ll do more talk about Nutritious Movement and all the new stuff that’s coming up, but that was the big one is taking that leap of faith to jump into a brand new name for many different portals, and we’ll see how it goes.
DANI: And so that’s probably going to be rolled out hopefully fall? Late fall? I guess we’re in fall now, so what do you –
KATY: Um, mid-November is the deadline. It was huge! It’s like a brand new website, renaming everything. A – new business names, and new everything. You were there, right?
DANI: Mm-hmm.
KATY: When we had our corporate – our corporate meeting, you know, it was like 5 of us.
DANI: I think it was 5 girls on a bed with crackers or something.
KATY: In Vegas. In Las Vegas. After a really amazing hike – we did a – we had a great –
DANI: That hike, man. That was beautiful.
KATY: Yeah. It was – the way we do our meetings is we all fly in, and then we all go on this super long hike until everyone’s like, seriously? Can we be done now? And get to know each other, and get fatigued, and then come back and stay up all night with white boards and notes, and that decision was made there, so. Hopefully – I don’t even feel – I feel really comfortable like, this time next year for everyone to be like, this was the best decision ever, we’re all better for it. So.
DANI: Oh, good.
KATY: Yeah.
DANI: Awesome attitude. I’m excited. I’m very excited for it. So if that came up then, that means you probably had other stuff in the pipeline, which would maybe explain why you were so darn busy this summer?
KATY: Yeah.
DANI: And then you took that on, too, the whole rebranding of – of the everything that you’ve done? So what just came out a couple weeks ago was the Don’t Just Sit There.
KATY: Yeah.
DANI: Book and e-package with Primal Blueprint and Marc Sisson and that you worked on – gosh, a long time ago.
KATY: Yeah, see? Again, it’s the perfect storm. That little storm cell, that uh – I worked on Don’t Just Sit There, gosh – when did we do the last podcast on it? Last year sometime, right?
DANI: Yeah. It was last year. It seemed like last summer you were back working with that.
KATY: Yeah.
DANI: And doing that thing.
KATY: Yeah – I wrote that book last spring. Uh, spring 2014 I wrote that, and then filmed the videos summer 2014 and then it just took such a long time for it to come out that when it happened to pop out now, it seems like, what, you just wrote another book? But I did the bulk of that work last year, so it just happened to come out now. And the flurry of activity around that was it was originally just an e-package from Marc Sisson. It’s a fan – do you have it? Did you get it? Did I send you a copy of it?
DANI: I did, yeah. Yeah.
KATY: There’s so much stuff in it, right?
DANI: Oh, it’s gigantic!
KATY: I know.
DANI: It is such a value.
KATY: I know.
DANI: Man, sometimes you buy things online and you’re like, what? But this – I mean, it’s a value. Serious, folks.
KATY: Yeah, the e-book, the audio book. It’s the only place to get the audiobooks. So it’s like, e-book, audio book, videos, and then he, of course, jam-packed it with a bunch of other goodies.
DANI: Yeah, a bunch of freebies.
KATY: Yeah, Yoga Tune-up Balls, workouts, and it was great. But – that’s what it was designed as, and then I was like, you know what? As far as e-packages go, there are, you know, a lot of people who do e-packages, and then there are people who would never, ever download – like, do any package in their entire life. It’s just not on their radar. But books are, so I said, well, I’m going to publish just the print version of this book, which was not my intention a year ago. So the difference between getting a book ready like an e-book ready was way different than getting a book ready for publication; it’s just a much larger process because there are many rules for running them through a publishing house and getting them ready for stores. I mean, this is going to go to Barnes and Noble.
DANI: Oh, great.
KATY: This is a cool book – so that – the creative process of the book was behind me. But, um, the administration of getting it publication ready was great, and then of course, any time I revisit something I’m like, oh, this is terrible! I’m totally re-writing it. So the e-book that you guys have, for those of you who bought the package – or who will buy the print book – because I stepped away from it for a year, when I stepped back to it there were so many different things I wanted to say. So I ended up reviewing, I don’t know, 10 or more – I called them research corners. The research corners that are in the book didn’t exist in the first set, because there’s been so much more research into sitting and what the problem actually is with sitting. That’s a new edition. These couple paragraph synopses and kind of explaining some of the research that has been out of late. So that was – those needed to be written and edited, and then a broader reference section, and then of course, a rad cover.
DANI: Yeah. I always like your covers. They stand out.
KATY: Ooh!
DANI: No, but they do. They’re really good. And then I just – gosh, you’re talking about that, and then I was thinking about, so you wrote that book last year and it just came out, but you just had the Whole Body Barefoot book come out this spring?
KATY: Yeah.
DANI: Like late spring? Criminey.
KATY: It’s ridiculous.
DANI: You are ridiculous.
KATY: Yeah.
DANI: Gee whiz. And then I know, because we’ve talked about it before, you’re writing another book.
KATY: I know.
DANI: I almost want to call them, like, booklets because they’re smallish, but they’re not booklets. They’re a book but really, I can sit down and read Whole Body Barefoot – I just plowed through because it was funny, first of all, but just so digestible and I would have to say that is a mark of your work in general is high digestibility. I mean, I don’t know – you’re like the peach of writers. It’s just easy to digest you, is that weird?
KATY: Or am I like an amylase or something like that? Maybe I am actually a secretion that kind of breaks it down for you. Maybe like pyloric acid.
DANI: But is pyloric acid hilarious?
KATY: Oh, totally.
DANI: Oh, okay.
KATY: All acids are funny unless it’s in your eyes.
DANI: Oh, okay. Then you are pyloric acid. Mazel Tov. But yeah, so these books, like you’re just finishing up the diastasis recti book, right?
KATY: Yes. So I – you know, Move Your DNA will be out in October for 1 year. I mean – this October, it will have been out for a year. So in that time, there’s been 3 other books that will be out. Whole Body Barefoot, Don’t Just Sit There, and Diastasis Recti. But Whole Body Barefoot was really written last year, so was Don’t Just Sit There. But Diastasis Recti – I just finished – I just finished writing that. So that was really the book that I wrote this year, and I love it. And they’re not booklets – I mean, I don’t –
DANI: No, it’s just that they’re not huge. They’re not like some books, like Katy Says or Alignment Matters which was the compilation – that’s like 5 years’ worth of blog posts, so that’s pretty sizeable. And Move Your DNA was pretty sizeable. But just – if you were – if you read a lot, like this you can just slip into your bag and take with you.
KATY: Yeah.
DANI: They’re not booklets. They are definitely substantial in their own right.
KATY: Well, I didn’t –
DANI: And they’re loaded, too – there’s nothing pithy, it’s just loaded.
KATY: I know. I’ve gotten rid of all those extra words as we’ve talked about before. You, as an editor, recognizing my – there’s no superfluous words. Or very few, anyway. Every once in a while there’s a joke that I have to leave in, which is a total waste.
DANI: Well, that’s the pyloric acid in you.
KATY: It is. It is.
DANI: You just can’t help yourself.
KATY: It is. It’s a psoas release in a sentence. But I didn’t want to do body-part specific books; I didn’t – I’ve resisted that for a long time, because I’m like, every time we do a show, it’s like, what do I do with my foot, or what do I do for my back? Or what do I do for my pelvic floor, it’s always like, look at your shoes. Like, the impacts of all of your life and all of your other parts on your ailments is such a big concept, I always felt like writing a part-specific book like “fix your feet,” “fix your back,” “fix your knees” was going against the paradigm that I wanted to present, which is that it’s a whole body phenomenon. But what i have found is that people just won’t pick up a book. Like, if you have back pain and the book does not say back pain, you’re not going to pick up a book necessarily, for whole body wellness because it would not occur to you, maybe, that the solution to your back pain was in this whole body book.
DANI: Mm.
KATY: So I started writing topic-specific books, but they always – they’re educational books in that they’re like, here’s the exercises for your feet or whatever, but the broader reason, you know, that your foot or your knee or your diastasis recti, or your whatever exists is because your overall movement and habitat is out of accordance with what your biology requires. So they’re smaller; they’re easier for me to write because they are on a particular topic and they’re not particularly theory-heavy. Like, Move Your DNA’s like, ugh, it’s just so much re-framing and redefining so many things, that it’s kind of cumbersome in that way, where like, but what are the exercises? You know, it’s like – theory is so heavy, can I start with the exercises? So, like, yes, of course you can. And so, these books. These book - I don’t know. They’re not book – I totally get what you mean by booklets. What would we call them? I started – it’s a series. It’s called the Whole Body series. Whole Body is in the name -
DANI: Oh, okay.
KATY: - of every single title. So even the Don’t Just Sit There is like, The Whole Body Guide to Transitioning. Transition your whole body to a dynamic workstation or a standing desk.
DANI: Just call them the Whole Body books. Good enough.
KATY: It’s a whole body series.
DANI: Yeah, they’re not booklets. They are definitely substantial.
KATY: But the Diastasis Recti book – I mean, Whole Body Barefoot was small. Slim. You know, like you said, you could totally stick it in and you could read it quickly, and it’s a great reference book. Diastasis Recti’s probably going to be twice as long because there were – are you ready – over 30 exercises.
DANI: Whoa. Holy smokes!
KATY: I couldn’t stop! I was like, oh, and this! Oh, and this! So that puppy has got over 30 exercises and it’s still the same size as Whole Body Barefoot and Don’t Just Sit There, which is – in your hands, right? It’s not a huge, 6x9 book. It’s an 8.5x5 book for those of you who have your rulers out. Hey – did you know
DANI: I lent mine.
KATY: Did you know that a dollar bill is 6 inches?
DANI: I did not.
KATY: That has been – that was one of those helpful tips that has totally changed my life when I need to measure furniture and everything? A dollar bill is 6 inches.
DANI: Oh, that is brilliant. Thank you for sharing that.
KATY: Isn’t it? You will totally use it.
DANI: Oh, I love that stuff.
KATY: So whip out your dollar bill and go to your bookshelf, and try to figure out the size of the book that I’m describing. So that book’s coming out.
DANI: Okay, but you just said it’s twice as –
KATY: Thick.
DANI: Thick. Okay.
KATY: So it’s the same – we kept the series
DANI: It’s the same book sized series. Ok, got it.
KATY: Yeah, the trim – that’s called the trim – the trim size is the same. But uh, the thickness – we wanted the series, the Whole Body series – to all be the same size, but Diastasis Recti’s going to look a little beefy sitting next to the others in the series because it’s got 30 exercises, yo.
DANI: Awesome. And we’re looking at pre-sale on that at the end of the year, right? So people will be able to get in line for that. Hopefully? Or did I just put more pressure on you?
KATY: Wait a minute, it wasn’t coming out.
DANI: You were going to go stand-up paddle boarding today, weren’t you?
KATY: I was. I was going to go binge watch.
DANI: And now you’re going to have to go deal with that.
KATY: I was going to go watch a series all day today. No, it’ll be pre-saling in November, early December. Before – before the holidays we should be shipping. Oh, my gosh – I just committed to that. Don’t publish this podcast until January. J/K! J/K! I’m all right, what else?
DANI: Oh, gosh – well, you’ve done so much. Okay, so you were just – more pictures on the Facebook. Your film and DVDs, more DVDs. What’s up with the DVDs?
KATY: Well, we – I filmed the Aligned and Well DVD series, like I said, 5, 6, 7 years ago? 2009, I think it was. So I guess that’s 6 years ago. And it was 5 exercises to a DVD, you know, back pain, fix your knees and hips or whatever. There are like 5 introductory corrective exercises to help mobilize really particular areas or change the forces for particular ailments that were coming up in the body that didn’t move so well in a particular way. But there are 18 exercises total that were filmed years ago that sat in a can in kind of a workout flow. So what we did was – for those of you who know the Aligned and Well DVD series and bought – there’s 14 discs with 5 exercises each, some of them, like the calf stretch being on almost every single DVD because it’s that important. We created a disc that is the equivalent to a 1-a-day multivitamin. It’s your movement multivitamin. Take it once a day, and it’s got all 18 exercises broken down into 2 workouts. So 2 like 25 and 30 minute workouts, and then it’s got all of your postural adjustments, and how to stand throughout the day all on a single disc. So – I’m excited about that one, because everyone’s like, ok, I have all these separate exercises but like, what’s the frequency or whatever? And it’s like, wait wait, let’s back up – let’s just start with a vitamin. A movement vitamin that you do every single day. It doesn’t – it can be all at once, but it can also be done – I kind of broke it into a morning or an evening workout, like it’s a little bit more mellow. It’s mostly on the floor, so you could do it first thing, or last thing, and then the other one is more stand up, get down, stand up, get down. There’s more movement that’s associated with it.
DANI: Mm-hmm.
KATY: And it’s really – it could be done as a break to your standing workday.
DANI: Oh, that’s brilliant.
KATY: It’s totally low-profile, so yeah – you could play it on your work computer in your office and take 25 minutes to run through everything. So you’ll have kind of given a little head to toe nourishment if you do it every day.
DANI: I am super excited for that.
KATY: I actually did the video the other day, I was like, I am so tired of working, and I was like, oh! I’m going to run through it – and I felt amazing! I very rarely do all my exercises that I, you know, create and write about in a flow like that.
DANI: Uh-huh.
KATY: And it was awesome. It was great – and so I filmed all new intros and out-tros. The opening and the closing, and there’s a bunch of little new components. And then, um, the other DVD we did was –
DANI: What?!
KATY: Two!
DANI: Two?
KATY: Did you not say DVDs? Sss?
DANI: You know, I think of it as just one, big, giant blob of everything. It’s just what Katy Says and Does.
KATY: Blaaaaah.
DANI: You know what? Change it. Change it now to Katy Says and Does.
KATY: I’m going to change it now to The Blob.
DANI: Yeah.
KATY: The Bloooob dot com. We did something similar so our most popular DVD for the last 6 years has been, Down There for Women. We need to do a pelvic floor show again.
DANI: I’m all for it.
KATY: Yeah. But the Down There DVD – so it’s like an introductory DVD, motions, motions – that was very Canadian of me. Introductory motions to increase mobility and kind of, uh, how your pelvis is used throughout your day by doing these five exercises again. Five exercises for pelvic health, and that DVD still sells 20:1.
DANI: Wow.
KATY: Which is – which says a lot just about –
DANI: Mm-hmm.
KATY: Just like – pelvic health is not doing so well right now in our species in this time. And out of all – we’ve got this nice, kind of sample of a head to toe series, like 14 DVDs for neck and shoulders, back, knees, wrists, fingers or whatever. Down There – pelvic health, is 20:1. So the DVD was always – you know when I created the DVD series I still wasn’t even a real popular blogger yet at that time. The big Mama Sweat, you know, Kegel is Not Invited Thing –
DANI: Oh, yeah –
KATY: - that came out after this whole DVD series was filmed. That was like a year later. So these were just a small DVD series made for like, pharmacies, where a pharmacy could have a rack and someone could just pick up an easy 5 exercises to make their X, Y, or Z feel better. So it was just kind of gentle, pelvic mobilizing exercises. And then, you know, uh, No More Kegels came out and the squat came out and then fast forward 5 years and I get emails every day about pelvic pain and pelvic health, and it’s like, ok, I did this, what can I do next? So then I thought, well, I can do a new pelvis DVD that has 2 levels of exercise. I’m trying to put more on a DVD so it was the 5 exercises on this new DVD, it’s all new filmed intro and the 5 exercises from the first DVD, Down There, plus one other one. So now there’s 6 what we call foundational exercises, and I added – I filmed both of the DVDs with a man so that –
DANI: Excellent.
KATY: It’s like, we need the men to represent! So I’m trying to, again, consider, you know, there’s a man on the cover, and then the opening title of everything so that if you’re trying to get – it’s really hard, I’m trying to think, if like, there’s a woman listening, it’s like, I’ve been trying to get my husband to do this DVD but he doesn’t want to do 5 Down There crotch exercises, you know, like, whatever! You need to say things differently, you know.
DANI: Absolutely.
KATY: So I was like, I am making unisex DVDs, and so I was really conscious on our packaging, and in the filming that there are these men here demonstrating a lot of these concepts that we’re talking about. So the pelvic floor DVD has these exercises, but then it has 5 brand new, next-level exercises, one of them being the Click Clack. The Click Clack!
DANI: You brought the Click Clack.
KATY: I have never dropped – Click Clack is famous in Restorative Exercise circles, but it’s never been publicly –
DANI: No!
KATY: - available. There’s no DVD, there’s no blog posts with it. But it is in the Diastasis Recti book and it’s on this new pelvic floor DVD, because it’s an excellent exercises.
DANI: Bringin’ the Click Clack public. Yo!
KATY: Click Clack! Click Clack. So, uh, it’s got 5 new exercises for a total of 11 exercises, plus a flow. Plus a 3-minute – everyone’s like, could you put your – put these exercises into like a Vinyasa style flow? So I created –
DANI: That’s awesome.
KATY: - a 3 minute, get up and down, shift your weight around, you know, uh, flow to kind of tie in to see what your hip mobility and lower body strength was in a flowing, dynamic way. So you could run through the whole thing and it’d take you probably forty – you would have 45-50 minutes of movement as your workout. And then there are 5 lifestyle makeover tips, um, about 5 ways to get more movement specifically for the benefit of your pelvic floor put in there. So those are going to hit in the fall – those should be ready in November also.
DANI: Oh, okay. Good deal. Thank you for doing that and making them for both genders, because that’s – that’s huge.
KATY: It’s huge.
DANI: And we should do a show just on men and their pelvic floor.
KATY: Let’s just do a show on men and everything.
DANI: Okay. That sounds good. And now we can start #clickclack. Because everybody –
KATY: No one even knows what it is yet! They’re like, do your best guess at what you think the Click Clack would look like. Send a picture.
DANI: Ooh! Thank you.
KATY: Oh, and another question – yes, that I get all the time about our DVDs in general – they will be available as downloads. You will not have to buy a cumbersome DVD. There’s no more plastic boxes, there’s an eco-packaging, a thin little disc.
DANI: Awesome.
KATY: And you can also just purchase it as a download.
DANI: Sweet.
KATY: I know, I’m trying to, like, just get with the times. Get with the times, Bowman!
DANI: Hashtag hash brown Click Clack! Um, okay, so I just thought of one more thing – I had these question marks on my notes, like, everything – what’s Katy been doing this summer, you know? It’s like, most of us just make some popsicles and call it good.
KATY: Whatever. Whatever! You moved like 7 – didn’t you move like 11 times?
DANI: I moved 32 times this summer. I’m done now because I like it here. Yeah, so I’m like looking at my notes and it just dawned on me – the Nutritious Movement center. You also made a building.
KATY: Well, to be clear – I did not actually build the building? I just took a brand new, empty building and decorated it.
DANI: Well, good, I was feeling like a slacker, so thank God you didn’t build it. But yeah – so
KATY: I’m like the Martha Stewart. The Martha Stewart of Restorative Exercise™.
DANI: But there’s a place.
KATY: There is.
DANI: And that is cool.
KATY: I feel like – I’m sorry, but when you said, “there is a place,” it’s triggering a lyric in my head, like, isn’t there a song? But the tune I’m singing it to is an old Birds song. (music cues) There is a place, turn, turn, turn.
DANI: I don’t know, I had some sort of Sesame Street thing going on in my head, but it’ s just cool that – it’s a pretty sizeable –
KATY: Oh, I’m sorry. I can’t even hear anything that you’re saying now. You’re talking, but all I’m doing is going through songs in my head and I think it’s Beach Boys. (music cues) There – In my room. I think it’s In My Room.
DANI: That could be it.
KATY: Okay, I’m listening now. Focus, Bowman.
DANI: Get with the times.
KATY: Get with the times. Hashtag Click Clack.
DANI: #ClickClack. Yeah, so – could you just give us a quick, little rundown on the Nutritious Movement – it has a whole name, and what is the name? I’m sorry.
KATY: It’s Click Clack. We’re calling it – we’re deciding between Click Clack and The Blob. We haven’t quite decided. Katy Says, “Come here.” Um – yes, I’m very excited. I kind of left that part out, and that has been another huge occupier of our time is, you know, I’ve had a facility for 10 years in California, and then when we moved to Washington, I had – I didn’t close it, we – we left and other Restorative Exercise™ Specialists took over and started a new business there. But as far as like a large center where I was working out of and teaching, teaching things for the public, not blog – like, actual live courses, live retreats, and then of course, you guys come regularly for continuing education courses. Um, we opened a new facility here and it is the Nutritious Movement Center Northwest. So it’s NWC – I’m sorry. NMCNW. So it’s lots of – looks like mountains with all those Ms and Ns. It’s like a bunch of mountains everywhere. And it is – it’s open – it’s not open to the public yet; it’s open to those certifying through us, so we have Restorative Exercise™ Specialists who train and take advanced courses, and then we have, gosh, 300 new students in one cohort. We do all of our trainings now in cohorts. You sign up at the beginning of a year; we only open the registration, which we are going to open registration in December. When does this podcast go out?
DANI: Oh, like, in 2 weeks. The end of this month. So this’ll be September that people are listening to this – end of September.
KATY: Yeah, so if you want to be notified of the certification program, you should go to NutritiousMovement.com and there’s a place where you can sign up to get the newsletter, because we only open it via newsletter for 2 weeks. Because we expect – we expect that the people that we want to certify are the people who have been following for some time, the basic work of thorough understanding, as opposed to someone who just hops on the site and is like, oh, I want to certify! It’s like, you could spend a couple years here, prepping yourself to certify. So that will be at the end of January. We will open the cohort for 2000 who will graduate 2018 because it’s a 2-year program. Anyway.
DANI: And for the newsletter, just for you listeners, it’s – it is not a junk newsletter. I mean, you don’t send stuff out very often, like once or twice a month, right? And it’s always useful. It always has good information about what’s going on with Nutritious Movement and with you, and new things that are coming out.
KATY: Yeah, I try not to waste anyone’s time.
DANI: That’s where I get all my news.
KATY: This – this month is just going to be a giant Click Clack.
DANI: Hash brown Click Clack.
KATY: Hash brown! Did you say hash brown?
DANI: Yeah, I’m hip according to my kids. You said it’s not open to the public, but will that be an eventual thing?
KATY: Yeah, it will be open to the public at the end of this year, and then we will have, you know, week retreats, weekend retreats, family retreats – right? Because I am all for being able to do things with your people, you know. With your tribe and not, like – everyone’s people. Everyone deserves accommodation, so. I’m doing classes for the local community, and then privates. And also, we’re setting it up where – a lot of people are in a particular physical crisis.
DANI: Mm-hmm.
KATY: And they’re like, I need hands on, I need instruction for like 30 days to really get it before I go – we have a lot of people come in for like an extended period of time. So we’re setting it up where you can work out of our facility. So you could – you know, you could tell your boss, it’s like, I need to go do this for 2 weeks – 1 week or 2 weeks or 3 weeks or a month and I’m going to relocate to this area. I will be working every day, you know, via remote, so we’ve set it up where you’ve got your printer and your fax and your Wi-Fi, and your dynamic work station area so you can come to the center and get your work done at the same time. So a lot of people think, like, oh, I could never take the time away from work to go do this – I’m like, you know, bosses are reasonable people for the most part, you know, and if you’re like, this is my crisis and if I don’t solve it, then I’m gone completely, or can I figure out this way to do it? And just as a potential solution out there. So I’m excited; the space is – has a big opening door so it’s got a lot of fresh air, and the Olympic mountains.
DANI: Wow, you know what would be really cool, is if like, you had floating stairs, but you know.
KATY: We have floating stairs!
DANI: No way!
KATY: But you knew that.
DANI: I did. I haven’t gotten to play on them yet, but boy, they look interesting.
KATY: Yeah, well, to clarify: they’re stairs attached via chain, not –
DANI: They’re like, suspended, right?
KATY: Yes. They’re like, suspended. So you’ll go up and down stairs probably a couple times a day, even if it’s up a few steps. And when you do it, imagine that what you’re about to step on wasn’t attached to anything else, but able to float, and then you would see as you go up and down when you’re pushing your foot to the right and to the left and to the front and the back, and the floating stairs show you real quickly all of the wonky ways you’re moving your joints and kind of falling into every step so you learn to get out of that habit very quickly. If you just took the floating stairs 3 or 4 times a day, I wonder how much better your ankles, knees, hips, and low back would be just by righting yourself because you could see how you’re moving – where the cast of the ground really doesn’t allow you to see that much. Very good times.
DANI: They sound fun. Sounds really fun.
KATY: They’re noisy.
DANI: Oh, really?
KATY: Yeah, but that’s okay.
DANI: Okay. So we’re going to try and start ending the shows with a Mail Bag question, because we get so many, it’s just crazy. And we just don’t do enough mailbag shows. So keep listening and keep sending those questions in, because they are very interesting. So are you ready? I’m going to hit you with a question.
KATY: Hit me.
DANI: Hi there, Katy. I am strongly considering starting a family. As a female, I’m the person in my coupledom that will have to carry and deliver that bundle. My fitness is, frankly, terrible. I have a number of long-ago injuries taking their toll regularly, and I’m getting help for those. My question is: what movements should I consider as the injuries resolve to make carrying less damaging and delivery easier? I’ve read a quote that 300 squats a day will result in a fast labor. Is there any truth to this? Thank you for your work, Jacqueline.
KATY: Oh, gosh.
DANI: That’s a big question.
KATY: Well, there’s a lot of questions in that question.
DANI: Yeah – I know.
KATY: Maybe the –
DANI: You could make it short, because we’re always going to revisit these in –
KATY: Yeah. I would say that the first question is what movement should I consider? The first – what did she say, what movements should I consider after my injuries have resolved? And I would say that, right now, the movements that you should consider are ones that will resolve your injuries. And that goes for everyone listening. So you’re like, trying to – you’re always trying to solve two things. It’s like, what movements do I need, but also how much movement am I willing to do within my regular life? So the movements that you need are those that will resolve your issue, which can mean not even the correct – there’s corrective exercises, right? There’s a ton of corrective exercises you can find through the Institute’s website, or also in any of the books that we’ve put out, and those exercises will resolve your injury while seeing what simultaneously what’s making you a stronger vessel or a vessel more capable of going through pregnancy, delivery, recovery, parenting, right?
DANI: Mm-hmm.
KATY: So there aren’t – like, there aren’t exercises to fix X and exercises to fix Y and exercises to fix Z, which is why I didn’t want to write books with these little tiny titles. It’s like, the exercises you do to resolve your issues are also the ones that I would give to someone who didn’t have those issues who was like, how do I make myself a stronger baby vessel? Carrying. Squatting is definitely on that list – squatting being a category of movement and not a particular type of movement, and so if you go read some of the squatting blog posts, it’s like, squatting in the way, like, as a fitness type exercise, with certain parameters for how it should be done, have many steps along the way. It requires parts and mobility that you might not have yet. So doing all your squat prep exercises would be pertinent, as would walking. Walking is part of what mobilizes you to be able to squat.
DANI: Mm.
KATY: They’re very inter-related. I’ve seen the 300 squats a day –and again, this kind of goes back to our cultural way of looking at a population of people, seeing what they do, and then extracting one thing that they do and reducing it down to something highly concentrated and then trying to take lots of that high concentration. So squatting populations – yeah, gosh. 300 times a day, I would imagine if you’re doing labor – you know, if you’re laboring or if you live in a place where there’s not furniture or chairs and you’re minding your children or you’re getting food and processing food and you’re going to get up and down, you know –
DANI: Yeah.
KATY: i.e. do a squat 300 times a day, which is different than you doing 3 sets of 100 squats as an exercise.
DANI: Right. That’s the thing, and they’re shaped so much differently through the day when you’re just squatting, you know, for living – is much different.
KATY: Right. But also, the person isn’t just squatting. That person is moving throughout the day. That movement throughout the day, the distribution – not just the frequency of an exercise – is important. So again, all we see are the squats, but we don’t see the movement in between the squats, and the way that the squats are done. So 300 squats as an exercise prescription is, you know, may or may not have a strong foundation just because you’ve seen people – or you know, I – the reason I’m saying that is because I remember the article about it was like, well, these women squatted 300 times a day through their regular daily life and their labor outcomes were better. So then, I just want to say – beware of reduction.
DANI: Mm.
KATY: Beware of reduction, because you could very well be losing the thing that was happening, because it wasn’t the thing you saw as clearly as the 300 squats. So it’s – that’s why we talk about movement in terms of nutrition. Like, if you see someone eat and not starve, you know, on X number of oranges and you figure out how much vitamin C per orange and then you take only the vitamin C, well, it’s like, now you’re missing the calories, and now you’re missing the water. Like, you can’t substitute –
DANI: And the chewing.
KATY: And the chewing! Right? And the use of your arms to open it. You can’t really extract that 300 squats as a prescription. But what I recommend more often would be to live similarly, you know, watch your furniture, watch your furniture use, limit your furniture use so that you yourself are doing a version of getting up and down off of the ground 300 times. Use a squat toilet. If you want to supplement with a few exercises, that’s fine. But that – this population is not doing 300 exercise squats, they’re just moving in a particular way. Which I think is pretty well outlined in Move Your DNA. Move Your DNA would probably be a good book for her, I think.
DANI: Yeah. It’s an excellent – I’m on my 3rd time through.
KATY: Ooh.
DANI: I loves it. There’s a lot in there. That was good, thank you for answering that, and hopefully, Jacqueline, you are listening. You want to take us out?
KATY: Like, as a hit man?
DANI: Yeah, that’s like, cool lingo for, say goodbye?
KATY: Take me out. All right, I can! Thank you guys all for listening. Dani – I just want to say, you’re amazing.
DANI: Aw!
KATY: Thanks for hanging with me so often, I appreciate it. But I also want to ask what’s up with you, anything new?
DANI: No – well, yeah. I’m just kind of starting to meet people around here that actually listen to the podcast, and go to heir studios and check things out. And you have a huge amount of fans, and I kind of just, you know, get that kind of fan runoff for people that listen. But they’re just the nicest people that follow your work, so. I don’t know. There must be some sort of correlation there. But just very thoughtful people.
KATY: What about your – are your kids back? You’re homeschooling this year?
DANI: I’m homeschooling, so we got them in nature school 1 day a week and they go out in the mountains one day, and then kind of a group thing where they get to do theater, because it’s really hard to do theater at home. I don’t know about you, but –
KATY: I do not feel like your household has any problem with the drama. I feel like, I feel like you’ve got drama covered. But theater’s different, that requires many flairs.
DANI: Yes, but it’s good here, and I would like to say – I moved from prairie, and now I live in mountains, and boy – a vitamin hill. Awesome.
KATY: Aw, I love it! I’m totally going to come and visit.
DANI: Oh, you have to visit.
KATY: We should do – I should do a book signing there when Diastasis Recti comes out if there’s enough studios there. I would totally come there and we could do – oh! We could do a live Katy Says in front of an audience.
DANI: Oh, that sounds good.
KATY: We’ll plan on that.
DANI: I’ll arrange that. That’s good.
KATY: Yeah, could you just do that, in between watching all this Orange is the New Black?
DANI: Yeah. Oh, I’m done.
KATY: What’s the other show? The thrones one? What’s the one that everyone watches?
DANI: Well, Game of Thrones, but I just – I’m a big fan of the books. I’m a reader, so.
KATY: I know you are. I love that about you.
DANI: Yeah, I like to read a lot, so. And thanks to everyone – I know there have been a lot of reviews coming up on Stitcher and iTunes. Thank you, because I know that takes time, everybody. We appreciate to know not just how you like it, but what we could improve.
KATY: Yeah, I appreciate it.
DANI: Because it’s just us with headphones on, and we don’t know what’s going on, so it really helps to get your feedback on that. And we appreciate the listeners, everything that you do. Um, if you want more information, books, online classes, you can find Katy Bowman at KatySays.com, or you can – well, yeah, you want to do that, or you want to go send them over to Nutritious Movement? Katy Says still?
KATY: It’s Katy Says right now – I mean, at a certain point, all the websites will point eventually to Nutritious Movement, but – Katy Says. Come see me at Katy Says!
DANI: Come see Katy Says. It’s easy. You can remember it. You can learn more about me – Dani Hemmat –
KATY: Um – what’s my name again?
DANI: Who am I? And I am a movement warrior and Click Clack groupie, at MoveYourBodyBetter.com.
KATY: #ClickClack.
DANI: #ClickClack. Peace out.
We hope you find the general information on biomechanics, movement, and alignment informative and helpful – but it is not intended to replace medical advice and shouldn’t be used as such.