I am so excited to share this interview with Katy Bowman today! As a prolific author, biomechanist, and founder of the Nutritious Movement movement, Katy is a real thought-leader who is passionate about teaching people about the power of natural movement and the importance of integrating movement into our lifestyle.
Katy has authored books like Move Your DNAand Movement Matters, and now has a new book out called Grow Wild, about the challenge parents these days have when it comes to raising children in today’s modern world in a natural manner. Even when you take the pandemic out of the equation, it’s undeniable that the reality of our (pre-Covid) modern world was one that was extremely supportive of a digitally dominant and also highly sedentary lifestyle. “This is the most sedentary group of humans in history,” Katy comments. But even though the world we live in makes it super easy to be lazy, there are still many practical methods we can all utilize to ensure that we are getting enough movement.
In this episode, Katie shares these simple, but highly effective actionable steps you can take to organize your life, daily routine, and home environment in a manner that helps you integrate movement in a more natural way. You’ll learn fascinating information about the physiology of the human body that will completely shift your perspective on movement and parenting (and also the strong connection between the two) especially when she highlights how “our ideas of safety and not moving go hand in hand.” Katy also breaks down why we require a wide variety of movements to be able to maximize bone density, and explains the unique importance of movement for children so certain diseases do not show up later on (did you know that osteoporosis is actually a juvenile disease that manifests in later years?). She also reveals that you can actually dress your children in a way that either “helps or hinders their movement” and that one unfortunate side effect of parents hindering their children’s movement in an “effort to keep them safe” is that they are now less able to assess risk and have a good understanding of how to assess their self.
Katy also explains the value of setting aside time to do longform investigations into the subjects that interest you most, and the reason why she describes longform reading and/or investment as an important skill to cultivate. You will also learn about the danger of this “pandemic of myopia” we are currently in, and why “the environment is the problem” (Katy organized her book by environment for a reason). You’ll also learn why Katy says that there are “many nutrients to be found in movement” as well as how to set up your home environment and lifestyle habits for success in a practical way. “This isn’t about moving into a cave and wearing a loincloth,” Katy says, but about making “really small changes.”
TIMESTAMPS:
Rather than moving, we are living in a crazy sedentary lifestyle. [01:45]
Katy moved from urban life to a much more traditional lifestyle. [05:30]
Her children are being exposed to nature in a big way. [11:06]
Kids need nutritious food, community, and lots of movement. The health of a child is really setting up that adult for what they can experience later on. [14:46]
Everything that we use is hyper-stimulating, like a sugar addiction. [19:33]
The developing body needs the most movement, and it’s more than total movement. [22:29]
If parents don’t have the opportunity to bring to their family this ideal rural life, what can they do to expose their kids to nature in a healthy growing way? [26:20]
Think outside the chair. There is a relationship between culture and posture and movement overall. [33:23]
There are many “don’t move” messages in our culture. The side effect of not letting our children move to keep them “safe” has also made them unable to assess risk. [36:30]
Kids have a different makeup in that some just have to move and others more easily can be still. [39:26]
Because of the pandemic, people have had to find other ways of moving. [49:15]
Kids need to learn to walk. From the beginning they have been on wheels: strollers, trikes, bikes, and in carpools. [51:08]
Transitioning is difficult. [55:18]
The launch party for her book is going to be “book walk.” [59:52]
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B.Rad Podcast
Brad (1m 46s): Hey listeners. I am so excited to share with you. One of the great thought leaders of the planet. It’s Katy Bowman. She is the founder of the nutritious movement movement. That’s right. She has done such amazing work in the area of natural movement of the body and integrating movement into our lifestyle. She is a prolific author. One of the most prolific authors I’ve ever seen. She’s a bio mechanist by training. She’s written some wonderful books called move. Your DNA movement matters. And she’s going to talk a lot about her new book, which is targeting the incredible challenge today of raising children in a healthy, happy, natural manner. Brad (2m 29s): The book is called Grow Wild. And we are going to get into it. So, people, forget about COVID for a second. Are you concerned in any way about this crazy sedentary, digitally dominant lifestyle that we’re living? You don’t have to be concerned. You can order up Uber eats, push a button, get your food, stick your nose in your screen and just live that life and carry it out. No doubt you’ll be destined for some pain and suffering by the end. But if you are concerned, you feel like something’s missing that connection with nature, especially if you’re a parent and you’re trying to do the best in so many ways and get your kid to the right music teacher and academic tutor and competitive sports programs. Brad (3m 14s): Oh my gosh. There’s a whole nother dimension that you might be missing. And when you talk to Katy, she gives you some incredible food for thought and really some simple, actionable steps that you can take to organize your life, your home environment, and your daily routine in a manner that integrates movement in a more natural way. She talks about her poster thinking outside the chair, and you can go pick that up on her website, follow her on Instagram, go to nutritious movement.com. Get into this. It’s very interesting. And for me, when I first met Katy a few years ago, she presented at one of our retreats and I just discovered her randomly on the internet, taking a tour through her home with this random home video and showing us all the different ways that they live without usual traditional furniture. Brad (4m 5s): And it was so fascinating that I tracked her down and got into some of her books. And it was sort of a, a blind spot for me because look, I’m into the athletic scene. I know how to work out. I know my way around fitness, but this is a completely different element of having a fit and healthy body. So our daily obligation to move, move in different ways, this wonderful book Grow Wild. You’re going to get some great insights. You’re going to hear about her heroic walking exploits that she does to celebrate her birthday every year, and also to celebrate her kids’ birthdays each year, as they turn a certain age, they’re out there walking a requisite number of miles wild times with Katy Bowman. A really interesting conversation. Brad (4m 48s): Here we go. It is Katy Bowman. It’s been a long time since we connected on the podcast scene and also in person, unfortunately, but I’ve enjoyed my visits out to the Olympic peninsula and you’re off the grid sort of lifestyle. And you have an update for me on that. What’s going on up there, Katy (5m 7s): Snow flurries, snow flurries. I live in, in the peninsula of Washington, but we moved about eight to 10 miles away from where we lived at sea level. And so we’re just dealing with a little bit of, I call it Montana weather, which is, which has really like sudden changing weather. Now it’s mountain weather essentially. So that’s been fun. Brad (5m 31s): So when we met, you were, you were chilling and so Cal and the very cool beach town of Ventura, but you said, no, I gotta get out of this cement. And they, they, the urban living. And so I think it’s really inspirational to hear how you and your family lives. So, and now you, you went even further off into, into the wild lands. So tell us about your, your lifestyle up there and how it differs from someone who’s constantly looking on their screen and seeing 20 different wifi connections from all the neighbors and attest to our devices and urban, urban living. Katy (6m 8s): Right, right. That’s right. So we moved from Southern California about 10 years ago and I had a five month old, which was 10. He’s going to be 10, which it blows my mind as you know, you’ve been to that. Yeah. And we just, we, I think they are really motivated by food early on when we first moved and water, you know, I was starting to look around and, and just pay attention to a lot of different things. I’m definitely a multi-disciplinary person, you know, I collect my information from a wide verses perspectives. And so I thought really were, you know, they’re like these basic human things, you know, there’s, you know, there’s like, do you have wifi access? Katy (6m 48s): There’s like a lot of things at that level, but there’s also like we need clean water. What does that come from? You know, where does food come from? You know, to really, and not the grocery store. And I grew up on a, I grew up on a small farm, Apple producing farm. So I was not unaware, but, you know, I had just sort of gone through my life and gotten away from what I would call it resiliency. And I’ve always taught physical resiliency. You know, the idea of being able to move better in your own body for the sake of being able to get yourself from point A to point B well. Katy (7m 28s): So we thought, well, maybe, I mean, my husband’s from Orange County, not a farmer, not a farmer, although a barefooter even in the city, a city landscape, but yeah, we, we just, we started with a garden and really, you know, we had like a small, like a small garden, the size of a really big farm table, you know, not, not anything overwhelming. And I probably farmed, like, I’m going to say, it’s a garden. You know, it’s a garden. I gardened a quarter of it. Well, everything else sort of died, but I just sort of, you know, fiddled around. And I, growing up in California in apartments, I’d always have like a pot of tomatoes or something like that. Katy (8m 10s): So even when I had this land access, this plot of a garden, I found myself just drawn to container gardening still. Cause it was easier. And I knew what I was doing. And then we did that for awhile. And then, you know, we moved over the next few years cause we were just renting sorta from house to house and found a house that had a little bit more acre that chickens, you know, we started playing with chickens just first and a little tractor, just us, a flock of four and had fresh eggs and you know, flash forward 10 years later now we have 30 chickens and you know, it’s, Oh my goodness, like a dozen, two dozen eggs a day, you know? And, and so now I have to, yeah. So like now I have to know all the ways to cook with eggs because yeah. Katy (8m 52s): Use them. So we just, we had this idea of a really slow transition of the lifestyle and the effects of the lifestyle that we wanted. And it wasn’t like we have to sell everything and start something new. It was like, this is going to take the rest of our lives. So just make slow steps and we’re getting ready to get sheep because, because where we live now has a lot of grassy area and, you know, you get tired of the noise and the fuel of mowing it really fast. And I was like, I’m like, this is very wasteful. This land, you know, would have more grazers on it. You know, it’s more like the regenerative agriculture perspective of, we could have a few grazers that were eating it, you know, that we could tend to, the kids would have some sort of learning experience bonding with other species, which is really important, I think for humans. Katy (9m 48s): And, and then my son who does not like does, does not, he doesn’t like to kill animals or really to see them killed, you know, he’ll definitely be my, probably have a vegetarian or vegan phase. I can see that coming in the future for him a little bit. So we decided to be part of the Fibershed. So the Fibershed is sorta similar to the idea of a water shed. You know, the water flows into an area from the sky and the mountains and becomes your drinking water. Well, we all wear clothes that are made of fibers and those are all farmed and harvested. And what are the practices around those? And since we all use a lot of wool up here in the Pacific Northwest, because of our aforementioned the mountain weather, I was like, okay, well we can, we can, we can sort of contribute a small amount of wool to, we can, we can harvest it and then, you know, to learn to wait, I’d already, you know, they’d already learned knitting, you know? Katy (10m 47s): And so like just sort of to, to do the full picture and then economics, it can be like, do you want to start a little business, you know, figuring out who wants to buy your wool or buy your few eggs on a roadside stand? You know, so that’s really common where we live. So that’s sort of where we are right now, 10 years later. Brad (11m 6s): And so the kids have pretty much grown up amidst nature. Do they go to the unconventional schooling approach I believe. And you could maybe talk about that and then take us right into your, your latest passion that the most prolific writer I know, I think, and, and the new book, which is really helping us with this, this challenge of raising kids in a, in a natural, healthy manner and kind of fighting off the, fighting the battle, which would I call it, especially with my kids, because now they’re adult age. And, you know, I was fighting that battle all through, growing up, mainly the screen use and the, the food choices. And a lot of times it’s a losing battle, but it’s, you know, at least you can kind of step up and, and do your best. Katy (11m 52s): Yeah. Oh my gosh. That was 17 questions, Brad. Brad (11m 57s): I know. Katy (11m 57s): So yes, I am a prolific writer. I feel like I was, you know, when I had two kids that were young, like in the, in the toddler years, you know, and I was, I breastfeed extended for like three years each and I feel like I was just so productive. Like my body was like, you’re going to make milk and words. Like, it’s like, you’re just primed for doing that. And then it does, it does, you know, it’s upwelling, it’s upwelling and outwelling, you know, so it’s all the same. There’s this a force of vital force there that really helped me along. And then I took a break. Like I was surprised to see that my last book, I think was really maybe 2016, 2017. Katy (12m 40s): So exactly there hasn’t been any next book coming out. I just happen to have a copy of his book. And I saw, I was watching the video of the launch party for it at market guard farms in Half Moon Bay and what a beautiful night that was like, that was great. And remind me to tell you about the launch party for this upcoming book for awhile. But I think just if anyone out there is listening and has kids, like there was a transition period, I would say between when they went from five and six to the seven and eight years, like they’re, they’re, they’re really their own people. I think when they’re really, really little, they’re sort of like an extension of you, you know, they’re keen to do the things that interests you and they just want to be with you more than everything else. Katy (13m 25s): They did go to nature school. We did the nature preschool, the nature kindergarten, because gratefully there just happened to be a woman here who read an article that, that kids really needed, especially young kids, needed sort of immersive nature experiences to sort of set the baseline for their relationship to nature and being comfortable outside and moving outside and being comfortable with weather and bugs and dirt. And she read an article and my gosh, 10 years later, she’s just stepping down as the executive director. And she built a massive program. I mean, multiple preschools and kindergartens and early elementary schools. Katy (14m 6s): It was amazing what, again, what one person can do when they have that passion. So they did do that. And then they’ve done more, I would say, conventional schooling. So I think I can speak pretty well to how you deal with kids when they get to be a nature school. And then how you would do some of these things when they’re actually just gone from you, you know, from the eight to three period, which isn’t happening for many people right now. But, but, but, but has been, and will continue to be, you know, where kids tend to go, you know, in our society. Katy (14m 47s): So I’m trying to think of the other questions that you were asking. So Grow Wild. We’ll talk about Grow Wild because that’s a book about, It’s my book about It started with movement. I mean, what are, what are parents concerned about? What’s the battle actually. I mean, I would say that parents have this idea of what kids need that comes from, you know, a lot of research about what kids need, which is nutritious food. They need lots of movement. They need other kids, you know, they need community. They need. And I don’t, I’m sorry, I’m not going to be an addressing things like love and support and those basic things like these tangible items that parents sort of know in their head like, Holy, I need, like, they gotta, they gotta, they gotta get outside. Katy (15m 39s): Like they need nature time. Right now. That’s the new emerging thing. I think nutrition probably been around the longest and now this idea of vitamin, nature and like, wow, kids really need, it shows up in other little things like, like in ice I researched right now we have, we have a pandemic of my myopia. You know, myopia is on the rise. And on one hand, it’s easy to make it feel not that it’s easy to see it as not that serious of an issue because like you just get glasses whatevs. But, but what you’re really happening is you’re setting up the eye to be more disease ridden later on. So Grow Wild is really trying to explain the health of a child is really setting up that adult for what they can experience later on. Katy (16m 28s): So things like osteoporosis, they, they recognize so much. Now that it’s all about you, you set your bone, you set your bone robust tenicity, which is like not only its density, but its size and shape you set that in your juvenile period. So you can’t really improve upon it past wherever your top line was set by the time you were 20, that’s how you were sort of done with your juvenile period. You’re like kind of a little bit later than puberty, but really before you’re a full physical adult. So, so that’s, so what do we have? We have this physiology, that’s like, you need to move a lot and all these crazy ways, lots of landing, leaping jumping to be able to maximize your bone density and all these other things, bone density is the one that’s people know are most familiar with, in order to maximize it when you’re older. Katy (17m 24s): So now they say that osteoporosis is a juvenile disease that just manifests in later years, right? So when you have that perspective, it becomes more important to let your kids move. And I called it Grow Wild because we in this sedentary culture and it’s more than sedentary. It’s not just sitting around now, it’s become sort of digital, right? So there’s a side effect of sitting not all the time, but it’s definitely associated with it. Like device use in general, our culture really sees what are just baseline kid movements as really like not okay, dangerous, rude, you know, all the, all these things. Katy (18m 10s): So I’m just really trying to read, take the time to reframe that, to say no, like they need these things. In fact that we don’t like it, or the fact that the rest of our life has become sort of movement free. We want them to fit into our movement free in life, but this is the first generation that’s ever had to do it. I mean, this is the first generation of parents has ever had to negotiate this particular landscape. And this is going, this is the most sedentary group of human beings ever. And, and we’re going to see this plays out in history, not even history in pre-history, you know, history is that written, I mean, in the human timeline, I mean, it’s, yeah. Brad (18m 50s): Our species is transformed in a very short time and like how you distinguished between just that we sit around too much and then even worse. We’re immersed into this digital experience, which includes the development of myopia and also the development, I believe of short attention span and inability to even maybe, maybe even less appreciation of nature, because it’s not as stimulating as the little challenge that you’re doing on the screen with your mobile video game and that, you know, that, that physical necessity to get out and move is one thing. But if you don’t, you know, kind of foster a incredible appreciation for it, you’re going to send your kids outside and they’re going to come back 30 minutes later and they’re bored. Katy (19m 34s): Well, I mean, I do, I try to use, I try to use sugar as an example, you know, like sugar. Like if we just look at what sugar is, biochemically, it’s very fast stimulation, right? There’s not a lot of work your body has to do to be stimulated by it. I mean, and that’s why we are naturally attracted to it because one, like that’s a star nature nature is to go to the sugar. You know, there’s nothing inherently wrong with sugar. It’s just that in a natural environment, there would be a natural regulation around it. So when you combine our natural affinity for ease, with an environment that has made sugar or ease ubiquitous, then, then now you’re introducing this new concept to human called humans called willpower, right? Katy (20m 27s): Like it’s the environment is the issue. The environment is the problem. And so when parenting like recognizing, and I just really speak to movement movements, my movements, my field. So I think in terms of movement, I think many people, parents, but this could go for, I mean, if you don’t even have kids, this is just for yourself and why we move and why we don’t move. We’ve put everything that we need inside. We’ve made everything that we use hyperstimulating. Everything feels like sugar, right? So if you give, if you give a one-year-old an all sugary, fast energy, colorful, it’s like a party, everything that eats like a party. Katy (21m 9s): And then you’re like, Oh, and here’s the asparagus. You’re like, boom, boom. Like it’s just boring. So I just worked really, if you set a kid’s palate though, first of all, you know, like we started our kids like they ate bone marrow and egg yolks and salmon and avocado. So they had this very complex palette and, you know, people around the world, their kids, when they don’t have exposure to, to the kind of foods that that has maybe in the sort of conventional American diet, kids have no problem eating foods that we would call those aren’t kid foods. Those are sophisticated palates. So it was like, no, they’re just foods. Katy (21m 50s): And they’re the first foods. And then that becomes what you eat. And then when you, if you introduce sugar later on, it, doesn’t go in and really erase those other palates that, you know, like there’s already an appreciation there’s already, I’m not sure how it works in the brain, but your brain already recognizes these as fine acceptable foods. And so like, I just did that same thing with movement. You know, I, I was like video games. They’re just like the sugar of food. Like I don’t think inherent there’s anything necessarily inherently problematic with the exception of everything is just slowly becoming more stimulating. You can just sit there and have your brain stimulated. Katy (22m 30s): Like you used to have to go out and work for it. Like you used to have to walk for it. You used to have to, you know, build a ramp and jump off stuff. And now you can just sit there and, and get that same level of stimulation by doing almost no movement. And you’re also not really doing anything you’re able to get like your brain is, is reacting. Like you’ve done a thing, but it’s all sort of, it’s all virtual things. So for me, I don’t know anything about the effects of any of those things, but I can tell you that the body human body needs a lot of movement. The developing body needs more most, and, and it’s not as total movement. Katy (23m 11s): It’s like all these nuanced movements, fine motor skills, full-body skills, balance, agility, confidence, risk assessment. And when you feed the humans’ desire to get all of that input with the junk food lights on a screen, you’re effectively then turning off the impetus for them to go find the other thing. So we just don’t have it because I was like, it’s just akin to stocking my house with junk food and wondering why they’re not going to do, you know, do it. Why wondering why they’re not going to eat well. It’s like, they’re not really set up to eat well. They’re set up to eat sort of what they’re given and what parents feed them and eat themselves, right? Katy (23m 57s): Because that’s the safe, that’s the biological safety thing. If my parents are eating it, then I know it’s sort of a non-dangerous food. You know, like I’m just talking about the real primal instinct for when we add or don’t add foods. Brad (24m 13s): Cool. Your, your story is reminding me of Dr. Robert Lustig’s book, the Hacking of the American Mind. And he lists these way that we, these different ways that we hijack the dopamine pathways in the brain, which is the most powerful motivator it’s supposed to be that way. Sugar, caffeine, prescription drugs, street, drugs, video games, porn, excessive exercise, to get that exercise buzz. Every single time we go to the gym and the, the end result is we flood the dopamine pathways to the extent that we cannot nurture the, the serotonin and the long-term sensations of a life that’s well lived and satisfying and rewarding rather than just instant, instant pleasure seeking. Brad (24m 58s): And so what you just described is, you know, I’d rather watch some dude do a triple flip off the jump and build my own little jump and get one foot off the ground, because I am hitting the dopamine pathways with this intense pleasurable sensation of seeing the amazing things on the screen. And I guess, you know, we don’t have to care about any of this, right? We can say that we’re winning the battle and we have a life of ease and comfort and luxury and constant access to, you know, rewarding foods. And so it’s sort of like a fork in the road. Like you could describe with your, your own life, like, Hey, we’re going to move out of the urban area. We’re going to try to set up camp here in a completely different environment and, and tiptoe down that road. Brad (25m 39s): And so I guess that, you know, it takes someone saying, yeah, this kinda sucks in a way, because here I am. At the end of the day, I’ve watched 27 videos of guys going off jumps. And I haven’t left the ground myself and I’m looking and searching for something better. And if we don’t do it in the formative years with the kids, we may just be raising a bunch of video game experts who reach over and grab a, you know, call in for a Uber delivery to get, you know, whatever quick food. Apparently there’s like 30 or 40% of people never cook a meal. They just eat out all the time. Yeah. So which, which are we going to join? We’re going to go on Katy’s route? Brad (26m 20s): Are we going to just kind of plug along and especially with raising kids, it’s a precious opportunity to do something different. So you said you just kind of eliminate that from your lifestyle, but if a lot of people are going to push back on you and say, Hey, Katy, I’m forced to live in New York city. How can I orchestrate this as best I can with, with my kids? Katy (26m 42s): Well, and I, so with Grow Wild, one thing that I really, just to that point, it was important to me to have lots of photos because we are sort of in a we’re in a, we are, we like our way of reading right now. If you looked at probably what you took in to your brain, as far as words go, it’s probably a photograph and a couple of paragraphs, like we’re just used to what I’m calling short form, right? We’re becoming adapted to being able to process short form information. The idea of investing into an argument long enough to sit down and read a hundred thousand words. Katy (27m 22s): That’s not common right now, but it used to be. And I would highly recommend setting some time aside to do some long form investigation into the things. It’s a skill. I mean, long form reading is a skill or long flow long form investment is a skill of a, of an idea because ideas are extremely complex and nuanced. That’s probably why I like to re write books because there’s no possible way. I mean, even a hundred thousand words will sell an idea of way short. At least you’re partially there. But anyway, to my point earlier, I wanted to make sure that the photographs weren’t ultimately coming from, from me, who, who, who could, you know, who you could say, like, you can really do it because of maybe your personality or your special access to the things that you have in your life. Katy (28m 12s): And so I was like, right. So what I want to show is lots of different people who have done it in lots of different places, urban, rural, the photographs come from around the world. So, you know, so like to really, and to like, think of like, what are the common barriers that many different people who aren’t me would have, and, and, and what have they done so that you can sort of help yourself over some of the barriers of like, I couldn’t possibly do that because of X, Y, and Z. Which is what we all do that because I think it takes, it’s like an energy preservation mechanism to change. Even your mind takes energy, you’re going to have to regrow some tissue somewhere. Katy (28m 55s): And so that same natural tendency to do very little work. Those are just sort of, I think they’re a mechanism to keep us from spending too much money to start thinking different movement districts thinking differently. So I add a photos, but I organize the book by environment because kids, kids, you know, I’m spatially oriented, I’m a bio mechanistic, I think in terms of space and form, I organize information in terms of space and form. It’s just the way that I perceive. So when I was thinking about, okay, kids spend a hundred percent of their life in nature, but I had to read, if I had to say nature, isn’t really what we, we call parks and green and gardens and bugs and trees. Katy (29m 44s): We call that nature. But this is whole planet is nature. The thing that I’m sitting in and looking at you on those are just really sophisticated beaver dams, right? It’s taking harvesting things that were already in the earth and reassembling it and putting it in something else, but it’s all nature. But we have the human, what we spend our, we spend most of our time in human built environments. But so like we have natural laws sort of around us, meaning we’re all going to die. You know, like these things that really, we like humans because we’ve said nature, define it as everything in the world, but human stuff, we try to set ourselves outside of sort of natural rules, biological rules, things like carrying capacity for the planet. Katy (30m 36s): Things like you have to do some, some work has to be done for the things that you need. Maybe you’re not doing it, but none of that, none of it’s magically assembling and bring brought to you. It’s someone else’s just doing all that work. So it’s just really buying, okay. Humans are in nature. Okay? Now your kids are all sitting in a culture. So the kid, the culture that they’re in this container has very specific. It’s not as easy to see as the container that is your home, but there’s rules that we all have to follow, right? There’s beliefs that we all tend to subscribe to. And we all have multiple cultures. You have your home culture, your family culture and your school culture, but then there’s sort of a, there’s a human culture. Katy (31m 16s): Or at least there’s certain groups of human culture because different groups have different cultures. And then you have your clothing, your apparel, as a container that you’re in every single day. So your home is a container that you’re in every single day. Your education container is a container that kids are in everyday activities, container celebration as a container. So the book is not about, Hey, everyone, just like I said, and move your DNA. This isn’t about like moving into a cave and wearing a loin cloth, right? Like what we’re trying to say is there, there are many elements that are available by making really small changes. Katy (31m 60s): With Grow Wild the same as true. You don’t need a farm. You don’t need chickens, you can be dressing and you can dress children in a way that helps or hinders their movement. You can teach children about cooking or not. You know, you can involve them in the process of figuring out where ingredients come from and what, who did the labor for them. You can start doing more labor. You can remove some of the furniture in your home to be able to move more or your tiny apartment or whatever it is. So like, the point is the steps that I’ve made in my own, or just the steps that I’ve made there are moved. Katy (32m 45s): The movement environment is a hundred percent of the time. The mechanical environment is going on a hundred percent of the time and we’re moving almost never. So it doesn’t matter if you live in New York city in a high-rise and you can barely even see a tree from where you live. Natural human movements, getting kids moving more is totally available in ways that you really hadn’t considered, including culture-wise just giving permission to move. Instead of always saying, sit down, be quiet. You know, like those, those are movement rules that we just don’t even realize we’re participating in that aren’t dependent on. Brad (33m 23s): Yeah. Tell us about, think outside the chair, for example. Katy (33m 27s): Yeah. So that, that, so the think outside the chairs, I mean, it’s a poster that I’ve had for 10 years. I just always keep modifying it a little bit because I think kids think I said, the chair is the chair is, is, it’s just one cultural way that, that one group of people have sort of said that you can sit and then have built entire infrastructures around this one way of sitting, right? Like your schools, your offices, your airports, like everything just assumes this one body position where the thing outside the chair poster, which is based on the work of an anthropologist Gordon Hughes, who went all over the world many decades ago to look at the resting positions. Katy (34m 12s): He was really interested in. He was really interested in posture and the, the relationship between culture and posture and sort of movement overall. But he really focused on still positioning what we call just like your, like your mechanical or positional environment. And he showed, I mean, I think I’ve got 50 on the poster, but there’s like 200 and they’re not using chairs because they’re not using furniture. Because again, we’re this one culture sort of invented it. And then this has happened to be the culture that, you know, dispersed in so many places and then said, Hey, you, you gotta have furniture to, you know, sort of as, as the world’s been colonized in that way, the practices of the dominant culture, which involved a lot of furniture just became sort of distributed. Katy (34m 60s): So I was glad that Gordon Houston said, humans sit in a lot of different ways and here they are. And so I thought, well, making, making an environment, if you say it this way, there’s a lot of don’t move signs. There’s a lot of don’t move signs. If you’re taking a walk, you know, and they’re there for your safety, you know, that’s the, that’s the idea, you know, no climbing, no jumping, no walking here, you know, please walk quietly. So if you’re a kid and this goes for grownups too, there’s all sorts of no movement, no movement, no movement, no move in your house, sit, be quiet stuff. As you need. You know, you’re disruptive if you’re in school. Katy (35m 41s): I mean, it’s all the rules of movement are don’t move implicit and explicit. So I was like in Grow Wild, I opened the culture chapter by showing a lot of don’t move signs. Because once you, once you learn, you know, like they don’t read to you necessarily as don’t move, they read as be safe. But you can see that our idea of safety and no move, go hand in hand. That that really what the easiest way to be safe is just sit down and don’t move and nothing can happen to you. And we’re like, it’s getting more and more and more and more that way. Where if you go to other cultures that is not an expectation of their children at all. Like in New Zealand, for example, this idea of don’t move because you might get hurt in all these movements, not a thing, Brad (36m 31s): A picture of the, the old tree house with what maybe a two year old standing 10 feet off the ground with absolutely no safety rail just perched on a tiny little piece of wood. And I’m like, Katy, what’s up with this? You worried about that. And you, you, you, you always have a great answer. Like I think you were describing how even a young human can sense the danger of being off the ground. And you’re not worried they’re gonna fall. Cause they’re not stupid. They’re going to hold on. Katy (36m 56s): Well, that’s right. And it all comes down to like that human, who was my human, you know, she, she had been climbing from a such a young age. She has learned to be aware of her capabilities and risk. So the side effects of not letting our kids move all the time to keep them safe has also made them really unable to assess risk and, and have an understanding of how to assess self. Because, you know, we tell like it’s interesting in, in, in an ancient time when we’re really sort of tuning into like what children need and like sort of like, Oh, kids are fully intact human beings. Katy (37m 41s): You know, they’re not going to emerge later when they’re 18, you know, the idea that they have wants and wishes, but the movement environment is still one where we, where we really have kids sort of constantly doubt the correctness of their instincts to move. You know, we, without realizing it like really help them, help them sort of embody the idea that moving their body, isn’t correct. That they’re wrong for moving their body. I mean, there’s a, there’s just a lot of that messaging going on and that you can see, you know, as a parent sometimes where I’m like, I need my kids to just sit down and be quiet and cause I need a break. Katy (38m 24s): So, but instead of taking myself out to a break, I’m just going to have them just be still, you know, it’s like, we just don’t really have that skillset of figuring out how to meet multiple people’s needs. Like we’re not really raised in community and support. And so the side effect is like, well, I need everyone to not move. If I’m the one person in charge of educating these 30 people, then they need to not move. Whereas like in a more traditional environment you would have had learning done over multiple ages, outside, free space teachers, which are really just family members or community members that it was just a whole different thing. Katy (39m 4s): Like the whole society has sort of set up around, not moving so that, you know, one person can do the job that many used to do. Like we’re sorta, I don’t know what that is sort of economically or if there’s a work type to it. But in doing that, we’ve just sort of movement as the thing that has to go, I guess, Brad (39m 27s): We’re in school to learn the skills, to send us into work in the factories. That’s how the whole thing started and prevails to this day. Even though the, you know, the economy’s changed, but we’re still trying to regiment these, these kids with the bells ringing and the sitting still. That’s why I was so glad to meet you so long ago. Cause I kind of have a fidgety daily lifestyle and I’m doing some standup desk stuff, but I’m certainly not going to do it for hours and hours because my legs get sore. And then I’m sitting in the corner and then I’m moving to a different place outside. And I asked you like, you know, is this okay? And you’re like, absolutely. Like I felt validated that I was just constantly, constantly changing my position in my environment. Katy (40m 8s): Well, and I think that I, and I think this is in the environment container, sorry. The education container for kids is I think that some kids adapt to not moving rules easier than others. I think that some people just like, we tend to see the ones that are hyperactive and fidgety as the problems. Whereas we’re where maybe it’s just, there are some kids that can dampen their reflexes more easily than others. And so that’s where I know that you, I mean you and I did the, “Don’t Just Sit There” project, you know, the idea that you could work and do a bunch of stuff. Katy (40m 50s): And there’s a lot of research on what’s called flexible seating in schools, but it essentially started with, man, there are some kids that really need to move and them trying to sit still for school means that they can’t do well in school. If you add movement, they do much better in school. So like what do we do? Or do we just keep insisting that no stillness is the skill to learn here also, or to see them as a problem, or just to recognize that still that stillness is an issue, especially because the kids who easily in their movement needs still need the movement. Meaning like, I’m not sure if it’s really benefiting anyone in the long run and become adults that are like even more stressed movement because now they really want to, you know, they, they, they are, they’re able to make the choice from it, but they don’t have that skillset because it was sort of like the skill set of not moving was more cemented than the skillset of moving. Katy (41m 48s): And I have one kid, I got one kid who, who, who never stops. I mean, I have two kids that never stop moving, but in different ways I have one kid that has always just, she’s always trying to master and move and like she wants to do movement. She wants to ride a unicycle. She wants to jump 40 times off the deck. She wants to climb the tree. You know, she just needs to always be moving. My other kid doesn’t really enjoy pursuing movement skills. He wants to read. He wants to sit, but he doesn’t want to sit still while he’s doing it. Katy (42m 31s): So he likes non-movement things being taken in, in a dynamic environment. So like I took 20 pictures of him once because he had an exercise ball event that then furniture balls. And he was, he cycled through 26 positions on it in 40 minutes, all with his book backwards forward. And it was just, it was just non prompted. You know, he’s the kid who we have logs because we have a low table. So we have these short little log stools. He flips them on his side and he’s balancing back and forth while he’s cooking or while he’s reading a book, like he just, he, he really needs some sort of a, to feel unstable when he feels most common, his mind when his body is slightly unstable. Katy (43m 14s): And so to recognize that, you know, these individual children’s needs and you know, they’re sort of like a dietician would recognize, Oh, you’re you need this like Mac you’re missing this macronutrient or this macronutrient like it’s movement is the same. It really need to drill it down to that, to that level. Brad (43m 33s): Well, and broaden our perspective about it. Because I think the trends I see today is like the, the, the parents know how important movement is. And that’s why I got my kid into competitive soccer division and we travel all around and play these games. And now we’re going year round playing the same exact sport. And so there’s kind of this divergence where movement is extremely structured, possibly overly strenuous and overly focused on, you know, high skill development and high competitive experience. When you’re talking about the, you know, the, the joys of, of reading a book in 27 different positions and that, that kind of hits that same checkbox of moving the body in the way that you you’re naturally adapted to or that appeals to you the most. Katy (44m 19s): Well, that’s why I made one of the environments activities, because I do think that many, I mean, many people, adults, educators, pediatric therapists, like everyone would say that kids need move. So the next question is, well, how they need to move because there’s really some, I made a whole like check sheet of like, how do you assess the activities your kids are doing to know if like, to look at it like nutrition to see, Oh, they’re totally not loving this area at all. We would need to supplement. And I added eyes and bones, like not just joints, but really tissues because different tissues need different types of movement. That’s why it’s a nutrient in that way. Katy (45m 1s): That’s why there’s many nutrients to be found in movement. But yes, and I think the pandemic really showed some of the liability in teaching kids over the last 10 or 20 years, because this is not new. You know, like this idea of sort of formalized adult led struck like exercise or movement in the form that we would do it like for adults who go to work, like you do it for one hour, it’s going to be this mode. Like it’s become this really regimented thing. Katy (45m 41s): Very directed that’s that’s that can have nutrients in it. It’s like a power bar. You know, it’s like, they’ve taken nutrients to try to compress it into like 200 calories snack, you know, and it’s going to meet a lot of needs. We’re moving, doesn’t work that way. But it’s sort of like that it’s precise. Pre-packaged, it’s, it’s very not like unstructured, immersive play where, which is now. So play now has becomes, Oh, kids need play now too. Like when I’m trying to show, I use, I use permaculture model in grow while this idea that when you investigate things, scientifically, you’re trying to break them down and you’re trying to find the individual nutrients, right? Katy (46m 25s): So you take a food and then you’re like, well, what’s in it. And so like, you were like, Oh, there’s, you know, these many carbohydrates and there’s this much fructose. And then there’s this much of sorbic acid. And like, you’re just breaking it down. And then you’re like, and we need all these things. And you’re like, I need to get a sorbic acid tablets. I need a fiber tablet. I need to say, I need 60 calories with the sugar, you know? But it’s like, if you just need the Apple, it has all that in there. So the mindset, when, I mean, we are a community or a society that’s trying to process knowledge. There’s no traditional, very little traditional knowledge. We really outsourced the understanding of everything that goes on in our world as someone else. Like, you don’t know how your toilet works, you don’t know where your water comes from. Katy (47m 8s): You don’t know where your food comes from. You just hope that it keeps showing up and working. So like that, that that’s, that is when you’re sort of in a knowledge liability that, that if you pursue some of the more, I mean, you, people will call them like natural movement or like what, what’s the word I’m trying to think of? Like, just like the traditional movements for kids, you know, like just put them in that environment, that in yourself that you’ll meet multiple, you’ll meet more, you’ll meet more needs. So that’s the permaculture style is if you just, instead of gardening, you know, where you’re like plowing everything and then bringing in a lot of a single type of plants. Katy (47m 53s): And then now you have to bring in water. Cause you got rid of the ground cover because you don’t want the weeds fighting. You know, you do end up doing a lot more work, trying to meet your needs one at a time. And that what you’re looking for is a single thing that meets multiple needs. So if kids need to move and then needs to be outside and the need to have a relationship with other kids and that nature. And so do you, you know. And you need these things in sort of like a casual meetup for dinner, right dinner, doesn’t even go into the exercise category. In fact, we’ve set up where it’s the opposite. If I’m eating, I’m not exercising and that’s bad, you know, that’s both bad. Eating is bad and not exercising is bad. Katy (48m 34s): So dinner is like horrible. But if you, if you set up like a outside dinner at a park with friends, the kids are just going to run around and play. And it’s not going to be exercised because it’s not pre prescribed, which is really what exercise is. So it’s just really trying to help people go. Don’t be overwhelmed by all the things that we need. The only thing we have to do is start picking better tasks. That’s it. You already know the things that you need and you’re stressed every day. And yes, you can say our life is better because we have this ease and this comfort, but there’s this underlying level all the time with my true needs are not being met and I can feel it. And those in my family are having their needs met. Katy (49m 15s): They can feel it. And like there’s a sort of that feeling all the time, plus any side effects of your actual needs not being met. So this idea of finding better ways to get the things that you need, because when everything’s shut down gyms, sports, tennis court, you know, places where people, the assigned places for people moving, everyone has sat down. They had no really understanding that movement goes everywhere. They have, you know what I mean? Like there was no practice in the concept. It was like, what am I, my, my gym’s closed off. I can’t move. Katy (49m 55s): I can’t, I I’m unable to move. And so we’re sort of seeing people, like I wrote about it in the afterword of Grow Wild because I had started writing this book before the pandemic was like movement, screen, time, up movement down for kids and probably adults alike too. But the type of movements changed. So kids started playing in their neighborhood, which they had really stopped doing because neighborhoods are either perceived to be unsafe because of just how we think now. And then also unsafe because cars, cars now have become sort of the thing we’re building our life around. Katy (50m 35s): Right. Right. And then like, and then, then you’re on your phone in the car, you know, you’re doing multiple things. So, so kids just with the cars sort of gone now, they had better access to just casual movement in groups. Pick up games of basketball, street hockey, taking a walk with their family. And even though the total movement was less, you started to see more of the movements that kids and their, and their families used to do. So that’s one thing we’ll see if it sticks up, stays up or not continues on. Brad (51m 8s): Yeah. It’s been encouraging for me to see more people on the typical trail than ever before, I guess, cause they’re, they’re stuck in the home and they got to do something and get out and everything’s closed. So yeah, hopefully we can pick up some of the positive aspects of the massive life disruption and, and carry forward. I know for you walking as a centerpiece, you talk about how you, you do your problem solving and best thinking on the move. So would that be kind of a, a quick takeaway tip for someone to, to get started on, on a, a more rewarding path of life is just, just walk? Katy (51m 43s): Yeah. I mean, walking and walk with others. Walking is like, and really, you know, they’re, they’ve done a lot of different research on just thought process in general. I mean, people have been writing about their connection to themselves and nature through walking for hundreds of years. Like this, isn’t a novel that Katy Bowman thing, I it’s just, and it could be that not every, I mean, certainly there’s different abilities. Not everyone can walk, but it also could be that maybe not everyone is necessarily meant to be a long cause I do long distance walking. Like I really need to walk there’s body parts. Katy (52m 23s): I can’t even get to without walking 20 miles. I finally feel them turn on because, because they’re, they’re like they’re endurance sort of muscles to kick in at a certain point when other things fatigue and we just hardly fatigue are walking. So for me, it is very much a need. And, and I also, you know, parents will be like, my kids don’t walk at all. And I’m like, well, I raised my kids walking. It’s very hard to start walking when you’ve driven, when you’ve been in a wheel device everywhere. It’s like the easy food. Right? Like, and like, and another thing is, you know, saying, you know, we have to watch when we start our kids on wheels as their first movement. Katy (53m 7s): I mean like bikes and everything has wheels now. And wheels are fun. Like they’re super great. But again, it’s that high stimulation activity. It’s easier. It’s easier. And it’s really hard to go do the more complex, challenging thing once you’ve been sort of set up to do the easier thing. So like our family celebrates birthdays on foot, then not on your actual, but that doesn’t have to be a birthday party. That would be like the worst thing ever. But what I mean is our rite of passage for your year is you walk your age. So we did that, you know, so five miles from the five-year-old and six mile, I mean, they can both walk like 12 miles by the time they were six, like they can, kids can do it. Katy (53m 51s): You just need lots of, they’re not going to do it in a way that you expect them. They just do it. It’s a whole day thing. We’re just out and we’ve done these epic walks, you know, and the kids are like the tired, which means they’re bored and bored of blocking. And then we’ll get back. And then, I mean, they have walked for seven or eight or nine hours. And when we get back, they don’t want to sit down. They just don’t want to walk anymore. They’re going to do 40 jumps. They’re going to sprint around and like, we’d play tag now. I’m like, Oh my gosh, we just walk for eight hours. I want to sit down. And they’re like, no. So we have to really be able to discern between when kids are bored versus when they’re tired, because they might not be using the right words, the most correct words, they might not have enough experience. Katy (54m 36s): And kids need immersive time. It takes sometimes 90 minutes of walking or being outside before they go can get out of their fast pleasure, easy mindset. So don’t be discouraged. And like my kids, you know, they resisted going out the, you know, the whole time they made it miserable. And like in the first hour they was dragging them complaining. I’m like, yeah, just keep going, watch. And they do my mind do that too. They grew up. And as my husband says, kids are going to whine, like kids whine all the time. Like it’s really sort of evolutionary how they get your, they survive better if they get your attention. Katy (55m 18s): Like, that’s, that is how that’s the investment is. I can bring it’s like crying. It’s like that, you know, I can cry and make sure people are focused on me cause I will, I will do better with people focused on me. And the same thing goes for whining. So they’re going to whine anyway, this is my husband’s quote. So we might also be doing something that’s right. And there. And once you get past that hump where they just transition out of whatever the easy mind was into, I call it a transition free. So when there’s a lot of work on kids, and I think this goes for grownups too, is transitioning takes a lot of work. Katy (55m 60s): When you go from one sort of way that you’re being a task that you’re working on. Like if you’ve ever been writing a book or like immerse in a creative process and someone interrupts you, the reason sometimes you’re like, just leave me is because, because that’s pulling us away from it’s a transition and it was not. And so when you try to transition a kid from are applying, like we, now we gotta go, come on. Like the transition is so hard and some kids transition easier than others, but there’s always sort of a feeling or a reaction, a transition once we start walking and that’s what we’re doing all day. There’s no, it’s a transition free day because even though we’re playing games as are walking and we’ll stop and we’ll carry a watermelon or something, you know, we’ll stop it. Katy (56m 49s): We have snacks along the way. And if there’s nice water, we’ll jump in and swim, or maybe we’ll all have sticks and be sword fighting, or maybe we’re playing 20 questions. There’s this baseline of non transition. They’re not going to be pulled away from it. They settle in and that’s what we’re doing. And it pays off. If you could just get through that really hard. Brad (57m 9s): And I guess sprinkle it in every single day, to some extent, you’re not going to have to do a wonderful 12 mile hike when you’re six. But if it’s, if that eases any transition, you know, that part of your day is going to involve movement. Beautiful. Same for adults. You know, I mean, we’re talking a lot about kids, but first of all, we got to set the example and great. If we do have kids, even if we don’t, we’re still all obligated to honor the same, the same guidelines that give us a nice balanced life and stress management. Katy (57m 40s): And, and I also, you know, I think that part of our, another, another aspect of our culture is we really separate people who have kids and kids’ stuff from people who don’t have kids. And that’s, that is not, that’s not really the human way, if you will, not ever. I mean, there’s plenty of people who don’t have children, but you still have a role in a community or a society where there are children. And so the term for that is aloe parent. An aloe parent is someone who gives care to a child that is not theirs. And we’re a lot of us are not directly aloe parenting, but we are still through not, we’re still building the environment that all children will have to pass through. Katy (58m 36s): So your moving more informs children who are just watching you see how adults are. I mean, you’re still part of this. You’re still part of the solution. I mean, I, I just, I think that this idea of, I don’t have to worry about kids, cause I didn’t have any it’s like those citizen children, their children’s citizens, their wellbeing in this society at least is what’s going to pay for you to be an adult that’s taken care of. And that’s become the new, you know, in a lot of, in a lot of literature, looking at the environmental impact of children, you know, and like the movement really to have fewer children as a way to save the environment, you know, a big piece of that is like, well, really there’s some cultures that have done that and what’s happening is you’re playing with sort of the workforce and the way your whole society is set up. Katy (59m 28s): So if we, if we want to reduce children as caretakers of the next generation, we need to also be able to see it that way, just remember that that the workforce of the future is going to be something that in this society we will call on again and again. So maybe it’s worth caring about Brad (59m 53s): Well said. So everyone needs to go pick up the book, Grow Wild. Exactly. It’s for everybody. Tell us about your launch party. Katy (1h 0m 1s): Thank you for reminding me. So I am sick of zoom. No offense. How are you? Brad (1h 0m 10s): At the time? By the time the end of the day comes and the family zoom call is on and I’ve already had four meetings. And I know people that are just back to back meetings on zoom all day long. So I think you just identified, like the balance point would be great because not being able to talk to you or, or, you know, I’d have to travel to the far lands of the Olympic peninsula. So this is the next best thing, but everything in balance, for sure, huh. . Katy (1h 0m 34s): Right. So I think it’s that, I mean, it’s like so many things where, you know, moderation really being the understanding of the right amount, right? Not, not, not the halfway point, but the correct amounts is what moderation really means. So yes, we’ve taken a tool set that definitely has many rewards, but it seems to be the only solution that really anyone can come up with how to do life. It’s like zoom, that’s it. Katy (1h 1m 15s): And I was thinking, so I wrote the book line. It’s very hard to publish a book anyway. I mean, it’s very hard to get. It’s very hard to have a successful book. How about that? Books require quite a bit of support from the author. It’s not like you publish it. And then it goes into bookstores and people buy it. It’s amazing. No, it’s a lot. Right? I mean, that would be ideal, but that’s just not the situation anymore, even before the pandemic, but books require a lot of loving support when you’re passionate about it. It’s great because your life is sort of, you know, the way I did my life before really connected me to people and the ideas to other people. Katy (1h 1m 58s): And I could really, I offered lots of ways where you could experience physically many of the things that you could also read about so that people could sort of go beyond just an idea. It’s like, Oh, I can walk you through some training where physically they become more a reality, whether it’s corrective exercises or just, you know, a 20 mile hike with a group of people where you’re you do it, but then you’re inspired and you set something up where you live, which effectively gets more people moving, et cetera. So we are, I mean, we’re doing what everyone is doing, which is having a virtual book launch party. Which is amazing. Everyone’s invited, but I wanted the whole book is about the relationship between sort of how and what we consume and things like emerging viruses. Katy (1h 2m 48s): You know, like this emerging virus is not a random, like this has a lot to do with the way we consume and sort of where we pressed into the earth. I mean, they’re not, it’s not like the surprise thing it’s been predicted more are predicted because of the way that we live. So I wanted to make sure that I had an, an event that was sort of truer to the book that would help more people out than tuning something online. And so one of the solutions that many communities have been using is this thing called story walk, where if you have young kids, you might be more aware of it. Katy (1h 3m 29s): Story walk was created by, I think, a librarian, maybe a cyclist. I’m not sure, but what they did was they took a children’s book and they took the pages out and put them on, on like lawn signs, you know, like political lawn signs. They put the pages of the book along a walk in a park or, you know, set like a life library had a lot of green space. So they, so kids could work on physical activity and literacy at the same time, it got them outside. So they’re promoting nature movement literacy as a group. And that became a big pandemic thing as libraries were shut everywhere. They’re like, well, we’ll set up a story walk. And now let’s move in libraries, which is a really great organization. Katy (1h 4m 11s): Everyone should check out to try to increase some of the economic viability of downtown set up downtown walks. So they’re not even necessarily for green spaces. They’re just like this idea that we can be outside moving around and it be sort of enjoyable for everyone that’s in this area. And I really, we, my kids were sort of above the, you know, the kid picture story walk, but when we would pass one, they would like drop right down and read the book as we were walking because kids love, kids, love being told stories and really great, beautiful picture books, picture books. So I decided that I was going to do the first ever grown-up book block where my book is over a mile long. Katy (1h 5m 1s): And I found a really great farm where I live on the peninsula. And so you’ll come to the farm and you can bring your family. And there’s a little, cause the book is full of pictures. I mean, there’s over 200 photos and you can do a family one mile walk and they have a little sheet that lets them do a book, scavenger hunt, because I think kids really like sort of find it books, you know, can you find this? Can you find that, like, that’s just a natural thing, sort of like going on the hunt so that the kids are engaged too. It’s a, it’s a site, it’s an organic Apple and cidery so you can have a cider or a kombucha and you just get your cup and you walk with your family and you go through this mile track and there’s eagles above and salmon in the river. Katy (1h 5m 53s): And you can have a nature non-tech based event putting into practice before you even read it, Grow Wild. And then of course you can pick up a copy and all that stuff. So yeah, something that really embodied all the ideas that I think we need to start seeing happening more and more. Brad (1h 6m 11s): So you’re saying along this mile course, you’re going to have hundreds of pages stuck up like? Boy, then, then you could go into politics right after with all those wire frames. Yeah. Katy (1h 6m 24s): Yeah. So you just, you take a spread out. So it’s, I think it’s going to be 200 signs. Cause the book is 400 pages, but we can actually do a spread. So like when you open the book, you can put that whole piece on one side. So yeah. About 25 feet apart, it’s going to be about 5,000 feet. So you’re looking at a mile. Yeah. And I’m excited about it because, because I think that there are many more, I mean it falls in line with the dynamic celebration. It falls in line with everything that I, the way that I would celebrate it beforehand. And so it’s just, you know, yeah. I’ve been trying to think about how can I, how can I connect? You know, I think we’re all missing connection. Katy (1h 7m 7s): And I just think that there’s more than virtual connection. There’s the good old, I mean, I’ve been writing all my elders letters and be like, send me your family photo and I will send you a family. But just things that I never really did before. I mean, even email community, all of it is just, it’s not as nourishing. And I think that, yes, it’s better than the alternative, but I think that maybe we could be more creative. So it’s just a call and be like, can you, like, what could you come up with if you really thought about it? Brad (1h 7m 37s): I love it. Tell us more. What, how do we find out more about this, this wild event? Is it going to be filmed a, if we can’t make it up to the farm and we can participate somehow virtually in the virtual book walk? Katy (1h 7m 50s): Watching someone else walk, like have some, do some cool flips at the end, we would probably have a little video for it just of how it went. They’ll probably be some media because I think that the media is also interested in stories. I mean, even if you watch TV or news or whatever, everyone just going back and forth on zoom. So I just think everyone’s sort of like, I would love to be able to cover anything to yeah. Right. And all the, and all the stories are about, you know, you know, kids are the computer, what are we going to do? And I’m like, this is what I’m doing. This is what, this is what I’m doing. And you are. And I would like you to comment. I’d like you to share it because when you read Grow Wild, you’ll see that there’s a ton of things you can do have a similar type in your own life that they just really just make things. Katy (1h 8m 41s): They feel, make things more celebrated. You know, celebration is another big part of humanity. You know, humans get together and celebrate certain things and, and it was dynamic and it was nourishing and it was usually about food or nature in community and milestones of life. And I think we’ve just really gotten away from some, so many beautiful things about our humanity. And I know that this community is, we think about foods. Like I want to conduct to you like the most nourishing food for humans. Like there’s lots of things like that. And you can take the same framework that you hold and it holds up no matter what you’re looking at. Katy (1h 9m 21s): So that’s what I try to do is tie, I try to tie in what people already understand about nutrition, especially I would say ancestral wellbeing, foods that, that your body really needs and say, it’s more than food and it’s more than exercise. It’s movement. And it’s community and it’s celebration and it’s nature. And you can pick activities that let you get all of it at the same time, Brad (1h 9m 49s): Putting it all together. The multi-dimensional Katy Bowman, killing it, go get Grow Wild, people, wherever books are sold. We can go and look at nutritiousmovement.com. Learn about the other stuff. Right? Follow you on Instagram, love your, your wild and crazy posts. What was the walking stunt that you did to celebrate a birthday with some amazing accumulation over? What was that? You turned 30? Katy (1h 10m 14s): Well, I started it. So I started when I turned 40 that I’m like, I’m going to walk. I thought I’d walked 30 miles to celebrate the end of my 30s, but I got lost in the forest. Cause some roads were closed and it ended up being almost 40. And then the next year, the next year I walked to all the food producers in an area to sort of like, who’s making the food in this area and put together 41 miles of food walks. And I actually wound up at the same farm where we’re going to have our events. Cause it’s, you know, half an hour from where I live and had a birthday party there after I had walked all day and then I fell asleep. Katy (1h 10m 55s): There’s a picture of me. I’m just like, everyone else is partying and I’m passed out because walking that much means you’re pretty much just going to go to bed. But last year I turned 44 and I thought I would try something different, which would be to walk 10 miles a day for 44 days. So I did 440 miles. And that was actually more challenging because it’s hard to carve that space again and again. But that was what I was after. I was like, I know I can do the mileage when I’m after is can I change my habits? And that was really wonderful too. So yeah, I definitely, I definitely use walking as sort of my that’ll be my next book is the art of the long walk or the joy of the long walk. Brad (1h 11m 39s): Love it. Thank you Katy, for spending time with us. Thanks everybody for listening.
