SHAWN STEVENSON: Today you're going to experience a masterclass on movement. You're about to discover how our modern culture has removed most of our normal movement inputs and is messing us up. You're also going to discover why exercise simply cannot replace movement. You're going to understand the distinction. Yes, exercise is incredibly valuable, but you're gonna hear an analogy that's gonna make all of this make sense. You're also gonna discover why more and more people need therapy today due to dysfunction with their vestibular system, AKA, this system that helps you to keep your sense of balance. Do you remember when you were a kid just spinning around for no good reason at all? I was supreme merry-go-round pusher.

All right, you run, I'm, I'm, Get on everybody. Hop on the merry-go-round. You know, Shawn got those wheels. So I run, spin us all around, jump on and we all getting dizzy af together. All right. You try and pull that today. Guess what? Guess what? They're gonna have to confine you. All right? You're gonna be laid out somewhere. The throw up all on your shirt, just completely run amuck from your own system. All right? What happened? How can we do that when we were a child? But then even, you know, a decade later, it is completely just that system gets thrown off so easily. And so today, again, there's kind of an epidemic going on that a lot of people don't know about unless you've experienced this with having issues with maintaining one's balance.

And, you know, of course there's vertigo. It's like one avenue of that, but there's many different manifestations of dysfunction with the vestibular system. And with that as one aspect of training the vestibular system, we're going to uncover the importance of training your eye and vision parts and why so many people are dealing with vision challenges today. And you're also going to learn why training your feet is one of the most important keys to preventing injuries and performing at your best. You're gonna learn how movement changes through the different stages of our lives and how to best support these changes and much more. This is truly a rich episode with invaluable information and insights, very practical things that we can apply to continue to evolve to become better, to figure out these puzzle pieces and create our own unique kind of patchwork quilt of what movement looks like for us.

And I'm telling you, this has given you a lot of permission to get better, to feel better. And this individual has been so impactful in my life. The person you're gonna hear from today, as a matter of fact, she's the most frequent guest that we've had on the show. Her and one other person, they're my top two favorites because I learned the most from these two. Super smart, but also just the articulation, the illustration of ideas is so powerful and I'm so grateful to be able to share this with you today. One of the biggest normal movement practices that I witnessed during my lifetime was gently, or maybe not so gently, being siphoned away. Being pulled out of our culture has been the normal practice of moving in relationship to preparing our food.

I grew up in the eighties, so this is where it really went to another level. Alright, we got delivery. Alright. I still remember the neighborhood pizzeria phone number in my head today for Alicia's Pizza. I still know the phone number. Alright. Being able to get food brought right to our door, being able to have takeout, being able to have fast food. The drive through was crazy. I mean, just the innovation of the drive through. Like you ain't even gotta come in. We're gonna put a hole in the wall and we're gonna pass you the food. Alright. Just that idea is just audacious. Sure. It's cool. It, it has, its its benefits, but also, again, it's just continuing to take movement out of the equation of just procuring our food and preparing our own food.

And so we want to acknowledge that and to appreciate the innovations that we have, if we wanna call them innovations. But just look at where this is removing movement from our own personal equation for our family's personal wellness and and wellness equation. And so one of the best things that we can do today is to be more human. Yes, take advantages of great resources. Sure. You could DoorDash a meal here or there, you know, have some great takeout, go to restaurants. We got all this great access, but one of the most health affirming things that we can do is to prepare food with our own hands in our own homes and to instill this practice in our children.

Data has come out, and it shouldn't be a surprise at this point to learn that fewer and fewer young people, so we're talking about around the age of 18 to 22, like the college age, younger populations of people are going into the world not knowing how to prepare meals for themselves. So this skill of cooking is being lost to a growing percentage of our society. But at the same time, there are robust bustling areas of food, preparation of cooking, of communication. Like we've got wonderful shows and you know, YouTubers and all this stuff who are really advocating for cooking and inspiring cooking in younger generations as well. So there's kind of these two different trains that are going on simultaneously in kind of opposite directions.

And we just gotta choose which train we're gonna get on and do our best to make the healthy food and cooking train ever more popular. And so, with that said, having great kitchen tools that make it fun, that make the experiencing the environment beautiful as well, because it's a vibe like being in your kitchen, especially number one, if you love cooking or you want to rekindle or even spark a new relationship with being in the kitchen and creating delicious recipes, experimenting, having a good time, the vibe matters. So being able to put on the music that you like, or maybe, you know, for some people this is when they put on maybe a quote trashy show in the background. Maybe this is hanging out with your friends and family, your significant other, your kids. You know, maybe this is just alone time and just a time to be in quietude, right?

We gotta create the vibe that we like, but also the visual aspect. I didn't understand how valuable that can be as well until our family started using the cookware from our place. Now our place stepped up to be a completely non-toxic, PFAS free. So these are these forever chemicals that are showing up in so many different products today, but especially being introduced into the environment through cookware. And this is dating back decades to the release of Teflon cookware into the general population in our society's widespread use of this Teflon non-stick cookware. It could be well intended to make cooking easier, but it came at a cost. One of the most notorious compounds used to make Teflon cookware is a chemical called perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA.

And PFOA has been found repeatedly in peer-reviewed studies to contribute to higher rates of infertility, liver disease, and a variety of cancers. One study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute concluded that PFOAs are a strong kidney carcinogen, cancer causing agent targeting our kidneys. Alright, and again, this was used for decades in widespread use. It was only recently outlawed, only to be replaced with another. A conglomeration of chemicals that was found to be equally as toxic enough is enough. And this is where our place stepped up again with their non-toxic pfas free, ceramic coated cookware.

And they also have, and this is one of my favorite pans that I cook with. I actually just cook with it today, and it's their titanium non-stick cookware. So definitely check out their titanium cookware as well. How cool is that? We can cook with titanium. Yeah. All right. Just head over to from our place.com/model and you're going to receive 10% off all of their cookware and and appliances when you use the code model at checkout and with their 100 day risk-free, trial, free shipping, and free returns, you can give yourself this gift and give this gift to others as well with confidence as one of my favorite gifts to give is the cookware from our place. So head over to fromourplace.com/model. That's F-R-O-M-O-U-R-P-L-A-C e.com/model. Take advantage. Check out this beautiful non-toxic cookware from our place and make your kitchen a healthy haven for food preparation. And now let's get to the special YouTube comment of the week. 

YOUTUBE REVIEW: Another YouTube comment of the week by immortality passion. I lost my mom in January 2020 to cancer. I was 40. I was her sole caretaker for a very abrupt and steep three-month decline. Then the world shut down over COVID 2020, early 2021 was the hardest, most stripped down and alienated time of my life. That was when I found Model Health Podcast. It was your carefully worded episodes on the pandemic, which were 100% in line with what I'd already known, researched, and aligned with. And so not only did it give me some version of community and support, but it was also your voice that I too found so incredibly soothing and healing to my nervous system. It really did help pull me through that incredibly dark time. Thank you. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Thank you so much for sharing your experience and sharing your voice. I hear you. I appreciate you so much. And wow, just thank you so much for taking a moment to share your voice and to share your heart, and listen wherever you're listening on, whether it's Spotify, apple Podcasts, whether you are hopping over to the YouTube channel, please share your voice. It really does mean a lot. Share your voice rate the show. It really helps to get it to more people's hands and hearts. And without further ado list, get to our special guest and topic of the day. Katy Bowman is a biomechanist bestselling author and founder of Nutritious Movement. She's written many books on the importance of a diverse movement diet, and she was named one of Maria Shriver's Architects of Change. Katy has been featured all over national media, including the New York Times, NPR, and The Today Show, and she's worked with companies like Nike, Patagonia, and Google, sharing her life transforming education around movement as nutrition. Let's dive into this conversation with the one and only Katy Bowman. Alright. I titled this episode for myself personally. 

KATY BOWMAN: Mm-hmm. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Instead of Katy Bowman, two or four. This is Katy Bowman legacy. 

KATY BOWMAN: Oh, no.

SHAWN STEVENSON: All right.

KATY BOWMAN: Okay. It's my greatest hits album. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Greatest Hits, that's what I'm talking about. Been around the world and I, two people, my most frequent guests. Two of the smartest people that I know, and two of the people I've learned the most from. Right. It's Jim Kwik. Katy Bowman. Alright. Jim's up here. All about the brain. You're all about this body, but they're connected.

KATY BOWMAN: Of course.

SHAWN STEVENSON: They're connected. And today I just wanna crack this whole conversation open. I think that we've unconsciously created a bit of a fatal flaw in relegating movement to exercise. And I think that we're doing ourselves a disservice. So can you talk about the concept of movement versus exercise and why we need to be more movement centric people? 

KATY BOWMAN: Right. Well, and it doesn't even have to be, versus I, I think of them as nesting dolls. You've got exercise and that is movement done with intention to make us physically healthier. There's a, a duration, a dose, an intensity, a mode that we've picked. It's very regimented, but it nestles inside of physical activity. Then physical activity is a little bit broader, it, it still meets all those health criteria. It's a way of moving that uses our musculoskeletal system. It uses our energetic system in a way that makes us healthier.

But physical activity isn't necessarily always done just with the purpose of making us physically healthier. It could be like, I gotta rake these leaves in my yard. So it makes me physically better, but it also makes my environment a little tidier. Maybe you wanna ride your bike to work because you're trying to save money on gas, or you want to actually calm your mind a little bit. Do something for yourself before you step into your nine to five job. And then both of those live within the concept of movement overall, which is just my body's changing shape. I'm changing locations with my body. And when we talk about movement. If you hear the word exercise, it means that you might be in the tiniest possible doll, meaning the volume of activities that are available to you to not just make you physically better, but enrich your life.

You know, going out and throwing the Frisbee with your friends, you know, on the weekends, being able to take a vacation with your family members and join in on like a long walk through the museums. Like, you're, you, you're strong enough to be on your feet for six or seven hours. It doesn't leave you feeling like I have to stay, I have to stay here while everyone else goes. When we start to incorporate a larger doll of movement, a larger container for movement than the possibilities are endless when it comes to not only making us physically healthier, but enriching. I think our lives overall, our relationship with each other, with the environment and with the way we wanna physically express ourselves.

SHAWN STEVENSON: I love that. One of the things that you really changed my perception of was how over time, the way that our culture is structured has been taking more and more of those movement inputs out of our daily lives. Right. Procuring our food. There was a time we had to go get it. Right. Whether it's hunting, whether it's gathering, now it's, you push a couple buttons on the phone and it shows up.

And so I think one of the things that I want to advocate for us today is, number one, let me ask you this question. What are we missing when the culture is taking away those movements? What are some of the big things that you see as gaps in our movement today? 

KATY BOWMAN: Well, I think of, let's think of like a food, you know, I, I like to pick an apple 'cause it's pretty accessible. Like you could say like, what is an apple? Like, what is the experience of an apple? You know, there there's picking it off of a tree. There's the experience of e like holding it and eating it, maybe peeling it or slicing it. And then there's what's inside the apple vitamin C fiber, water.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Pectin.

KATY BOWMAN: Pectin. That's right, that's right. So, if you were to pull out all the elements of what's inside of an apple and you know, and you had like a fiber supplement and you had a vitamin C supplement and I, and pectin, you know, and like, here's a package of pectin, the thickening agent, and you said that these are an apple, like what are you missing if someone told you that fiber and vitamin C and pectin was the apple when your relationship to the apple could be? I mean, it could start with planting the tree, planting the apple tree, tending an orchard looking at it day after day. And that's the way I really feel about movement, which is when you reduce movement to the, the things inside of it. That, that I think through the scientific lens, we've deemed that these are some essential elements, and they are, I'm not, I'm not arguing that they are, I'm just saying that they're not the total apple, they're not the full experience of movement.

And, what are we missing out on? Like when you were talking about this idea that we've always had to move for our food, for example. Well, it wasn't even like going out and, you know, getting a, a deer and bringing it back or getting a bunch of tubers and bringing it back. It was time with all the people, right? It was hanging out with your, with your bros. As my kid would say, you know, like as you're, as you're working towards a common goal. It was being able to read the landscape, knowing that your strategy would change by season, how you were going to accomplish this. It's failing a lot of the time actually and reinforcing yourself the, not only your physical self, but your mental self. Here's where, you know, maybe Mr. Kwik and I overlap a little bit, where there's a lot of brain activity that goes into moving your body. And so when you start to look at what is lost, when we outsource, outsource, a lot of movement, you know, a lot of our conveniences are really just places where we've outsourced movement.

I think in the, the intention is that I'm gonna get rid of these movements that I don't wanna do. Rake my leaves, peel the apple, you know, like, so that I can then fill my life with more of these wonderful things. More time with people to do things more time in nature to read the landscape, maybe even more time to exercise and not spending so much time cooking. But we're not doing that, we're, we are not getting rid of the movement to then engage in this really nourishing, nature rich people, rich culture, rich time. We're just not doing the movement. And then we're sort of scrolling with all of the downtime. And going, where'd all the movement go? I have no time.

It's like added more stress. We've kind of filled it in with more busy work. So I do like stepping back and saying, what if we chose less convenient things sometimes and recognize that while we maybe aren't saving time in that sense, that now I can go do a bunch of other busy work, this slow version of me. Moving, gave me more time with my friends, more time with my family, more time alone. Outside, more like a better relationship with these plants over here, or whatev, whatever else it is that you like. I mean, I think of stacking wood, I think of labor. Labor is a category of movement that no one really talks about too much.

You know, we talked about exercise, but labor is a also one of those nesting dolls. I I'm imagining those, the Russian nesting dolls. So exercise is actually the smallest one. And labor is another small doll that sits inside a physical activity. So it's like physical activity holds a couple dolls and labor is one of those. But labor offers, in addition to accomplishing chores and, and things, your responsibilities for being a human on this planet, it also moves you quite a bit. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Sometimes I think that you just, you, you sit around just, how am I gonna..

KATY BOWMAN: How dare you.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Blow Shawn's mind. Right. Sit around now. 

KATY BOWMAN: Yeah. Who are you talking to?

SHAWN STEVENSON: Move around. And you're just like, how am I gonna blow Shawn's mind this time? Because that, just thinking about the apple and breaking it down into its parts, it's not the same as the apple. Right. And so that ex, it's such a great visual idea for us to kind of piece together thinking about, okay, I can train to pick an apple, right? I can go to the gym and like do lightweight lat pull downs, like mm-hmm. Reverse or like neutral grip, lat pull downs. I'm going to emulate picking an apple so that I could train for it. It's not the same thing as going and picking the apple because of all the other inputs that that entails. Right.

It requires me to go into that. Specific area. It requires me to, you know, find a tree that is, you know, fitting for, you know, and using the visual part, like you said. The visual landscape, like what Apple looks the best for me, what can I reach? Do I need some kind of a tool to be able to get up there, a ladder or something like that? Or can I extend my body in a certain way That it just, you cannot emulate that in the gym because it doesn't have a purpose, it doesn't have the same purpose. And then getting that apple and being able to snatch it in the recoil. You know, so I don't get slapped in the face by the branch. Or whatever the case might be. And then eating that apple. And all of that, like directly from that tree and all the nutrients that are alive and well, when I just, I can keep going on and on the peeling Right. Peeling the apple. Whatever it is, it is it, you just can't replicate it. Yeah. Right. And so, yeah.

KATY BOWMAN: Well, and it's very interesting just to, since we're on the Apple theme, the vestibular system is another piece that as people get older, they're finding they need to get physical therapy for, you know, people who get a vertigo or dizziness because they don't spend a lot of time changing the orientation of their head relative to gravity. You know, like when kid, you know, kids will get in your office and they'll get on that spinny chair and they're just gonna spin themselves around all the time. They're always, you know, just trying to challenge these. I mean, it's not the limbs, it's not just these muscles that we've got in the gym. It's these other systems that humans sort of naturally gravitate towards playing with.

But when you get older, you know, now when your kid's like, go on the merry-go-round with me, you're like, I don't wanna throw up, you know, thanks for the invite. Right. But I'm not gonna throw up. So now a lot of the vestibular system training is using VR goggles, and they put you in an apple ord. And they have the apples and you're supposed to bend down and, you know, twist and rotate your body and reach your arm up. So now your inner ear is doing all these different things and I'm going, yes, great for therapy. And also get yourself to your local apple tree. And because picking an apple isn't even just sometimes you're on your hands and knees. I grew up in actually a apple farm. That's my, my childhood was on a com, not a com, like a small commercial apple farm.

And you'd go out and you'd pick things off the ground a lot at a time. So it's very complex getting an apple and also an apple's not one thing. You know, if you laid all the, there's not only fiber pectin and vitamin C and water in an apple, there's flavors and you can have one apple that doesn't have any bit of the other flavor. And so like, let's not even limit it ourselves in our mind to this single exercise that is. What an apple is, because it's just much bigger than that. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Ah. Mind blown. Mind blown. 

KATY BOWMAN: This is the Apple episode. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: The big apple. You know what? So you know about that fresh apple cider as well, obviously. 

KATY BOWMAN: Oh, come on. Martinelli's. Martinelli's, apple cider. I'm not sure if people know that sparkling stuff that you tend to get at the holidays. Those are from our hometown Apples. Very small town in California and that's, I used to drive with my grandpa and haul our apples to be juiced for that cider. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: See the model health show, man, you've learned something big time. Every time. Like, okay, so I, since you brought this up, because, and I didn't tell you this, but I wanted to talk about basically from the ground up. Mm-hmm. And from, you know, from the top down. Okay. And you specifically brought up seeing the landscape. And we don't think about this, the average person in terms of movement. Right. And that's a part of that vestibular system. And, and, you know, being able to re regulate things as well is that visual input. But today, our eyes are just so craving and deficient in movement. Our vision, and not just our eyes. Let me be clear. It's not just our eyes. 

KATY BOWMAN: It's our, it's our, our eye brain connection.

SHAWN STEVENSON: So vision, vision is bigger than just being able to, you know, to, to see with our eyeballs. Right? And so can you talk about. Why are we lacking so much movement with our eyes and what can we do to get some more movement inputs and strengthen our vision? Because that's gonna lead to better balance. It's gonna lead to, you know, being able to read. 

KATY BOWMAN: Yeah. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: What a concept and, you know, being able to you know, disa disassociate with the world around us for a longer period of time if we have healthy vision. 

KATY BOWMAN: Well, I think the simplest thing and probably people are familiar with this is breaking up so much near work. You know, this idea that so much of, you know, if you, if you think of if you're doing a bicep curl in the gym, you know, you put a weight in your hand and you watch, as you do that bicep curl, you bring your hand all the way up to your shoulder and you lower it all the way down. That's the range of motion of your elbow.

Well, your eyes also have a range of motion inside the ciliary muscles. The focusing muscles within the eyeball itself. So when you look at a screen, and I should say really when you have a distance of a screen. So maybe you hold your phone, you know, 12 to 16 inches from your face, and maybe your computer's a little bit farther from that, but the bulk of your time, your eyeballs are looking at something, you know, within two feet of your face.

That would be if we imagine that bicep curl, that would be like picking up the weight and coming almost all the way to the top, and then only moving from that point to the top and back down two or three inches. They're mostly staying in this tight constricted position. And we're, and we're barely letting the weight down at all. And that's the eyes experience of your day would be like your biceps experience if you held that weight up all the time and only toggled it between two inches down and back up to your shoulder, or real tight, narrow range of motion. If you wanna take your eyes through that full range of motion, you need to be focusing on something that's really far away.

You know, going out to a window and like looking at what's the farthest thing that I can focus on. You know, you're looking for the tree across the street and then maybe, you know, the tops of houses. If there's mountains and you're, you're letting your eye essentially set that weight all the way down, just like your bicep, you know, in a bicep curl, you lower all the way down. So that's one thing. Natural light is another thing. So you could be inside and using the computer window relationship, but you're still not getting natural light in that situation. 'cause a portion of it is blocked from the glass. So you gotta go outside and you gotta let your eyeballs interact with that natural light.

And then also, because it's not only about focusing, you know, this is sort of, have you probably spoken to Dr. Bryce Applebaum yet? You know, talking about why the brain is involved in everything is also the way our brain interprets depth perception with our eyes. So if you're not going up and down stairs, if you're not navigating terrain, that's complex. It's not you're not doing as much work with your eyes as you can. So this is not necessarily a range of motion, but it's like a range of function of your eyeballs and your brain together. There's a bunch of different things that they can do. And so the more your landscape, the, the pathways that you take are very flat and repetitious then the less they have to stay equipped for navigating things that require balance and stability.

So even physical balance training can help with your eyes, with, can help with your vision system. And also spinal curvature too. You know, the more we get sort of rounded over, you end up playing with your depth perception. Just because I think normally your, your head in, in the perfect world, your head would be over your hips, and so your brain has a sense of the distance your eyes are for something and I think the assumption is.

And your body below it is that same distance. But as we start to get curled, curled forward posture, our face is sort of getting there first. And so now let's just say the inner mathematics in our brain are off a little bit because the head is not sort of right, we say right or normal meaning it's about the, the vectors to the rest of the body. So working on keeping your body back. So as we just develop poor musculoskeletal posture overall because of our habits of just sitting a lot, or doing a lot of forward activities, not really using our, our body through its full range of motion, then that affects our ability to do things like perceived depth, for example.

And that goes on to be a risk factor for falling, you know, and other things that, that become more important probably as people get a little older. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Oh my goodness, I didn't know you was gonna bring that piece up. 'cause you know, I see. You know, especially. You know, kids, you know adults as well. Just like ..

KATY BOWMAN: Tech neck.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. Just down here, just tapping away. Mm-hmm. And starting to get hyper development back here as well. Mm-hmm. Getting a little, getting a little quasimoto going. You know, Quasimoto was a man of the future. 

KATY BOWMAN: That's right. That's not right was he was ahead of his time.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Right.

KATY BOWMAN: His head was literally in front of his body's time.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Right. Oh, I laugh. Way too hard at that. Oh my gosh. That is so funny. That is so funny to me. You know, and here's the thing, you know, like we don't think about how our body is always making these adaptations. 

KATY BOWMAN: True. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And many of these adaptations. You know, we might call them symptoms, right. But they're like signals. They're like this feedback that we might wanna change. And, and this is the great thing, is like learning information like this, we have the ability to change and to train for, to think differently, right? And that's one of the things you encourage for all of us is like, think differently about your environment and yourself and how you're part of all this stuff.

Because that can instantly change things. Like we have an epidemic right now to say the least of nearsighted this. You know, and it's not an accident like this. Look, we're staring at this fixed position. Yeah. For most of us, this small screen for several hours a day, and this has never been done before.

KATY BOWMAN: Several more than that. Like a lot a, a lot of hours in and inside. I, I think that we should also focus on and inside. Inside forward positioning, but forward static positioning. It'd be, it'd be one thing if you're doing activity out in front of you, but it's very static positioning. So it's, and there's nothing wrong with the position, it's the, the sheer volume of it. So it's just, again, like I use the nutritious movement construct to explain, you know, it's like there's no, you, you can have a nutrient, you can have an input, a vitamin or a mineral, and it's not really good or bad in and of itself. It's about its relationship to all other ones. So if you have this posture that you have to use this rounded forward posture, sure, maybe you're carrying something or you need to get extra muscular force to dig something up.

There's nothing wrong with the position. It's that this has become a high volume passive positioning in the absence of anything else. And so, you know, the, the most nutritious food in its singularity will make you sick. It's still, you're still not nutritionally balanced, even if you pick the healthiest food and eat that exclusively.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. Thank you for that. Because even when I was in, this is for the people that could see me on the video version, but when I was emulating, like having my head completely, my chin on my chest. Looking down at my pretend phone and it actually felt kind of comfortable. It felt kind of good. Sure. It feels relaxed, right. It's crazy. But being in that position for, and, well, I don't know the term, but maybe just abnormal amount of time or just overfed. 

KATY BOWMAN: Hyper. Yeah. You're just, you're just..

SHAWN STEVENSON: Right.

KATY BOWMAN: It's too much. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Overfed in that position can absolutely. It's gonna change all the, just everything that my body's doing. It's a completely different system of communication that has to take place for my body to adapt. And so, alright, we just took a trip upstairs. Let's take a trip downstairs all the way down to the ground. And this is, there's a revolution happening, right. That with this subject as, as well, which is our relationship to the ground and our feet.

KATY BOWMAN: Mm-hmm. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Finally, I just saw, I just saw, and I showed it to my son. 'cause you know, we've been about this life for quite some time. My son's a basketball player, but LeBron had on some five digit shoes.

KATY BOWMAN: That's right's.

SHAWN STEVENSON: And he's notorious for having the cram, like full on cram. Like, if you want to have nightmares before you go to bed, look at pictures of LeBron's feet. All right. Just like, it's not a good time. And so he, he's getting into these and like that we can achieve so much having dysfunctional feet, but it usually comes at a cost. Right. And so we can be experiencing issues all the way upstream with our neck. 

KATY BOWMAN: Mm-hmm. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Because of what's going on with our feet. Hip issues, shoulder issues, you know, issues with our low back, you know, these are more common, right. Knee issues, ankle issues, and. So much of our movement capacity starts with our feet. Let's talk about, and this is one of your bestselling books, by the way, is whole body barefoot. 

KATY BOWMAN: Yeah. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: All right. And really, you've been that person for me personally, that pushed this idea into my consciousness 

KATY BOWMAN: 15 years ago before it was cool.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Come on. So come on, Miguel. It's what you do. 

KATY BOWMAN: So long ago. Well, and that's funny. That book, whole Body Barefoot, the last couple of sentences in that book was, or, or something to the tune of, you're not putting a shoe just on your foot. Your shoe is going onto your whole body. Meaning just because of the way mechanical forces work, whatever you put on your feet is what's loading the cells. A trillion bodies that your single body is made up of. And so, yeah, I mean it's absolutely, it's such a simple thing that can be done that again, affects your whole body for a high volume of time. So this is not, if we're looking at those that. Nested dolls. This sits out of exercise as far as movement is concerned.

You know, this is just you walking around a little bit here or there, the way you're standing, when you're standing in line. Things that don't count as physical activity, that don't count towards exercise, that don't count towards labor, but yet they make up our movement diet. They're a part of our movement diet. And so when you make these environmental changes that are high volume in effect, like what you put on your feet, you can get a lot of positive benefits for such a small investment. And I'm talking about money, I'm talking about time, you know, 'cause everyone's like, I don't have time to do the all the things.

It's like, well you are gonna put shoes on your feet regardless in the morning. So you can pick one that allows you the opportunity to articulate your parts better, to stack your body parts a little bit better. And then should you then go m move within those shoes, experience fuller ranges of motion through a lot of these parts for the steps that you were already taking anyway. It's not about adding more time. And I think that that's really the secret and the way that we need to break out of the exercise boxes. 'cause when you're trying to struggle to pick like the best 35, 45 or 60 minutes a day to meet all your physical needs, you're gonna come up short every time. You, you can't cram in all the different movements we need into that short bit of time.

But you can expand your thinking to changing your form, you know, changing your alignment, changing your posture, changing these micro movements. All the other non-exercise time, which is, you know, 23 other hours of the day and come up with great results. And I, and I think, you know, you're talking about athletes now. Athletes really interestingly, of course it depends on the sport, have never really had like all of us feet on their radar as a body part to train. So when you think about the capacity for how well humans have done in sport recently, we'll just talk about modern sports that we watch not training their feet.

And I've gotten to work with different, like high level athletes and professional teams who bring foot training into their training paradigm. Not always. Yes, sometimes for increasing performance, but for decreasing timeout for injury, which is a different metric. You know, you get more money out of your investment when someone is not on the bench as often due to injury, you know, or, and so like, there's a, a complex relationship there, but you can get more out of your body when you bring on all of it. And again, I like to say, you know, the feet really, really from like the lower leg, the ankle down is 25% of the number of parts in the body. It's not the mass, it's not the most massive area in the body. But as far as hinges and bones that are all doing something slightly different, the feet have, you know, this largest portion.

Just like the hands, there's a lot of little pieces here. And all it takes for anyone who's had foot injury is for like the tiniest spot in your foot. To not work or feel good and you can't do anything with your whole body. So even though those hinges are tiny, they're mighty in their impact on the body. So definitely if you have not done this yet, this is like low hanging fruit. If we're gonna go back to the apple this, we're gonna keep it on brand for, you know, a a fruit fruit podcast. This is low hanging fruit as far as general wellbeing, it's concerned. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. Apple bottom. 

KATY BOWMAN: Apple bottom. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yes. Yes. We're gonna keep this going. Now, if people are wondering like what relationship, why would pro athletes now be looking into training their feet in order to reduce injury risk? 

KATY BOWMAN: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Right. And just as a intro, as I pass this to you, our feet are picking up data in relationship to, again, how we're in contact with the ground, the impact force. And if there is any data that's misinterpreted, that's blunted, that is. Blunted is a good word that is disrupted. Mm-hmm. Because that GroundStrike is informing your knee ligaments what to do. Right. It's informing your ankles what to do. It's informing the disc in your back what to do that data. Mm-hmm.

It's a information super highway that's taking place and if we are muting a part of that information by cramming our feet into shoes that don't, pr don't, that don't allow for that data to be communicated efficiently, that's when we're opening the door for all manner of dysfunction to happen. 

KATY BOWMAN: Yeah. And I, the way I like to explain it is, you know, I'm a biomechanist, so I like to stick with like levers in this way. All of our cameras now are pretty. Well, pixelated, you know, you get a really nice image, but if you think about the, the cameras that we had 10 years ago and 20 years ago, the image that you got wasn't very refined. It was sort of blurry. There wasn't enough separate bits of information coming in, so the resolution was fuzzy.

So it's the same thing, you know, one of the reasons, well, it's hard to say reasons, but one of the effects of having all of these tiny pieces is they all articulate to give a very refined picture. If you step on something in an, in, in the book, move your DNA, which is my, my first book 15 year long time ago, I use those they're like a desktop toy of pins, and you'd push your hand in it to be able to see your hand print. Do you remember those? Or you put it against your face and you could push into it and get the outline of your face. In that book, I took a picture of my hand pushed through one of those, and then I put three pieces of tape across the back of one of those pinned pieces so that when I pushed my hand through, you couldn't actually see the outline of my hand.

What you saw was sort of hand esque with a lot of rough edges. It was more like a blocky version of a hand, more like a Minecraft. You know, if Minecraft was trying to draw a pig, it's like, here's two blocks, it's a pig. 'cause one of them is pink. So when you have all this mobility, all of these individual pieces able to relay their snapshot of the picture, then your brain can have a much more refined sense of what it's standing on and, and your hands are the same. So imagine if I put your hands into mittens, or I'm also kind of famous for duct taping my hands and then trying to type on the keyboard. You can still type, you know, it's, it's very blunt to use your words. It's not really there, I'm not able to articulate all of my fingers to do it. And what happens when you type that way is it's not just my hands, my elbows and my shoulders.

Now, in order to hit a key, I have to lift my elbows in my shoulders in this weird way where if my fingers had the mobility, I would barely have to load or displace my elbows in my shoulders. And that's really what's happening with knees and hips is you're, you're, it's more like you're having to lurch around. Even if your whole body's sort of moving forward on a smaller scale, your movement is not as refined as it can be because the, it's sort of getting blocked data instead of, you know, I guess keep naming shows now, matrix, you know, it's not, it's not the zeros and ones toggling of all this information.

It's like, here's your Minecraft pig now, whatcha gonna do with your hips on this rock? And, and, and that's why it's really nice to start. Switching shoes. And then as I like to write about not just, not only switching shoes but going up and breaking up some of that stickiness. 'cause if you wore mittens on your hands or duct taped your hands for 20 or 30 or 40 years, once you free them from the tape of the mittens, even if you put on really flexible mittens, they have such an ingrained either habit or now structure that that needs to be dealt with or else you will sometimes risk going through those lurching movements now with less support where you had sort of adapted to this lurch you movement with this block, shoe block of a shoe, you remove the block of the shoe. Sometimes for some people you, it's hard to get outta that shape. So there's some exercises and some stretches and some reprogramming to all of these parts to learn a new way of moving. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: That's such a good analogy. That reminds me of this recent study, and we'll put it up for everybody that's watching the video version, but of course, being aware that the, the toe cramming can obviously lead to bunions. And so the researchers were looking at ways that they can possibly help to reverse the bunions by putting these individuals into wide toe box shoes. Yep. Right. And so they had a study group to put on the wide toe box shoes and to wear those habitually. And there was another group that also did toe spreading as well. The group that simply went from always cramming their. Toes together, and they had bunions and they put them into wide toe box shoes. There was no improvement. Their foot had been trained to be a certain way. But having the toe spread as well helped to reorient and actually dramatically reduced the bunion.

And it was like, it was quite profound actually, the results that they got by doing that. And just makes sense, just mechanically being able to open up that big toe again. And so again, it's not just about like you do suddenly do this one practice, I'm freeing myself. Right. I'm, I'm, I'm going barefoot. You might have to actually train your feet to get back online again. 

KATY BOWMAN: Yeah. If you've ever been in a cast, you know, you take that cast off and things have atrophied and tendons have shortened and we get physical therapy for these things. And essentially that's what we're doing when we switch shoes. Now it all depends on, you know, how active you were overall. How, what type of shoes you wear because, you know, there's not just minimal shoes and non minimal shoes. Minimal shoes are really a collection of features and so are non minimal shoes. So you could, if you wore really, really narrow shoes and you happen to have really, really wide feet and you've been really adapted to those and you also did a lot of walking, you, you could have more ingrained habits.

So again, I just like to cheerlead for making sure that you look at the whole pie. Although, you know, sometimes just dropping into a a zero drop shoe is enough to really take the load off some areas. So for some people the transformation's immediate, depending on the variable, you're looking at it. And sometimes it's not just for some people, for some variables they take a little bit more manipulation.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, that's great. I'm a big fan of like just putting in dosing. And you are too, obviously. Yeah. Like dosing in certain things. Intentionally. So what I started to do, this was about a year and a half ago now was to, and it's stacking as well, which I love being able to do. 'cause again, it's just like, there's so many things to do. What if I stack these things together, which is to put on my pva five digit, five finger shoes and walk. 

KATY BOWMAN: Yeah. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Right. And so I'm stacking that thing. I'm already walking so I could throw these on when I'm doing that thing. That doesn't mean that I'm gonna, I gotta put 'em on to go to the studio, to go to the gym. Right. To go out on a date, whatever it is. But I'm stacking this thing together to get, for me, it was really like rehab prehab. Right. And so just being able to spend time. But over time, I was WI started wearing them more and more and really just wearing them around the house. Right. Because I'm around the house anyways.

You know, but I'm training my, my feet again to just all this data. And also now, and I, I was just looking at this the other day, like, it, it's really surprising to see me versus the other people in my house being able to like indi individually move my toes. Right. Mm-hmm. It's just like this date, like it's connected. It's al it's been connected, but we kind of, again, we blunt that data and so yeah. Shout out to Peluvas. And by the way, you, you like Peluvas, right? I love 

KATY BOWMAN: Peluvas. Yeah. They really feel the, feel the niche in minimal toe articulation, but with a little extra cushioning for athletic activities. And, and that was something that the market was missing. So I definitely liked them for, I mean, I like all shoes for different activities, but when I'm doing something that's a little athletic, that's got some impact, that's what I'll reach for. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yep. You just said it perfectly because I have videos of myself from like 15 years ago at the gym wearing the early iterations of other five brands. And just like having so little cushioning on the bottom. And so, you know, I, I was, I was early in the game, but I just really kind of strayed away from that. Mm-hmm. Like, it just, I don't know, it just didn't feel good to me. It didn't feel. Durable. Right. But with the Peluvas, it was pretty instant, and I was resistant because, you know, just the cool factor as well.

KATY BOWMAN: That’s right. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: But I was, I, I was walking by, I was leaving the park, and so I was at the park by my house and just, you know, I was up there doing some road flow, just walking around, getting some sun, and I was leaving, and it was a group of young people, all right. They were probably, you know, early twenties, whatever, very, you could see the vibes. They're very vibey. They got the fashion, you know, they all got, you know, they got Jordans on, and the one who was a clear leader, or at least the coolest one I walked by, you know, I had my Peluvas on. He was like, yo, those some nice shoes, man. 

KATY BOWMAN: Mm. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Right. 

KATY BOWMAN: Did you just be like, thank you little blush. Thank you. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: I was like, thanks, bro. Yeah. You know, but yeah, I could've, I could've been like, oh, oh gosh, you know, but just like for somebody in the, it looked like, looked like they were about to go and hoop or something, but just to acknowledge like mm-hmm. We can make this stuff cool, we can make this normal. Right? And I think that's what it, what, what it was in that moment is like that. That just looks normal. It looks, it looks like something that's good for me too. Mm-hmm. Right? And so, by the way, so everybody who's listening, if you go to pva.com/model, you can actually get 15% off. Alright? That's an exclusive. You gotta use the code model at checkout. Alright? So peluva.com/model, that's P-E-L-U-V a.com/model.

Use the code model for 15% off. Huge part of my life, my family's lives. My wife's got these, the little, they got the little cute red ones. I like the mesh. There's got these guys new sport mesh, but then they've got some that like Mark wears for like when he's doing business meetings, you know, like that's his thinking of course is like elevating the brand. So this goes outside, just working out, right? So there's different shoes for different purposes. They just launched golf and they're golf shoes, lowkey. They look fire, they look really, really good. But I've yet to test those out, so maybe you could test those out before me. So again, peluva.com/model. Use the code model at checkout for 15% off. Back to you Katy. 

KATY BOWMAN: Great. Yeah, that's great. My, I just got a text from my 21-year-old niece, you know, and she's living in some college town and she was like, these shoes, these five toed shoes are, are in fashion now. She's like, you guys were doing these like 15 years ago and now everyone's wearing them. You're trendsetters. So I accept, I accept. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: As you should, as you should. 

KATY BOWMAN: We, you know, like it's, it's nice to, it's nice to see the young and this, I would say that there's definitely a surge of wellness mindedness in the, this younger generation. Like really trying to like, do things that are good for them in some way, probably because, you know, people are always bagging on them about all the other non, like, how much time are you on your phone? You know, and all this stuff. But I think that there's a lot of them too that are trying to be, well, you know, in maybe, maybe if there's a TikTok culture of wellness going out there or something. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: There is. You just said it, some of these creators. Right. And that's one of the things that I would watch with my youngest son, you know, like he wa he's got these certain YouTubers that he likes. Obviously Mr. Beast is the guy out here. Then there's Jesser, who's like basketball related. So we watch that stuff together. But then there's some guys who are really about like fitness and health. 

KATY BOWMAN: Mm-hmm. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And nutrition. And so, and a lot of these guys collab with each other. And so that's how he finds out about 'em. And also Nick DiGiovanni is another one that he loves who's all about cooking. And so now like that got him interested in making food.

KATY BOWMAN: That's right.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Right. and so it's, it's the, it's this creator generation, but the big thing is what are you plugging yourself into? Mm-hmm. Right. And we all, even as adults, you know, we are, we're just, we're big adult babies, right?

KATY BOWMAN: That's right.

SHAWN STEVENSON:  So we have this same programming. We can be intentional about what we're plugging ourselves into. And so I want to ask you are, are there any other, obviously spending some more time barefoot, yes. We can utilize some five digit shoes. But are there anything, are there any other things for us to do as far as like rehabilitating our feet, helping to get that information? Super highway, a little bit healthier, a little bit more online? 

KATY BOWMAN: I like real simple stretches for the feet that aren't necessarily. Separate exercises. It might be just the way, like if you're gonna come in after an exercise session, or maybe it's just after a long work day and you take your shoes off and you're gonna watch Netflix or just zone out for a little bit before you plop down in the chair, get down on the ground and sit on folded feet, just tuck your toes under.

And really so the de to describe it would be if you tucked your feet underneath you and sat all the way down with your butt on your heels. So your knees are folded all the way, and if your knees don't bend all the way, you can put something underneath your hips to, to lift you. But the point is, your toes are now really pointed and your ankles are what we call plantar flex. So it's like, you know, if you really pointed your toe how the ankle and the shin sort of make a straight 180 degree line, you're doing that with your body weight sitting on top of it. And what that's gonna do is just stretch everything out. You, you've been up on your feet, they've been at 90 degrees for a lot of the day.

You are gonna take the time to, it's not just your feet, but it's your feet. Lower leg and upper, and your quadriceps a little bit, a little stretch, and then tuck your toes under and try to sit like that for a little bit as well. And I'm talking about give yourself 22 second or 32 second c periods of time to sit like that. And it just helps you without needing to learn a big exercise regime. It helps you make sure that this area of your body doesn't get really stiff. 'cause you know, you're talking about this information highway and mobility is a big part of a smoother signal. You know, not such a clumpy signal. So you're going to just. In that easy way to varying through those couple of different sitting positions, give your toes a little bit of attention within just your entertainment time. You know, it doesn't have to be something that you do at a gym, it could just be inside your house. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: I love that. Getting that input when you're doing something you're gonna do anyways. What I tend to do, and I of course like this is the thing about if you're sitting on the ground, which you were the first person to illuminate my awareness of sitting on the ground all those years ago, and you know, of course Kelly starred and, and Juliet helping to like put more into the now 90% of the time, that's where I'm sitting and your body's gonna give you feedback about when you need to move around, right.

It really helps you to get more movement inputs in. And so one of the common movements that I'll find myself in or kind of seated positions is. Instead of being on both knees, kind of sitting on the back of my ankles. I'll have one behind me. And the other one up by my chest. Right. And so I'm sitting on the back of one of my legs and the other one is at my chest. And maybe we can put this up for everybody to see afterwards, but essentially that allows me to like, move around on that front leg and kind of like stretch around like the calf, the Achilles as well, while the other leg is getting that other input from the front of the leg, getting that stretch Right. And just get those movement inputs. And it just, I, I find it very comfortable and very pleasant to sit in that position. 

KATY BOWMAN: Yeah. And it's just, you know, you're, you're talking about hanging out with your kid and watching YouTube, like, just take that down to the floor. This does not need to involve any extra time, but the idea of, you know, taking those moments, maybe you're reading, you're playing a game with your family, or you're just chilling out and scrolling together or whatever, move it down to the floor level.

Then recognize that, you know, you're in a relationship with your body and your body's asking you to move a lot more, and you're not really paying attention to the signals. We're not necessarily refined to understand what or to interpret what asks for movement. Feel like, you know, if your kid wants your attention, they have words that they use that you've tuned into, but your body has those and we're not really as tuned into them. So once you get down there, you know, let yourself fidget. You know, fidgeting is a sign that you need to move around a little bit. So just roll around on the ground, try one leg. If, if you're like, I can't get in this position because of my knee, then it doesn't mean that you don't need to get on the ground.

It means that you need to find a different position on the ground that you can adapt to. So just keep exploring and guess what? That exploring is itself. Movement, even if you don't land anywhere, the fact that you are down there moving around. That's the, that's movement too. You know, you're not trying to get anywhere, you're just actually trying to stay in motion.

SHAWN STEVENSON: You said it. Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about, because obviously, especially in our culture, movement can change dramatically. Throughout the different stages of our lives. Right? The average kid will just say, you know, two to 10, 10, 2 to eight, they're getting so many diverse inputs. It is just mind boggling, right? As far as movement is concerned. And then as more desk sitting, more school time, more all the things, more video games. And then from there we just set into this decline. Mm-hmm. Of the movement inputs that we're giving ourselves to the degree you just mentioned, the vestibular system. Just being like, people having to get therapy for that. Because they can't even turn around quick. If somebody calls them like, what? Who? And then they dizzy.

KATY BOWMAN: And they fall over. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Right? Apple, bottom. Right. So they're just, nevermind. So with this being said, this is something for us to be aware of and start to remind our bodies. And I think, and so my question is this, can you talk about movement through the different stages of our lives? And also hopefully you can remind us that, for me, I think there's a big use it or lose it factor here. Mm-hmm. You know? And being able to, to the best of our ability, like you already said, find a spot. It doesn't, if it's not comfortable, find a spot, something similar, something adjacent to getting ourselves into these movement patterns, these positions that would be more childlike.

And the unfortunate thing is that in our culture is childlike to sit on the floor. Yeah. Right? Right. For cultures all over the world, throughout our evolution, that was just normal. 

KATY BOWMAN: Mm-hmm. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: All right. But now we got the Lazy Boy and they telling you the name, they named it Lazy Boy. 

KATY BOWMAN: And no one even flinched. They're like, yes, give me a lazy boy. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Gimme that. I need that. So please talk about movement throughout these different stages of our lives. 

KATY BOWMAN: Well, and I'll start with in, in our society right now, the idea is, you know. Humans are born, they're really hyper, they need a lot of movement. And then it sort of tempers down. And then by the time you get, you know, 50 or 60 and older, you no longer can move 'cause you're too old now to move. And that's just biology. But if you look at hunter-gatherer populations, what you'll see is kids move a ton. But that's really as a training and preparation for how much is needed to be moved as a, I'll just say responsible.

The responsibilities, whether it's, it's, you know, whether it's job or attending or you know, attending children, it's this idea that you're producing, you're producing something. We produce a lot of documents and things now, but there's still a lot of physical things that need to be produced. And in the hunter gatherer tribes, you're very active in middle, middle age, or outside of juvenile period.

The most active are really in hunter populations. Postmenopausal women, right? So like this idea of, it's supposed to be this decline, it's like really, once you're an elder, you're really, really active. Which really goes against the way our society looks right now where it's almost an opposite graph, opposite on the graph. Now, the thing that's really, so, like I, I'll always go back to kids. We are setting our adult bodies during the juvenile period of our, of our lives. So, you know, things like bone density, it can never get any higher than how you set the cap of your bank account. So you want children to be very robust, moving a ton because that's almost like your capacity going forward is set by that period of time.

When you get into middle age, I think people tend to. Push. Really, they're pushing hard in their lives in general, right? This is the time where you're probably most productive at work, building a family building. You're just in a building period of life. So we see that decline go off because so many of our activities no longer have that aspect of movement any longer. So during middle age, this is when I would really work on trying to bring back some labor into your life. You know, like if you're like, oh, should I outsource this labor or should I do it? It's like, no, this is actually a good time to do it because you are actually in this builder type of life. So your mind's going, but your body isn't having to go as hard to keep up for many of us.

So it's nice to balance out the mental heft that we lift every day, the informational weights that we lift every day with some straight up just physical activity. So like rake those leaves, stack that wood clean, vigorously. Volunteer to set stuff up, even though you feel like you don't have the time. If it gives you a chance to be with other people or participating in these other structures, look at it as a movement opportunity. Look at it as a training session where you get to also tick off some other boxes that are of service to some other aspects of your life. Once you get into like that older adult period of time, societally, we, we definitely feel this decline of you're not hitting the same, you're doing oftentimes the same thing that you were doing.

You know, as you begin to age, you're like, I've always done it. This has always been my routine. This has always been the volume that's kept me primed. The thing to know is as we get older, we get less sensitive to, I'll just say mechanical input. So when you're a teenager you do a workout and just, you know, like, that's it.

It you're just. SW from that little bit of input because you get a one input to one response. It's like a hundred percent goes across. But as you get older, you put that same a hundred percent in and the effort is the same. The exercise volume is the same, but the cells are different. So they do not receive that full 100%. You put a hundred percent in, you get 80% out, as in terms of adaptation to your physical, to your cells, we'll say. And that continues as you get older. So when we get older, as we get older, you have to work more harder and more volume to be able to maintain where you were. So this is why it's really nice to be able to broaden.

Your perception of what exercise is, because if you're containing to that one hour, like how do you get more of that hour? Like you could just go harder or faster and you get a little bit more susceptible to injury as you get older. So sometimes going harder or faster isn't necessarily the best solution you need to go. Maybe broader volume more times throughout the day, more times throughout the week. And if all of your eggs are in the exercise basket, it's really hard to balance other activities that are in your life. 'cause you still have this, you have whatever you built in the middle age, right? Whether it's a family, whether it's a business, or whether it's a community, a robust community. So finding ways that keep us vigorously active as we get older in the context of checking other boxes in our life beyond just physical wellbeing will actually improve our physical wellbeing. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: That part right there. That part. That's, it's, it, it, it, it's, so some, some of the times when you talk and you say certain things, it's just like, that's so obvious, but I just never bring it to the front of my mind. And so, I'm so grateful for you because you've got this incredible gift and ability to be able to communicate these things to make us think differently about our position. That's another one of your great books, by the way. Mm-hmm. But to think differently about our movement and our association with our environment, changes to our environment can make dramatic changes on our physiology, you know, and so just being mindful of these different pieces and the different.

Incredible parts of ourselves and how we fit together. And one of the big takeaways today is of the many, number one, apples. All right? But you know, number two is understanding that, and this was just from the very beginning, that all the different apple parts is not the same as the apple, right? And so we can isolate, we could try to mimic and train in all this stuff. We can use vr. 

KATY BOWMAN: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: We can do that. But we've gotta understand there, it's not, it's not like the doing the real thing, right? And that's the real things is the thing. And not to say that the VR thing isn't something that we're gonna adapt and mutate and become X-Men to and have secret powers and all that kind of stuff, right? 

KATY BOWMAN: Who knows where we're going. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Who knows. But as of now, we know that we are going to be deficient in all kinds of. Those parts that make up the whole experience of picking that apple if we're not picking the damn apple. All right. So, let's make this a mandate to be more proactive in being more human than we've ever been. That is my advocation, that is my big overarching message moving forward for the time being, because AI is here, heavy AI is li right now to this recording. Hi ai. AI is listening and learning. 

KATY BOWMAN: And taking notes. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And taking notes. And your best opportunity since AI's gonna be doing stuff for you is to use that time being more human.Do not allow that time to get filled with more consumption. 

KATY BOWMAN: Right. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Right. And so I know that you've got a cake. To take care of. Mm-hmm. And you've been so gracious with your time and if people only knew, just you stepping up for me and having my back and you know, and just again, adding so much value for all of us is just really special. And I appreciate you. 

KATY BOWMAN: I appreciate you, you such good work in the world. I know everyone listening loves you. Loves you. I love you too.  

SHAWN STEVENSON: Thank you. I love you back. Can you let everybody know where they can follow you? 6 7.  

KATY BOWMAN: 6, 7. You can follow me nutritious movement.com. My podcast is Move your DNA and a new substack coming out Movement colored glasses where I'm talking about movement outside of exercise with these broader concepts of Yeah. Using movement to tap into these aspects of humanity that enrich our lives. Physically and beyond. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Love it. Already. Be on the lookout for that new Substack coming, the one and only. Katy Bowman, thank you so much for tuning into this episode today. I hope that you got a lot of value out of this. My question for you is, how are you going to move differently today? What new movement input are you going to give yourself to add to that overall nutritious movement menu? All right, because again, knowledge is not power. Knowledge, applied is power. So take something from today, add it in, whether it is getting yourself some palus and starting to rehabilitate those amazing feet of yours, whether this is making the decision to spend more time on the ground and being able to again, explore.

I love that she used that word. Explore different positions, and it's so much easier to do when you're sitting on the ground versus. A quote, lazy boy. Alright. Or are you inspired? Like I was to find a local apple orchard or a place to go and pick some fruit, to gather some food, take the family on an adventure and go and pick something off the tree or the bush, harvest something ourselves and have that whole movement rich experience, and also have the benefit of some deliciousness thereafter. So many great tips and insights. This was so rich and I'm so grateful to Katy. If you appreciated Katy as well, please share your voice with her. Take a screenshot of this episode and share it on Instagram. She's at nutritious movement on Instagram. I'm at Sean model on Instagram, so tag me as well. I know that she would love to see the love.

We got some epic masterclasses and world-class guests coming your way very, very soon. So make sure to stay tuned. Take care, have an amazing day, and I'll talk with you soon. And for more after the show, make sure to head over to the model health show.com. That's where you can find all of the show notes. You can find transcriptions videos for each episode. And if you've got a comment, you can leave me a comment there as well. And please make sure to head over to iTunes and leave us a rating to let everybody know that the show is awesome and I appreciate that so much and take care. I promise, to keep giving you more powerful and empowering great content to help you transform your life. Thanks for tuning in.