Summary: Download this audio by clicking HERE. My guest this week is Katy Bowman of Aligned and Well and Restorative Exercise. Katy is a Biomechanist and her blog is a wealth of helpful information for anyone who wants to prevent and reverse diseases caused by habits of modern life. Our focus for this show: Habits and daily disciplines to prevent aches and pains in pregnancy and prepare for an easier labor. Katy answers my questions about belly bands for postpartum use, proper squatting form, the skinny on sucking in your stomach and getting back into shape postpartum, pelvic floor issues and more. Listen by clicking on the grey arrow below. (A transcript of this interview appears below if you would rather read. It’s a work in progress, it was unfinished by a transcriptionist I hired so I’m doing it myself. I’ll be adding to it throughout the week.) Carrie : We are joined this week by Katie from alignedandwell.com. Good morning Katie. Katy : Good morning. Carrie : I am so excited to be talking to you. I am a huge fan of your philosophies and blog. I have three of your exercise DVDs and have some questions. Katy : Yes. Go for it Carrie : It is funny how sometimes you just happen upon something on the internet and don’t really know how you got there. You follow that little rabbit hole… I don’t remember how I found out about your website, but when I did I just started digging in and reading archives and searching various things and thought, “oh my Gosh this is really awesome. Makes a lot of sense.” So please tell us about yourself and your background and what you are all about. Katy : Well, I am a Biomechanist. Biomechanics is the science, the physics of Biology, I guess it is the easiest way to say it. My specialty is applying the field of biomechanics to injury and disease. And I have always been most interested in where disease comes from… the mechanisms … the actual cause. I don’t think there is a lot of work being done to try to find the cause as much as there is a lot of work done to take care of the problem. An engineer will usually figure out what the problem is before trying to find the solution. It is a lot easier to reverse engineer something than it is to kind of stab in the dark to make a solution. So I have always that natural interest, but I have always come from a platform regarding the human from its original state, not the modern human because the modern human which is you know, not just the human living in the 21st or 22nd Century, but really the human as it is lived since humans were. So your earliest humans before there were cars and before there was abundant food, even agriculture. That population had all the same equipment. We have all the same equipment, but the habits are different. So I have always kind of investigated how do the habits of modern living contribute to a set of diseases that we call affluent ailments. Affluent ailments are all the stuff that you will likely have and that your parents have and that your friends have. And they are very normal they become very common within our population, but it is always important to maintain the prospective of they are still diseases and injuries based on the way we live. They’re not genetic issues and they are certainly preventable if you know enough information and you know, can change the large components of the way you live. And you don’t have to give up your house and give up your food, but for example just not sitting as much in chairs makes a big difference. And then I would say that my focus has really become the pelvis. Pelvic floor disorder, female pelvic floor disorder was my specialty in graduate school so I did my research and my thesis on. So probably how you stumbled onto the blog was through something related to pregnancy or pelvic floor disorder because even though I do the whole body it seems like that where most people are coming from. They are coming to fix[...]
