Book review: move your dna
I have listened to and loved Katy Bowman’s podcast of the same name almost since its inception (my 2015 start was a year in for Katy!). I was so excited for this book and her accompanying personality. And it did not disappoint. I mean, who else uses photos of fallen carved pumpkins with their innards spilling out to explain pelvic floor integrity (or lack thereof)? Love her!
Move Your DNA has all the humor and personality I love about Katy’s online work. She knows how to explain complicated topics in an entertaining way that demonstrates her authority and expresses the deeper and often uncharted currents below the mainstream. In a nutshell, Katy shows us that the genetic expression of our bodies is highly correlated with our frequency of physical movement and the type of movements we engage in each day: the shape of our bodies (external bodies and internal bodies) is defined by the way we move. She contends that overreliance on the structures and constraints that we introduced with good intentions (i.e. chairs in corporate offices, couches, soft mattresses, even the shoes we wear on our feet) are doing us harm by causing our bodies to function less effectively. In turn, this can lead to disease, malaise, early death, and a general lack of vibrancy.
Our current exercise paradigm cannot come close to restoring the tissues already adapted to the way we have been using our habitiat. In the same way supplements should not be the bulk of your diet, exercise should not be the bulk of your movement profile. Rather, Katy recommends we rethink our idea of movement and consider it as nutritive. Our tendency is to ask, “How much movement do I need?” We want a bare minimum, a daily requirement. Katy’s book shifts the paradigm and asks the question, “How can we move more and move better in order to feel our best?”
Katy hope to plant seeds for further movement exploration and a renewed assessment of our own presuppositions. Katy says it best:
“It is also my hope that you see how you are not so different from the other animals and plants that coexist alonside of you. You are just as complex and adaptable, just as entwined with and affected by your environment, and just as capable of magical transformation.”
Move Your DNA the paradigm shifter that changed my ideas about health and fitness, in the order, than that what my industry had previously instilled in me. It acknowledges the complexity of modern movement habits while also providing helpful ways to improve and grow. We as humans will be healthier and more vibrant if we move more frequently and if our physical movements become more natural. Our everyday physical movements should become more diversified and resemble the way that our ancestors moved, for through movement, we have the power to move and change our DNA.
