My Journey into Natural Movement

The other day I was looking up an old email, I was trying to get the date of something, and as a result, I ended up pulling up this great series of emails. One was to Katy Bowman, who's the head of Nutritious Movement, and it was right when I learned about her program and was about to join, The Restorative Exercise Specialist Program, which is unfortunately now closed. But it was a lovely email telling her how her work has changed my life, how I need to figure out how to integrate it into my Pilates teaching, and how it was the paradigm shift I needed.

Have you ever read or listened to Katy Bowman's podcast “Move Your DNA?” At the end of the year, she tends to do a year and recap, and she has a list of questions that I think are pretty good. It's kind of New Year's resolution-y, but not really. So anyways, I found my answers from 2015-2016, when I started all of this natural movement.

Continuing Education Paradigm Shift

Back in 2015, I needed to do some continuing education like every good Pilates instructor needs to do every two years, and my friend Jeremy encouraged me to take a workshop at Pilates On Tour, which is the Balanced Body Nationwide Workshop program. He said, “Come take Phillip Beach’s workshop!” I'm like, “Cool, who's that?” He said, “I don't know. It's just this guy. I think he's going to be good.” I was like, “Cool. I will take that,” because I trust everything Jeremy says.

It was the pre-conference out in Burr Ridge, and we were in a big conference room with no chairs, like a hotel conference room. Everybody's sitting on the floor. I walk in and find this ridiculous. I'm not sitting on the floor the entire time. So I grab a chair, put it in the room, and sit on it. If you know anything about Philip Beach, his whole mission is furniture-free, archetypal postures, taking traditional Chinese medicine meridian points and applying them to our body from an embryologic standpoint.

So here I am, sitting on this chair, and everybody else sits on the floor. I finally begin to question what they are doing sitting on the floor. This is ridiculous! I’m spending good money on this workshop! And low and behold, he unveils why we need to be sitting on the floor more. So I casually slide myself onto the ground, put my arm on the chair, and then put my writing pad on the chair, and I'm incredibly embarrassed. It's over-the-top embarrassing! So what was so poignant? What did he talk about?

Archetypal postures. It's kind of like what it sounds like. It's something that our ancestors did if you can think about our ancestors, who didn't live in what we think of as houses today. How did they move about their life? What postures did they assume on a very regular basis? A lot of floor sitting, crawling, climbing, running a little, walking a ton, carrying heavy things. In learning that, he laid out all the different archetypal postures that are the potential of. He had us practice them, and it was humbling. There were certain things I couldn't do, and here I had been teaching Pilates and Gyrotonic for 15 years! And there were some of these like fundamental movements, and I couldn't do them. It was humbling, and I was shocked.

Like-Minded Teachers

So fast forward, I'm at lunch with an excellent friend named Lane and asked, “How do you like the workshop?” She said, “It's great. Isn't he a lot like Katy Bowman?” And I asked, “Who's that?” And she said, “Oh, this woman out in Seattle.” And I was like, “Cool. I never heard of her.” So I get on my phone and Google Katy Bowman. I quickly learn that she has a blog and website, but it's lunchtime, and I don't have much time to look at it. But somebody else in this world is doing the same stuff.

Never Stop Learning

I completed Phillip Beach’s workshop, and my mind was blown. I realize I’m missing many of these ingredients and elements in my daily life, let alone my movement practice. I decided I was going to start practicing these things. I created little flows and exercise sequences and started giving them to clients.

The other thing Philip Beach taught me was that he trains Olympians out in New Zealand. He's huge into minimal footwear, barefoot, all that stuff that comes with the Natural Movement world, and I've talked about that in the past. He showed us his rock mats, and I immediately went home and made them, and then I brought them to the studio, and then I started training clients doing just some simple arm work on the end of the Cadillac standing on these rock mats. Clients pull them out, and they stand on them. I made a set for my standing work desk and always stand on them. I have them in my house, and I want to stand on this challenging rocky terrain because there's no other opportunity for me to do that in my daily life. I think it promotes foot health and balance because it's getting in between those little bones in my foot that are hard to get on flat and level surfaces, which is what we live on.

Nutritious Movement

So fast forward, I entered Katy Bowman's program, and one of the books we must read is her book “Move Your DNA.” Phillip Beach writes the forward, so my life can come full circle. But anyways, he is an important presence in the Natural World community. But we don't have great access to him because he’s in New Zealand, which is a little hard to get to.

Then when I learned about Katy Bowman, her programs, blogs, free content, and YouTube were so abundant that I thought there was a catch. Because I always pay and have paid for workshop content until now, and for the first time, I was going through an online program, and so much of the information was free. It was amazing and speaks volumes about her character and the accessibility that she wants people to learn her information. Her books are not that expensive. You can get them at your local library.

Philip Beach was my gateway to Natural Movement. If you want to learn about him, he does have a book out there. It's a thick read geared toward the movement professional. Philip Beach's work crosses over if you've ever done acupuncture, traditional Chinese medicine, or anatomy trains.

When you repeatedly hear the same information, and it's coming from all these different sources, I consider them a movement truth. It’s pretty awesome!