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Recap: Movement Ecology During Pregnancy with Katy Bowman

I had the pleasure of attending another movement retreat with Katy Bowman this past weekend (previous one was last year; here’s a recap of that experience). This program was focused specifically on pregnancy, called Movement Ecology During Pregnancy.

I was lucky to get in; apparently there was a 200 person waiting list for this workshop! Most of us in attendance were in some way connected with the pregnancy/birth/postpartum space. I was the only dietitian in attendance, but there were a number of movement professionals (women’s health PTs, a women’s health chiropractor, yoga teachers, Pilates teachers, body workers, etc.), doulas, midwives, lactation consultants, and many more. It was also cool to connect with people who knew my books as well (and hear all the positive outcomes from using real food with their clients!).

If you’re not familiar with Katy’s work, she is a biomechanist who takes a unique perspective on how our culture and sedentary lifestyle shape our bodies and our relationship with movement as a whole. Like so many others, I’ve followed her work for years and always appreciate the ancestral reframe on how our modern lifestyles have removed us from much of the physical labor that the human body is accustomed to (and needs) to function as intended.

For a better understanding of her work and why she’s such a thought leader in the movement world, visit her website, listen to her podcast (Move Your DNA), and read one of her many books.

Below are some notes I took during the workshop. I didn’t have time to write everything down—the goal was to absorb and learn through movement, after all (and writing while on our Sunday walk or working at the lavender farm wasn’t exactly feasible!)—but I did want to share some key takeaways.

Here are a few takeaways from Movement Ecology During Pregnancy with Katy Bowman.

“It’s complicated, it depends…”

First and foremost, before answering any question on movement and pregnancy, we have to start with “It depends, it’s complicated.” There is no one-size-fits-all. What your body can/can’t do during pregnancy has more to do with your pre-pregnancy movement habits/patterns/practices than it does a physiological change “caused” by the state of being pregnant. (<– This really got me thinking because while there are notable changes in pregnancy, our bodies are designed to adapt to it if we give it the right nourishment, both food and movement. How much are these changes pathologized (and is that fair/valid)? How much can they be mitigated by better lifestyle habits leading up to pregnancy and throughout pregnancy?)

(Sidenote #2: We didn’t discuss this directly, since we were focused on the movement side of things, but I was also wondering how much lack of good nutrients, especially glycine, plays into so many of the maladaptions to the state of pregnancy that so many women encounter in modern life. Yes our connective tissues are designed to adapt, but even with attention to alignment, if your body is not getting adequate glycine (and proline) for collagen production and turnover, of course your body is going to favor sending glycine to your baby. As I share in Real Food for Pregnancy, the uterus contains 800% more collagen by the end of pregnancy (not to mention how much is needed for baby’s skin, bones, and connective tissues)! Your body has to make it from something. Certainly it’ll borrow from “non-essential” places like your own ligaments rather than risk baby becoming depleted.)

Context

There are many different perspectives on pregnancy exercise and the type of information included (or left out) in various programs/guidelines depends on the perspective of the program/governing body who created them.

  • Is it to maintain fitness in pregnancy (ambiguous, by the way, since fitness is an inherently hard-to-define term/measure)?
  • Is it to help manage/prevent symptoms commonly associated with pregnancy? (such as diastasis recti or pubic symphysis dysfunction)
  • Is is to specifically attempt to optimize birth and delivery?

One is not more correct than the other, it just affects the type of information and quality of information given.

Sedentary culture is an outlier

At this time in human history, we’re not experiencing pregnancy in the same way as our ancestors. We’re experiencing pregnancy in a sedentary culture. All modern data on pregnancy exercise is in the context of this culture (who spends most of their time in chairs). Sitting as much as we do is an outlier in human pregnancy as a whole and our bodies adapt to this (lack of) movement. (<– This also really got me thinking about research on pregnancy exercise/movement and prenatal nutrition. So, so, so many potential holes. This is why it is wise to consider how traditional cultures ate and moved and slept and birthed and on and on. Of course, science has its place and modern research adds to our understanding of these many topics; it’s just inherently imperfect.)

Built-in training program

Pregnancy, by default, is a progressive training program where your body gradually puts on more and more mass. If you move more, you allow your body (muscles, connective tissue, etc.) to adapt to increasing load. Changing position often and letting more of your body feel the increasing weight IS your training program. (<– Our bodies are smart!)

Duration & intensity

We need to get away from the idea that you can fit your movement into a short period of time (i.e. a 60 min class/training session at the gym). We’re demanding tissues that are mostly sedentary for the rest of the day to adapt to high load + intensity, which in the context of not enough long duration, low intensity movement, our bodies don’t always adapt to well. Small exercises practiced 1000x per day, like standing with better alignment matter, big time. (And, by the way, standing with better alignment generally means with feet parallel and weight evenly distributed between them, hips back, ribs down, and back of your head lifted/chin nodded. If you practice this, you’ll find muscles start to automatically fire to keep you upright, like your abdominal muscles.)

Alignment & misalignment

Misalignment of your bones and relying on your skeleton and connective tissue to hold you (rather than your muscles) is a major factor in many pregnancy discomforts (like SPD, diastasis recti, pelvic floor dysfunction, low back pain, etc.). We shouldn’t blame pregnancy for this, rather pregnancy just reveals the “weak links” in our poor posture and movement habits as a whole with increasing mass and a shift in our center of gravity.

Diet culture

Many people view exercise as an atonement for overeating. We need to ditch this entirely.

Fetal-led movement

Moving your body during pregnancy allows your baby to move more as well. All those kicks you feel is the baby literally exercising in utero or “fetal led movement” (it’s technically resistance training as they kick against the uterus).

Squats

Yes, they are great for your body for many reasons (core strength, balance, hip mobility, pelvic floor health, all of which are helpful for birth prep). There isn’t a right or wrong way to squat, just different ways to do it based on your goals, such as working specific muscle groups.

Birth positioning

Birth is a natural phenomenon, but so is robust movement. Our sedentary culture is making this natural phenomenon more difficult if a woman doesn’t have the requisite strength, mobility, and stamina to have the option to choose the best position for her birth to progress.

Carrying in arms

One of the best movements to focus your attention on during pregnancy is carrying loads and doing so with awareness of your posture. Once you have your baby, you’re now responsible for carrying around that extra weight. Know how to pick up loads, manage intraabdominal pressure, work with your pelvic floor, and with an awareness of your back and your stance. (<— This should not be ignored. It’s biologically expected that babies want to be held close and held often. Carrying in arms versus always relying on a baby carrier naturally means you adjust your positioning often and avoid other issues/muscle fatigue/dysfunction. For me personally, I heard Katy talk about this in a podcast episode when my son was still pretty small. I found that carrying in arms alleviated a lot of pressure on my pelvic floor and low back pain that would happen when using a baby carrier for too long. I used a carrier when necessary, like when I needed 2 arms to cook dinner, but otherwise shifted to in-arms carrying the majority of the time and it made a huge difference in my postpartum recovery.)

Breathing

If you stop breathing during an exercise, it can be a sign that the exercise is at too great of a load and you’re relying on valsalva to stabilize. By not breathing, you’re not in alignment. You don’t have the strength to execute. Reassess the “why” behind the movement.

Final thoughts

My major takeaway from the weekend is that we probably shouldn’t view pregnancy movement any different than non-pregnancy movement.

All the same alignment exercises and considerations about volume/duration/intensity apply preconception, during pregnancy, and after pregnancy. Move your body more, period, regardless of your stage of life. (Of course, this means listening to your body and scaling up/down and adjusting your movements to fit your stage of life, too!)

If you have a chance to attend any of Katy’s live events, I highly encourage you to sign up (no I’m not an affiliate or in any way tied to her programs; they’re just good!). As far as I know, the plan is to host this same even in Summer/Fall of 2019, so keep an eye on her event schedule. If that’s not a possibility, her podcast, books, and blog are fantastic as well.

I focused this post on the broader implications of pregnancy movement, but it kind of leaves out all the fun stuff we did all weekend, which included a 7 mile walk along the Olympic Discovery Trail (and learning the best way to carry a friend who gets hurt in the backcountry), harvesting lavender and distilling lavender essential oil and hydrosol at an organic lavender farm, and many lovely real food meals spent with newfound friends/colleagues.

Below are some photos from the Movement Ecology During Pregnancy weekend.

Vary Your Carry Movement Ecology During Pregnancy
Katy Bowman demonstrating “vary your carry” by carrying a backpack in arms without using the straps. When traversing long distances, shift positions of your load, so you don’t fatigue and to “move more of you.”
Carrying injured person backcountry Movement Ecology Pregnancy
And in case you’re ever in the back country and someone breaks an ankle, here’s a good way to carry them out.
Lavender field Sequim Movement Ecology Pregnancy
The smell was phenomenal!
Harvesting lavender Movement Ecology Pregnancy
Harvesting lavender to distill lavender essential oil. Not only are we helping this family farm with necessary labor, but we can practice squatting, alignment, varying our stance in the process.
Distilling lavender essential oil Movement Ecology Pregnancy
The massive pile of lavender awaiting processing while the still works on the first load. We bottled lavender hydrosol (lavender-infused water that’s a byproduct of the distillation process used to make essential oil).
Katy and Lily Movement Ecology Pregnancy
Can’t leave without a fan photo. 😉
Lastly, this is NOT from this weekend. This was back when my son was 6 months old. I had listened to Katy’s podcast about carrying babies IN ARMS and found it helped my postpartum recovery. Here I am nearing the end of a 7 mile hike when my son wanted to nurse for the millionth time. Instead of stopping to sit and delaying our hike longer, I hiked and nursed. This demonstrates the “stack your life” principle that Katy explains. Movement is part of caring for a child, not something you need to do separately in a gym.

Have any thoughts on pregnancy movement and Katy’s approach? Share ‘em in the comments below. 😉

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Lily Nichols is a Registered Dietitian/Nutritionist, Certified Diabetes Educator, researcher, and author with a passion for evidence-based prenatal nutrition and exercise. Her work is known for being research-focused, thorough, and unapologetically critical of outdated dietary guidelines. She is the author of two bestselling books, Real Food for Pregnancy and Real Food for Gestational Diabetes.

9 Comments

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  1. Great article! I have been following Katy for a while and love her approach. Thanks for sharing! Also, just a heads up, the link you have for her website is incorrect 🙂

    • Thank you Whitney! The link to the website has been fixed. Thanks for letting us know!

  2. This is great! I am 36 weeks pregnant today with my first, and have kept your book and Katy’s books close by throughout!
    Thanks for sharing!

    • That’s great to hear, Holly. Sending ease-ful vibes your way for the last few weeks of pregnancy, birth, and postpartum recovery.

  3. I’m so glad to have read your distillation of Katy’s pregnancy workshop. I wanted to attend one myself, but haven’t had the chance. These principles are similar to what I teach in my prenatal & postpartum movement classes in Brooklyn, NY. As a pilates, yoga and embodied anatomy teacher, I know that the same alignment used for functional movement practices in the general population are even more necessary during pregnancy — as pregnancy simply highlights the weaknesses in our form, like you mentioned. I am not always so lucky to receive students/clients during preconception, but when I do, their birth and postpartum experiences are relatively undramatic and easeful. Just as Katy talks about a build-in training program for pregnancy, my practice is to establish connection to the deep core (thanks pilates) through breath and visualization (thanks Body Mind Centering) and to them layer in movement (aka exercises or poses) that are centered, stable and integrated.
    I love what you brought up about nutrition re: collagen, etc. This is a blindspot in my practice that I’d love to know more about. One of my students sent me this post. I’m so glad to learn more about your work!

    • It’s always optimal to work on all of these things (nutrition, movement, sleep, lifestyle), preconception, right? Then again, there’s never a wrong time to start integrating new-found knowledge. Your clients are lucky to have you! If you want to learn more about glycine and its role in prenatal/postpartum health and in fetal development, check out my book, Real Food for Pregnancy. I include quite a bit of research on this topic because it’s completely overlooked by conventional prenatal nutrition guidelines.

  4. I’m taking the class this summer (August 2019) and I’m so excited! I love the photo of you walking and nursing, I do that with my LO too (she’s 10 months now).

  5. I followed a link to this article from the Healthy Movement page. When I saw the reference to your book and realized who you were I was so thrilled – 2 of my favorite experts together! I am reading Move Your DNA for the first time and it is already motivating me to change how I move, walk barefoot, switch to a smaller pillow, etc. It reminds me of another book I read that motivated me to really change my habits – Real Food for Pregnancy! Absolute gold! I’m starting to work with pregnant women myself and both of these will be number 1 books/experts I recommend learning from!

    • Aw I love that! It was an absolute pleasure spending time with Katie and the other participants in this workshop. 🙂

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