Click on NOTE CATEGORIES to browse by topic, read through the entire archives, or type a topic in the search box.Biomechanist Katy Bowman and biologist Jeannette Loram, discusses a recent study on sitting time, standing time and circulatory risk. They cut through the media hype and explain what the study shows and why any prolonged static position might have health consequences.
Katy and Jeannette contrast our cultural norm of being in the same position for many hours a day with the diverse resting positions of the Hadza, a hunter-gatherer group with low cardiovascular risk but also a large amount of rest time. Katy explains how repetitive positioning generates higher pressure in specific locations in our circulatory system setting us up for injury, whereas varied positioning and light movement keeps the cardiovascular system supple and the pressure distributed throughout our system.
Jeannette and Katy touch on other issues to do with repetitive positioning including mobility and discomfort and offer practical suggestions for supporting your mobility and cardiovascular health while stationary. Finally don’t miss Katy answering a listener's question on hyperkyphosis via bananas and semi-permanent hair dye!
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OVERVIEW
(time codes are approximate)
00:08:00 - The Dynamic Collective (Jump to section)
00:08:40 - Why the switch to standing? (Jump to section)
00:11:15 - How long have we known standing could be injurious and varicose veins (Jump to section)
00:15:15 - What did the paper say? (Jump to section)
00:17:30 - What do we do now? Let’s look at the Hadza. (Jump to section)
00:22:15 - Cardiovascular and arterial walls and laminar/turbulent flow. (Jump to section)
00:34:00 - Listener Question brought to you by Venn Design (Jump to section)
00:42:30 - Back to our topic - Practical ideas (Jump to section)
LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THE SHOW
Article About Dose-Response Sitting (is this the right link?)
Episode #168: Is Sitting Aging You Faster
Resting postures of the Hadza: Sitting, squatting, and the evolutionary biology of human inactivity
Nutritious Movement Exercise Programs
Sign up for Katy’s Newsletter here
We would love to have you read our credits, please click here to take you to the script and recording page.
SPONSORS: THE DYNAMIC COLLECTIVE
This episode of The Move Your DNA podcast is brought to you by The Dynamic Collective, a group of six companies that create products and services helping you to move more. The Dynamic Collective is:
Wildling: Minimal footwear handmade from natural materials for toddlers, kids, and adults. Wildling is offering our listeners free shipping on all purchases until April 2025 with the code KATYWILDLINGS
Peluva: Five-toe minimalist shoes that are functional and stylish. Peluva are offering our listeners 15% off their purchase with the code NUTRITIOUSMOVEMENT valid until April 2025
Venn Design: Functional furniture for a balanced life - sit still less and move more
Smart Playrooms: Design and products for active living indoors. Smart Playrooms is offering our listeners a 10% discount on monkey bars, rock wall panels, and rock wall holds with the code DNA10 valid until April 2025
Correct Toes: Anatomic silicone toe spacers and other foot rehabilitation tools. Correct Toes are offering our listeners a $5 discount on all purchases with the code myd-toes5 valid until April 2025
Movemate: World's first dynamic active standing board designed to make movement a natural part of your workday, without disrupting your workflow!
PODCAST TRANSCRIPT
(Theme Music)
This is the Move Your DNA podcast, a show where movement science meets your everyday life. I'm Katy Bowman, biomechanist, author, and standing desk user. And I'm Jeannette Loram, biologist, movement teacher, and I love my standing desk. Every body is welcome here. Let's get started.
(Music Fades)
KATY: Oh Jeannette, welcome to the first episode of 2025.
JEANNETTE: I know! 2nd of January and here we are.
KATY: Are you meeting your New Year's resolutions so far?
JEANNETTE: You know, so far, it didn't start well because, as I told you, all my family got sick over Christmas. Actually I've been getting my Sunday walk. I did it twice this week. So I've already got the Sunday walk that I said I was going to do with my family. The one person in my family was fit enough to come with me.
KATY: Because they were ill.
JEANNETTE: But we did it. How about you?
KATY: Well, I will tell you what one of my New Year's resolutions is, and that is to give up a lot of my standing work time. I know! I actually made that a resolution. I did this watercolor New Year's resolution activity. I just set everything out slowly. Because I'm not artistic, Jeannette, I am NOT artistic.
JEANNETTE: But that's beautiful. And one of your resolutions also was about beauty. So you've made even your New Year's resolutions beautiful.
KATY: That's right. And I guess that's part of it. I just want to grow the creative, more beautiful, colorful, artsy part of myself. So instead of just writing it down on yellow lined paper, I sat down and I lightly sketched with pencil and then just had a really wonderful time filling everything in color. And I did one for all of my ... I don't think I would call them New Year's resolutions as much as I would say intention setting - being mindful and being thoughtful about setting up this upcoming ... it's not even the year, it's just this is a transition point. So until the next transition. What am I thinking of? What am I holding space for? But I made movement specific ones as well, really drilling down what I wanted. And I need less standing time.
JEANNETTE: Right.
KATY: We both need less standing time. We have alluded to it before and that's what this episode is going to be about: Why.
JEANNETTE: Right.
KATY: If getting out of this chair is so much better for us than sitting in the chair, allegedly, then why would we, you and I, be talking about doing less of this thing? And that's because that's what the whole episode will be about. So in my resolutions, the actual resolution I tried not to frame them in the negative. It would be the action I was going to take.
JEANNETTE: Oh I like that.
KATY: And it was picking, and specifically crossed legged sitting has become harder and harder for me the more I am adapted to standing. So it was to pick the cross legged position for more activities and work.
JEANNETTE: I love that.
KATY: I need a cross legged podcasting station.
JEANNETTE: Well this is actually why I've realized I need this too. Because this is my only dedicated sitting on the floor time. I mean I obviously sit on the floor to do bits and pieces but this is a long period of time for me. And I'm itching to get up to my standing desk. That was what really got me thinking that I really have adapted to my standing desk over sitting on the floor. Or even in a chair!
KATY: And the chair - and that's right. Chair sitting for me is also hard. The reason I wanted to do this topic is whether you're someone who, as soon as you have to stand or get on the floor are looking to get back to the chair, it's the same phenomena, the same underworkings as someone who stands a lot who can't sit on the floor or in the chair but wants to get back to sitting...
JEANNETTE: Standing, yeah.
KATY: ... or standing. We're all adapting to the thing that we practice the most often.
JEANNETTE: And it's fascinating. I remember trying, back must have been 14 or so years ago, and it was so hard. I didn't have a good set up. I was still in academia where I had an office. And it was a standard office. And I could only manage short periods of time. And now here I am having to reverse that. Your physiological adaptations are fascinating.
KATY: We're so fluid. We're just fluid. We're very fluid.
JEANNETTE: Now we're specifically, this kind of came to the top. Didn't it? At the end of last year where you were probably sent this paper numerous times by various people. But there was a recent, very large study that was published at the end of 2024 which was all about kind of the dose-response of sitting and standing. And cardiovascular disease and circulatory disease risk. And the headline, I don't know about in the US, but certainly in the UK newspapers the headlines were sort of inflammatory and misleading slightly.
KATY: That's not a problem for us here in the US.
JEANNETTE: No?
KATY: No. Not at all.
JEANNETTE: So we had Take a Seat at Work, or Expert Issues Health Warnings to Anyone Who Uses a Standing Desk.
KATY: Health warnings. Exactly. Stop. Get back in your chair immediately. Your standing work desk is literally killing you.
JEANNETTE: Yeah, so it was sort of, at best, missing the point. So, we thought it would be great to sort of tease out how we think about sitting, standing, and adaptation.
KATY: And I had actually written about this in Move Your DNA.
JEANNETTE: Yes!
KATY: And sending me the article saying, "Oh standing isn't great." I'm like, exactly! It's not that sitting is bad or standing is bad. We are so married to this idea that there is a single position. If we could just find this utopian position and never leave it, that would be the ultimate single position for the body where the best position is the next one. The best posture is the next one. And the fact that one of the reasons chairs have shown up is standing for laborers, standing all day long, had already shown to be very hard on the cardiovascular system as far as venous return was concerned. That it is, again, if people want to go back and listen to the episode we did a couple episodes back about sitting. That geometry is really important and standing geometry, there are pressures that are also not optimal. Your legs need to be pumping.
JEANNETTE: Moving.
KATY: They need to be moving. So this idea that we're trying to ... the movement diet, you want to look at your sitting habits and create a movement diet across your sitting. And that collectively we might have come to chairs to save us from one set of problems. And as everyone kicked the chair to the curb and is now standing all the time, these old issues are raising.
KATY: Yes. The Dynamic Collective. They are a group of companies that make great products that help us move more and they also support the Move Your DNA podcast. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The Dynamic Collective is made up of Wildling: Minimal footwear, handmade from natural materials. Correct Toes: Anatomic silicone toe spacers. Venn Design: Functional furniture helping you move more. Smart Playrooms: Design and products for active living indoors. Peluva: Five toe minimalist shoes that are functional and stylish. And Movemate: Dynamic, active standing board. Thank you to the sponsors.
JEANNETTE: Before we dive into standing, why did many of us move to standing workstations in the first place? That would be, for me, just so we're kind of all on the same page. Certainly for me through your work, I realized I had short hamstrings, short hip flexors, things that were resulting in things like low back pain which a chair seemed to be not helping with.
JEANNETTE: I would say.
KATY: When the "sitting is the new smoking" headlines came out.
JEANNETTE: Yes.
KATY: And the joke that I made about this phenomenon, which I am a supporter of getting up and out of your chair and standing. So I don't actually have a problem with standing workstations. Again, the nuance is the volume. How much? I'm going to keep some standing work time in my life, but I'm erring on the side of too much of it. I don’t have any more diversity in my active rest positioning. Which is the term that I use in My Perfect Movement Plan when I'm naming what these things are. Positions where are still and in place. So I think it was the sitting is the new smoking idea.
JEANNETTE: Yes.
KATY: And also, to go back to the beginning, this research that people are referencing had a lot to do with cardiovascular health. Which wasn't the reason that you were talking about getting up and out. It was about how your knees felt, your hips felt, your low back felt and that has not been looked at at all. That's not reflected in what this study is saying at all.
JEANNETTE: That's right.
KATY: It's talking about the pressure to the blood vessels in the standing position for prolonged periods of time.
JEANNETTE: That's right. There was all the information that came about like you said. Sitting has cardiovascular disease risks that are not necessarily mitigated by any exercise that you do. Sitting is an independent risk factor. So I think that was key in getting people on this up and out of the chair and into a standing position. So how long have we known that standing has injury potential? Hundreds of years?
JEANNETTE: And the things they're talking about in the paper they call them "orthostatic circulatory disease" essentially. And all this stuff just means in a standing position.
KATY: Yeah.
JEANNETTE: Related to the standing posture. And as you said, it's all about the fact that when you're standing obviously gravity is pulling your blood down to your feet. And you have to mitigate that, your physiology has to be able to cope with that until maybe it can't so well. And then you might see things developing like, it's a big word, but orthostatic hypertension, where you get a low blood pressure when you stand up. So anyone who has been, and I've experienced this. I remember at school when you were sitting on the floor in this cramped position for ages in a school play and you stand up suddenly and you feel this dizzy.
KATY: Lightheaded.
JEANNETTE: Lightheaded. And that's because you haven't been able to adjust your blood pressure, your heart rate, and get the blood, your muscle, pumping again.
KATY: And distribution. When you go to move everything opens and says "hey feed me, I'm moving". And then if you had a sudden onset of movement and blood moves out of it, it changes pressure faster than maybe, especially if your blood vessel walls aren't agile.
JEANNETTE: Interesting. Yes.
KATY: That's where we want that. That's another big piece of cardiovascular health that we don't think about which is keeping the muscles of the blood vessels themselves sensitive to respond quickly to change their shape. Which is how pressure is mitigated inside these tubes - is by the tube's ability to quickly adjust their shape to the demand. To match the shape of the body that these tubes are within.
JEANNETTE: Right. So it's the state of your tissues that you're bringing maybe to a standing position as well.
KATY: Yeah.
JEANNETTE: And again, that's not being looked at in this paper. What are other things that we have? Varicose veins.
KATY: Varicose veins is probably the one that many people are ...
JEANNETTE: Experiencing?
KATY: ... experiencing. And before that maybe just discomfort in the lower legs.
JEANNETTE: Yes.
KATY: The fact that the feet don't feel good. The ankles don't feel good. The pressure or the feeling in the calves before veins become varicose. Before they have broken valves, there has to be a long stage of pressure applied to that. It's very rarely this acute sudden blast of pressure. It's just chronic overload over time. So I think that's what most people relate to - I do feel uncomfortable on my feet for a long time. And those are the orthostatic. And then lower back pain. A lot of people will feel lower back pain or hip pain from standing.
JEANNETTE: Just fatigue. It's incredibly tiring if you're not used to it.
JEANNETTE: Right. So would it be worth, very briefly, explaining what this paper found? Just so that we listeners can know what this paper said. It was a very large study, I think over 80,000 people over a period of time looking at dose-response sitting. They had 3 categories. They had total stationary time, sitting time, standing time. And with all three of those they found that... Well actually let me say first of all, so with sitting there was both orthostatic circulatory disease risk, and cardiovascular disease risks. With standing there was only the former. So it was only the kind of venous pooling type scenarios. So the paper very much said, you do want to reduce your sitting time. It was not "take a seat and give up standing."
KATY: It was absolutely not "take a seat." It was just that standing all the time is not the solution to the sitting all the time program. And that's really all the paper said.
JEANNETTE: It's exactly what they said. They said you need to move more because just replacing sitting time with standing time you have these ... because standing time has risks. That was what it said. And there were some times where with standing there was an increased risk at over about 2 hours. So it's not a very long amount of time.
KATY: Although interestingly enough, sitting should also be broken up. We know that blood vessels to positions to be broken up every 30 minutes. It would make sense that standing would also need to be broken up with micro-movement.
JEANNETTE: And they don't know, the paper didn't break down that.
KATY: Exactly.
JEANNETTE: Which was interesting because they just have time and we have no idea how that time looks.
JEANNETTE: And how it's distributed. So that's something that really couldn't be teased out. But I would say that it's supportive of what we probably already knew rather than being "burn your standing desk." So, what do we do? How do we move forward with this information? I think we can say that prolonged, we know this from many studies, prolonged sitting and standing both have injury potential due to changes in blood flow when we are still for periods of time.
KATY: Well let's just expand that to a thought experiment. I would not be surprised if we would come up with injuries for any single position that the body was in 8-10 hours a day.
JEANNETTE: Well I can tell you this, if I spent two hours in a squat, I don't think I'd feel great.
KATY: Well and even in cultures that are squatting cultures that can tolerate large amounts of squatting, there are still musculoskeletal issues. It's all about a balance. There are issues that arise also in the knees and hips from excessive amounts of those loads.
JEANNETTE: Yes.
KATY: So I'm just going to refer everyone to this concept of movement as nutrition to recognize you need a varied diet. And that goes for your in-place or your active rest positions. But I want to keep this in the context of our overall goal is to be moving more. So we want to ... there's a fine amount of active rest that human bodies, I think, are evolved to. So let's talk about the Hadza for a second because I think that's a good place to go.
JEANNETTE: I think that's a really good place to go. Because they actually rest a lot.
KATY: A lot. Not even that much ... They rest more than a lot. It's like hours and hours a day. Maybe even somewhat similar to I don't think we would call them sedentary because of all the other movements that are being done. But as far as being in place, they're in place a lot. However, they have, again, I'm going to refer you to My Perfect Movement Plan, because this is all really fleshed out in a clear way where you can, instead of listening to bits here or there, you can find this is sort of what I mean by a full movement diet. There's a lot of very light work that is happening in, I'm going to call them, with an air quote around them, "active rest" positioning. But there's not a lot of just slouch back and zone out type active rest. There's a lot of making work that's fairly gentle. Like sitting and knitting would be maybe an equivalent or sitting and shelling nuts.
JEANNETTE: I was going to say food prep. That kind of thing.
KATY: Whittling, or doing art, or playing an instrument. Where you're still but you're still sort of busy with some parts of you. I would say that in addition to using a lot of stationary positioning, the Hadza will also use a lot of that time to be doing these micro movements as well. And I do wonder about the effects of those subtle shifts, if those aren't enough to offset the fact that there is a lot of time spent in place. It's not a ton of running and sprinting and jumping. Although relatively speaking it’s going to be much more than what we would get.
JEANNETTE: Right. And they also, they do spend a good portion of their time in more active, maybe not as active or maybe equivalent to standing, but they're in supported squats, or unsupported squats, or kneeling. Things that require more of particularly lower leg muscle contraction.
JEANNETTE: And then the other thing that I don't think anyone apart from you really teases out - because a lot of their movement is what they call ground sitting. I'm sorry, a lot of their rest is ground sitting. But I imagine it's in very varied shapes, constellations. If we want to stick with My Perfect Movement Plan, the constellations. I think my question is, because they are changing shape even though it's generally relatively inactive, can that induce a more pliant, healthy cardiovascular structure for want of a better term?
KATY: I think yes. Right now in my mind I'm trying to build this model. This would be good for just a heart cardiovascular - just a heart-centric podcast episode, which we can do. Which we will do. So there's the effect of varying intensity. I think of that as being really ... as a main, as a big part of keeping these supple arterial and vascular - let's just say cardiovascular walls flexible.
JEANNETTE: Right, ok.
KATY: And I also think that we talk about laminar flow. So if you're a pilot, there's laminar, smooth flow. Or if you're just looking at water, when all the water is going easily in one direction. And there's turbulent flow, where the water has got eddys and backflow and swirling. And you can see when there's turbulent flow there's a lot of interaction between - in the water itself. But also on the shore of the water when things are flowing smoothly you don't have as much turbulent flow. Where you have complex geometry, where you have sharp turns. If you have a river that's all going in one direction, and you probably would never have this naturally because things would just naturally widen. But let's just say you have a river and it's got a hairpin turn in it, when it's flowing smoothly that's not a big deal. But when there's a big gush of water that comes through, now you've got water actually, as it's traveling forward, it can't make such a quick bend. So some of that water is banging into the shore because it missed sort of getting on the bend with the rest of the water. So I think if you sit in a chair what are you doing? You've introduced a bend in the knee and hip, and that complex geometry is going to just increase trauma to the walls themselves. They're basically taking more impact. And I think we can all take a certain amount of impact. But when you've got this repetitive impact, the body tends to stiffen against impact. Or lay down more mass. Or calcify in response to trauma. And I always talk about it's almost like a scab. And I do think that it's really interesting when we have cholesterol that develops plaque we would call it, how much of that is protective initially. Why are there spots that it's attracted to and how does that relate to the physical, mechanical experience of those areas of the body? So when you're using varied shapes, I think what you're doing is you're distributing that impact over more surface area of your arteries and veins.
JEANNETTE: Right.
KATY: And so I don't think that there's any one that is better, but I think the variance of them is what keeps a repetitive use injury from happening within the blood vessels.
JEANNETTE: And you're not picking off the scab at the same place each time.
KATY: That's right. There's a chance where I think your body is really efficient. It's like, oh if you're going to be impacting in this area all the time, I will be bolstering it. It's almost like getting a callus. And we don't want calluses on our blood vessels. We want calluses on our hands and our feet. They serve a purpose there. And I guess you could argue that a callus inside of your body (and it's not really a callus, I'm just using that as a metaphor), you could say that it actually is helpful. Right? It's trying to help to a certain point but at some point it becomes catastrophic. Especially if that callus pops off.
JEANNETTE: Right. Right.
KATY: For your hands and for the inside of your body. I don't think we're really meant to have so much single position. And our cardiovascular system needs to stay supple. And we need to be changing the flow of our river. I mean, if you are someone who is really grounded in nature, the natural world, you understand that rivers need to move. That rivers, they can't even be at the same place on the landscape without destroying it. And when they're really flexible, you've got this ability to distribute the impact of flow over a much broader area. And our cardiovascular systems are very much the same. I always think, when I stand at rivers, I can see what, I'm like, "Oh look. There's a corollary flow." I really see river science and cardiovascular science in the same lens because I think the mechanics are the same.
JEANNETTE: Yeah. The river only tends to become devastating when we have paved and concreted.
KATY: Or dammed.
JEANNETTE: Or dammed the river. Absolutely. That's very helpful. Because I think the Hadza don't have these cardiovascular risk factors in the same way that the western populations do. But yet they still rest. But they've got these two parts isn't it. It's their every changing geometry plus a lot of what they do is slightly more active.
KATY: That's right. But again it's small. And I'm really championing this model because I think it is much more accessible for way more people. I mean, that you can still continue to have, I'm going to call them sedentary activities. You can still have the quieter down time and rest and making and creating, but you just can make some different choices about the constellations, the body shapes, you're using while you do them for good return. And also you're going to kick your overall activity up a little bit. But when you look at what the Hadza are doing, if we're looking at cardiovascular health, they're high intensity. They're even moderate to vigorous intensity, it's like under 20 minutes.
JEANNETTE: That's right.
KATY: You could be like, and be easy on yourself, you're like, "Ok, I'm going to do 10 to 15 minutes of something that's hard." You know, cardiovascular machine, running up and down steps, just in your own house, "I'm going to set the timer for 15 minutes and I'm just going to walk up and down this staircase. I'll do it every day." It's 15 minutes. That's a big gift. That's a love letter you're giving to yourself by doing it. And then I'm going to take all my sedentary activities that I love and are meaningful to me and I'm just going to sit cross legged while I'm doing them. Or if you've been sitting in a chair, you can stand. I'm not trying to... maybe I'm going to stand to do some. I'm going to sit in a straddle position, a hurdler position, with one leg crossed. I'm going to sit on the ground while I cut out my patterns for sewing. Whatever it is, just make some simple shifts. And then the rest of the Hadza they do have that much bulkier light activity that is not active rest positioning. That is not that vigorous. But the fact that there is, now we're going to go to the ok here's your three hours of extra things that you're not doing. But it's light. It's walking to work. It's doing some of your friend connection or your parenting on foot outside, physical. It's taking your volunteer time and making it physical. It's not complex. It's not complicated. And I don't think it has to be physically hard. I do think it's psychologically challenging to rearrange your whole life. I don't want to downplay that. But I do think the physical solution for many people is actually in this get that 15 minute burst and really start thinking about this river, that constellation. If you don't like constellation, this is, again from My Perfect Movement Plan, which did not sponsor this podcast but maybe it did, is that you need to open up the rivers of your hip joints. And you have to open up the rivers at your knee joints. And you need to open up the rivers at your shoulder joints. And they need to have the banks, the shape of the river changes regularly so that you're not creating ... Do we call it a callus, do we call it a wound? Trauma on the inside. You're not getting repetitive injuries within the blood vessels themselves.
JEANNETTE: Right. Yeah I love all that. And I think especially at this time of year, it's helpful. Because I think we often, we started talking about resolutions and we often start with things that are completely unsustainable. They're too hard. So if you're thinking about ways, you called them low hanging fruit before, but just changing how you sit and stand to do your quieter past times is a low hanging fruit. That can make a huge difference.
KATY: There's not a financial barrier. There's not a time barrier. But if you actually are coming up with 3 or 4 barriers right now then that's the psychological barrier. It's like, "I can't. I just. The dogs will get on me and I can't do it." Which is one of our, in the upcoming psychology book we tackle. The animal and kid issue, too. It's not to say that you're not going to have reasons, but just work through them. And I'm here to help you work through them. But also they need to be worked through, I guess I should say.
KATY: And just for everyone listening, listener questions are often not on topic but they are a chance to broaden what we cover in an episode. This question is brought to you by Venn Design. Venn Design creates exercise ball type seating but beautifully upholstered. So they look and feel like furniture and not exercise equipment. I've had one for years. They are a great option for how to help change up how you sit and they allow you to introduce shifts and movement into your body while you rest. This listener question is from Laura in France.
JEANNETTE: Right. So this is the question: I found out I have a very pronounced hyperkyphosis which I was not aware of before. I work every day to drop my ribs but I find it worsens my kyphosis. Is this normal? Am I doing it wrong? She also goes on to say that you talked about lengthening your spine while walking. I find I am not capable of lengthening my spine without pulling my shoulders back. Again, is there something I'm missing?
KATY: Ok. This is a time where video movement instruction is going to be far superior than trying to talk through this in an audio format. But here I go regardless. So let's talk about what hyperkyphosis is. Imagine the shape of a banana, that curl forward. That's going to be the curve to the upper back. Now all of our upper backs have some curve, but hyper kyphosis means there's too much curvature for your segment. And there's not any fixed degree that all people have. The amount that you have is a range really depending on how the rest of your segments are shaped - the rest of your anthropometric dimensions. But if you have hyperkyphosis it means that your banana is too curved. So it's not quite squished all the way in half, but the curve is too deep. It's starting to look more like a U. It eventually looks like a U rather than like a crescent moon where there's a gentle C-shaped curve we'll call it for right now. So there's something that I want to say here and that is some things about our position in space, they're relatively easy to make adjustments in real time. So if you're standing up and I say to back your hips off of the front of your toes and you can shift your hips back to stack your hips more over the rear of your foot, that's something that most people can make an adjustment to fairly quickly because the joint is fluid enough or open enough to be able to make that movement. But there are some parts in the body where, I don't want to say their position is more fixed, but there's greater resistance to making simple changes. And so with hyperkyphosis it's not just one banana. There's a lot of different bones involved and there's a lot of musculature involved. So if you have a spine that's curving extra on top, it's not just that you aren't holding it up. There's bigger changes in shapes that are a little deeper than just you firing a different set of muscles to move them differently. So, for example, if I pick up a glass, I've changed the shape of my elbow to bring that glass up to me. And then let's say I keep my elbow there, drink and then I say, "You need to straighten your arm, that will make it easier for you." And then you put the glass down and that straightens your arm. That's fairly easy. But imagine that you pick that glass up and you held it there for 15 years. It would not be a matter for just setting the glass down anymore. There's deeper adjustments that have been made to actually the way mass is distributed within your arm itself. There's been changes to muscle length and tendon length that's I'm going to call it semi-permanent hair color. It washes out but you can't get rid of it overnight. So with hyperkyphosis it's much more like a semi-permanent hair color and there might even be elements of permanent depending on if you've got later stage osteoporosis and your bones have become web shaped. That would be more like permanent hair color. It's going to have to ...this is where it's all breaking down but it's a deeper commitment. Help me out Jeannette.
JEANNETTE: I'm loving the analogies. Hair dye and bananas. It's great.
KATY: I want people to really get this.
JEANNETTE: I've not heard you use either of those before and they're brilliant.
KATY: I never use the same thing twice. I'm always like how can I explain this? So kyphosis is not like, oh I'll just set the glass down and so I'm going to stand up straight. There are things that you do stepwise over time that make a changing the banana bit by bit more possible. And if you were trying to change the curve of the banana what would you do? You pull the top and the bottom away from each other. Right? Instead of pushing them down toward each other you would be pulling them away from each other. The problem is gravity is always pushing the ends of your banana together. So when you have a banana, an extra curvy banana, and you go to stand up straight. I'm just going to look at the rest of her question here, because I think that's important.
JEANNETTE: So the rest of the question. So, I think the key bit for her is could you recommend some specific exercises or Nutritious Movement programs to achieve this? And she's meaning achieve reversing the hyperkyphosis. I feel like hanging is the way to go but I don't really understand the mechanics of it.
KATY: And hanging is a tricky one. So you've got this banana and gravity is pushing the top and the bottom of the banana together all day long. And so when people tend to go stand up straight, they just take their banana and they rotate it so that the bottom of the banana, the bottom of the rib cage comes forward and that pulls the head back. The top of the banana moves back. It's sort of now lying on it's curvy back and the bottom of the banana is poking up. And that brings your face more upright, but you still have the exact same curve in your banana. So we say drop the ribs. It does make kyphosis worse because you can see it. The actual banana shape hasn't changed but now it's more visible. And then you have to go about how to pull the top of the banana away from the bottom of the banana. So your abdominals have to be strong enough to anchor the bottom of the banana. And then I just got done doing a whole exercise advent on pulling your head away from the rest of your body. Doing that is one way to gently pull the top of the banana away from the bottom of the banana. There's things to, if you get a sleeping bag or a could of pillows and put them long ways so they're long along your spine and lay back on them and open your arms out to the side, stretch the front of your chest. That would be a way to, if the chest is part of what's pulling your banana forward, get rid of some of that hair coloring that's on the front. You can started eeking it out that way. There's a lot to do. And if you're asking about where to find them, I would refer you to my Virtual Studio. And the Virtual Studio is a database of almost 200 classes with me and you can look for... there is a challenge.
JEANNETTE: There is. The Hyperkyphosis Cure which has 5 classes all about the key parts of undoing hyperkyphosis.
JEANNETTE: Yeah. Excellent. Thank you for that. And keep the questions coming everyone. I read them all. So just to go back briefly to our topic for today. So you're saying that one of your resolutions or one of your intentions is to have more cross legged sitting time. I'm just wondering if we could throw out a few examples for both those of us who love their standing desks, how we could actually maybe just take care of our calves and our veins maybe a little bit more while we stand. So I was thinking, you know, if you use, for example, standing boards or just stretching your calves or doing some heel raises, just working that into your standing time is going to be very helpful for keeping your veins and your lower legs happy.
KATY: And that's always been a recommendation of mine was, if you are standing, keep the lower legs moving. Fidgeting is so underrated. Developing a fidgeting habit is a really great New Year's resolution or intention.
JEANNETTE: I find it hard to stand and not fidget.
KATY: Me too. And I think that that helps me deal with the cardiovascular issue. But my issues with standing aren't cardiovascular. They're mobility related.
JEANNETTE: Mobility. Right.
KATY: They're mobility related. The more you recognize there's a lot of different things going on. But I will say what's enhanced by my standing is my alertness and my energy.
JEANNETTE: Yes.
KATY: And that's also one thing we don't talk about and that's not in this paper - the aforementioned paper - about the effects of sitting. Sitting for many people creates almost a malaise. A lack of creativity. A lack of focus. And there's no offsetting that later on. So for me when I stand, it would be hard for me ... I haven't seen a lot of Ted Talks where people are sitting in a chair.
JEANNETTE: No.
KATY: Or sitting cross legged on the ground. I would not be able to project and use my diaphragm well.
JEANNETTE: No, it's true. And in my academic background, when I lectured and gave talks, nobody - you don't see anyone that sits down to do anything like that. It's all standing. And often walking around, actually, which is interesting. It's a helpful thing, while you're talking through a subject, to actually gently walk. It's hard when we're trying to work at a computer.
KATY: They say "think on your feet." I think on my feet because it's where I can get faster responses. I can make faster connections. And so I have found that as I have become more busy and more productive that standing is the position that is good for my brain. But it's at sacrificing some of these other parts.
JEANNETTE: It's interesting. I was just thinking about the word understanding.
KATY: Ooo
JEANNETTE: Isn't that interesting?
KATY: Now this is a wordsmithing podcast.
JEANNETTE: Yes. Hmm.
KATY: Mm-hmm.
JEANNETTE: Understanding. So that's interesting. I might have to think on that one. Ok the idea is to keep you active while standing. And then we've talked about sitting quite a bit. Just frequently changing your positions. So, Katy, have you got any changes that you have to bring into how you work with your new intention to sit cross-legged? Or is it easy for you to do?
KATY: Um. Well the only type of work that I've been able to do sitting cross-legged is meetings, discussion things. I haven't tried seated writing yet, for example. And then in my beautiful watercolor intention picture, which I'll put a picture, probably in the newsletter. If you get our newsletter you'll see it. At the end of the day, doing reading, or watching TV in that position. So I haven't paired as much with really heady type of working yet.
JEANNETTE: I think that's the hardest place to make change, I think. Because you need to not have something screaming at you to be able to concentrate deeply. Which might also be worth, again, we're gonna talk about My Perfect Movement Plan, but I love your setup, which we've talked about frequently, looking at the domains. Because I think sometimes it's easier to make a change not in your work domain when you need to focus really hard. It's easier to start looking at how to diversify your rest positions in your leisure time when you've got a bit more freedom and you don't need to be quite as focused in terms of head space.
KATY: And I think I'm pretty good - you know standing, again, hasn't been a cardiovascular issue for me because I'm using ... You know as we've been talking I've been standing here and I've got a foam roller, half foam roller that I can be stretching and working my calves. I have a balance board/wobble board - the new Movemate who is the sponsor of this podcast has made. I really like that one because wobble boards tend to be... you're standing on a fixed plane and you're kind of moving in one direction. So there's actually not that much foot relative to foot, foot part movement.
KATY: Great for the back. Great for the core. But when you add this foot movement, and their boards are in many separate slats. We'll throw a picture up. We'll put it in the show notes. But the fact that your foot and ankle are getting a little bit of that pumping motion...
JEANNETTE: Yes.
KATY: ...so that's really nice.
JEANNETTE: I love that one too. And I have the Movemate and it's wonderful. And it really feels like a calf workout for me. And I have tight calves - for me it's brilliant. I don't know about you but sometimes when I'm standing I lean forward towards my computer...
KATY: Fall into it.
JEANNETTE: Concentrate really hard. Whereas the Movemate tips me back and I have to move my feet. So it's been a really good biofeedback for me too. As well as that calf movement. So yeah, we'll definitely put a picture.
KATY: And I think, I also address this in the psychology book, but it'll fit nicely here; yes, separate things by domain. But it's harder to make changes in things like work and school where it's not so much attention but there's a lot more boundaries that involve other people that are harder to navigate. But when you're in your own home and you're in your own leisure time, a lot more is flexible. But I like to actually break up my occupation into the places where changes are easier to make. And then there's things that I don't want to tinker with. So, for example, high focus activities, I don't really tinker with those. I would tend to tinker with things like meetings, phone calls, general research, where I'm reading but I'm not trying to create an upwelling of product that's coming up and out of me. Where things are more coming in. So if you are trying to figure out where you could diversify your active rest positioning, break down some of these seemingly stiff areas of life into sections and you'll find "ok, if I'm on Zoom, can't we do whatever we want?" Short of jogging on a tread desk and sort of sweating all over your computer, you probably have a lot of freedom here to mix up your geometry a little bit.
JEANNETTE: Brilliant.
KATY: That's good. I should stop standing. That's what I need.
JEANNETTE: Well I have been sitting in different ways but I'm actually sitting cross-legged. Cross-legged for me is not so much of a problem. Other things there are. Ok. That was great. Thank you.
KATY: Happy New Year to you!
JEANNETTE: Yeah. Happy New Year to you and all the listeners. And I should also say, we would love to have some more listener voices on the podcast. If any of you would like to read our end credits we will put a link to SpeakPipe in the show notes. If you follow that link it will take you to a recording button and provide you the script to read. It's super simple. And it would be lovely. Otherwise, you'll get me again. And you're probably sick of listening to me. It would be nice to hear someone else.
KATY: So thanks everyone for listening to this episode which has been brought to you by our Dynamic Collective. Can I say how much I appreciate you all? Dynamic Collective is: Venn Design, Peluva, Smart Playrooms, Movemate, Correct Toes, and Wildling. If you have any burning questions you want answered send them to podcast@nutritiousmovement.com. We'll see you next time.
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JEANNETTE: Bye.
Hi, this has been Move Your DNA with Katy Bowman, and me Jeannette Loram, a podcast about movement. We hope you find the general information in this podcast informative and helpful but it is not intended to replace medical advice and should not be used as such. This podcast is edited by Chris McLaren. Thank you, Chris. And transcribed by Annette Yen. Thank you, Annette. And our theme music is performed by Dan MacCormack. Make sure to subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen to audio. And find out more about Katy, her books, and her movement programs at NutritiousMovement.com.
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