Alignment Matters: The First Five Years of Katy Says Paperback – September 1, 2016

I recommend this book to every single person. Katy Bowman is a biomechanist who has devoted her career to curating scientific research (she reads roughly 1500 journal articles, across multiple disciplines a year!) and educating the masses in an entertaining way. Her main message is: if you spend the majority of your time with your body in proper alignment (and what you think is proper alignment, probably isn’t), and get consistent movement, then you will minimize your risk in contracting a whole host of modern diseases including: foot, knee, back, hip or neck pain, osteoporosis, heart disease, fertility, pelvic floor disorder, dysmenorrhea, menorrhagia.I have bought a few of her videos, and in doing the exercises and paying attention throughout the day to how I stand and sit, I have significantly improved many issues. I will not go into details because it is a bit TMI that I don’t want to share with the entire internet, but suffice it to say that primarily calf and hamstring stretches relieved symptoms that seemingly had nothing to do with the calf and hamstrings. Starting from the feet and lengthening the proper muscles, allows for proper alignment that fixes problems higher up. The stretches she recommends are just slightly different than anything I have been exposed to (and I have a fairly wide breadth of knowledge and experience in regards to various fitness paradigms, etc). Those differences provide amazingly significant results.This book is a collection of five years of blog posts that have been grouped into related topics. I wasn’t sure if it was necessary to buy the book and spent a few weeks reading her blog [...] first. The book is more organized than the blog which makes reading related ideas easier and ensures that you don’t miss some stuff. Also there IS some content in the book that is not available on the current blog.Get this book, and her other book, read the newer entries on her blog, follow her on Facebook, watch her YouTube channel, listen to her interviews, buy some of her videos. All of it is immensely fascinating, often humorous, and most likely will make your quality of life significantly better now and in the long run.p.s. Amazon lets you buy the hard copy and get the kindle version for $2 which is really cool. I wanted a hard copy to lend to friends and family, but I prefer reading bigger heavier books on the kindle.

I read first Move your DNA and this book gave me deeper understanding of alignment. I have bought every single book written by Katy Bowman as I want to know everything possible about the subject. And I recommend this book to everyone who cares about their own health and the health of their family and friends.In addition to the important information Katy has a great sense of humor and I laughed aloud while reading this book.I am not native in English language but could understand everything in this book because it is so fluently written and scientific terms are explained.

As the cover says, this book is the first five years of Katy's blog: Katy Says. Originally intended for current and former students of Katie's Restorative Exercise program (now called Nutritious Movement), the blog itself doesn't have any linear structure. Katie writes about a wide array of topics in varying depths. One day you could be reading about the movement and structure of the hips, the next about the proper position to sleep in, the third how many muscles are below your ankles, and then again back to the hips for the fourth. Trying to read the blog straight through would be a mess. So, though the editor's kept the individual blog posts unedited, they tried to organize them first by topic and then in a way that gives the rough feeling of a beginning, middle, and end.The information she gives is incredibly valuable. I'm a massage therapist and have learned quite a bit about the body. She shifted my entire way of thinking about exercise, movement, and health. And yet everything she teaches made sense to me in a way where I felt like I should have known about it already. It's the logical conclusion when you step back and think about the body in the right light: not just the newest health trend but about thousands of years of human health.Most of the the problems I have with this book stem from the fact that it was a blog that was never intended to be a book. A lot of the information is repeated over and over again, and some of it not treated with the kind of depth it deserves. Katie is well read and highly educated. She backs up some of her points with different studies. And picks apart other studies that seem to disagree with her. And yet many topics are glazed over. Either her students know stuff that the general audience doesn't, or she just decided she wasn't going to write that long of a blog post that day.Still, the information at hand wins out. This book is certainly worth reading for what you will learn. She just released a new book called Move Your DNA. I'm hoping it will be the book (sans blog) that I was wanting to read.

This would be without doubt the most useful, inspiring and informative book I've read about healthy movement! It has shattered a few myths, inspired me to make some significant changes to my movement habits that I was previously unaware of ( feet straight, feet straight if you want to get rid of those threatening, 'hereditary' bunions amongst other things) and helped a non scientist really understand the reasons why habitual movement and lack thereof if such a health problem. Katy writes with humour and clarity and is still able to give concise, accurate explanations of functional movement. I could write an essay, but I won't. Just read it ... :-)