Full Transcript

Welcome back. I am Dr. Beau Beard from The Farm, and this is episode 9 of the Dr. Beau Show. So I think I'm going to go ahead and start condensing some of the things I've done in past episodes. I've talked about things I've been listening to watching, reading all sorts of stuff. Then, you know, the tip-off, in the beginning, I think what I'm going to start doing is just starting each show, give a quote from something of that realm. I've been listening to watching reading and every once in awhile; we'll get into the random stuff. There's plenty of that throughout the show. So if you've been watching or listening along, you know, that I've been reading troubles with Charlie in search of America, by John Steinbeck. I had no clue how apropos this book was going to be for this time, especially when you get into the last two chapters, a lot of talk about racial inequity. And this book was well, the journey that he took, took place in the 1960s. So you can imagine what was going on in that time and he makes a trip through New Orleans and through the South. And this quote has nothing to do with that, but I just thought it was very interesting that, that this book, what was in my hands during this time. So I'm just going to read you a quote that I liked. Before I get into that. Not like Tim Ferriss ever going to listen to this, but thanks to Tim Ferris if you guys can see this and if you're listening. He made the suggestion of in empty page in the front of a book, making yourself basically a table of contents for you, write each page number, and then the quote. So if you open up a book that you've went through, you can just easily go to this, look for your quote. I can go to page 181 is where we're looking in this book and I'm going to read a very quick quote from Steinbeck. "I Took the little pills and paid my bill and got out of there. It wasn't this veterinarian didn't like animals, I think he didn't like himself. And when that is, so the subject usually must find an area for dislike outside himself". "Elsie Would have to admit his self-content".

So that was a very good quote. I highly suggest this book. Also, we have a library at the farm. There's a big shelf up front. If you're local here, you can come pick one up, check it out. The late fees are extraordinarily cheap to keep it as long as you want. So, let's get into this. So, I know it's been a little bit since I did an episode and my make- scuses are excuses. We've been trying to, you know, pump the business backups since COVID-19 hit. And we had to shut down for a while. We bought a house, we moved into the house, we took a vacation and we got a four-month-old. So, there's a lot of stuff going on. It's all excuses though. Right? Other people got it much worse than I do, but we're back at it now. And I wanted to basically do one big show of Q&A, because I got such a thoughtful, a well thought out email I thought I deserved an entire show to answer this woman's question. So, I hope she doesn't mind me saying her name, but I thought it was such good email. If you guys want to look her up and follow her, it looks like she puts out some good stuff, but her name is Ellie Pekcova. I believe she's from Bulgaria. And she sent me an email because she is a Kin Bowman movement, certified specialist. She's went through the EBFA education. I think she does a lot of movement education with adult clientele but her question was premised around the fact that she gets a lot of questions from her adult clientele about their children. 

And I know that Ellie is a parent as well. And she basically says that there's not a lot of good info to pull from. She doesn't know what she should be telling these clients when they're asking these questions. And yeah, basically just wanting to shoot some questions. So, I'm going to jump right into this. So, the first question I'm paraphrasing all of these questions. She was asking about the environment in which we're raising children now and how we're supposed to manipulate or better equip that environment to create better movement. And she posed this in terms of artificial versus natural saying that our environment now is more artificial. Well, here's the first thing I'm going to pose a thought or a question not necessarily statement is, go listen to the podcast with Joe Rogan and Alan Rabinowitz. I think it just came out a couple, maybe two weeks ago and they talk quite a bit in depth and particularly at the beginning of this podcast about because Alan wrote a book about this on what is natural versus what is artificial. And it goes into everything and then how we substantiate what we're doing based on these things. Like, is there a natural movement, right? Is there such a thing as an artificial environment? If all of the things that are in this room are manmade, right? Chemicals materials, they're all manmade. Well, those materials are of the earth, right? There's nothing, that's not of the earth and we made it. 

So, doesn't that make it natural. And it's just how far you're willing to extrapolate the naturalness of these things, but then does it matter? Well, would we agree? And I'm sitting in a chair right now because I can't be down, I'm usually kneeling on a knee, but I'd be way too short and I liked that this camera's high so I've got to sit up tall here. Do our environments dictate poor movement? Well, then we have to ask the question of what's poor, what's good movement. And I think really what we're getting after with this is that we're saying, Hey, do the environments that we live in dictate that I'm going to be more pain or more unhealthy due to the movement choices and the food choices that I made. And I would say yes, absolutely. But there are people, was watching another show. I'm not embarrassed to say it. The Zac Efron. What's it called? Oh, I'll put it in the show notes. Zac Efron, Netflix show. I'm going to look it up real quick while we're on here. But he visits Valtier Longo and the scientists that studied the blue zones for the first time ever. And it's called Down to Earth with Zack Efron, I thought it was down to earth, but I thought that was like a, I don't know, some gushy movie, but he could have been in that movie too, who knows. But they visit Sardinia, which has per capita, more centurions, more people over a hundred years old and US in total. And what they were looking at is these people tend to be very socially involved, low involvement with technology, a lot of low-level aerobic exercise, a lot of walking, but then there's also a ton of carbohydrates in their diet. A lot of alcohol, not in one mass sitting, but spread out. 

And then we got to ask like, well, these people are still sitting in chairs. They're still sitting in couches. They're doing all of the same things now. I don't know how they move, but if we're going to put movement in as a health factor, which is really what we're doing here, because there is no prize for moving better, right. The prize for moving better as being healthier and then hopefully having better quality of life and longevity. So, we need to also realize that when we're thinking about this stuff, that there's no movement prize, we don't need to move better for the sake of moving better we're trying to be healthier and out pain. But when you go to these blue zones, yeah you can say, well, there's other blue zones in Southeast Asia where people aren't using furniture. Sure. But that's not the crux, right? It's the fact that they're moving throughout their day and that doesn't have to be you know, high intensity interval training or plyometrics or functional range, conditioning, walking work, manual labor, all these things are still movement.

So that's a hard question to answer because it's always depended but what I would say is, yes, our American environment is dictating poor movement and it obviously sounds like Southeastern Europe as well. But I don't think it's just that I'm sitting or just that I'm in a home with a couch. I think it's the fact that how much time we spend doing these things because of our jobs, because of our education systems. So, I don't think it's an environment thing. I mean, chairs had been around forever. People moved really well because they were moving more than we do. So, don't think the environment is dictating as much as we think. Now, when it gets to kids, what are we saying here? If you gave kids the choice, they're not going to sit in a chair, they're going to be on the floor. Right? Because they're closer to their toys, their lower to the ground. They're going to be playing around using the ground, using couches as things to play on. But what do we see? We see that we tend to put the constraints on them, right? Don't run in the house, don't climb on the furniture. Get up off the floor it's dirty. All these things happen. So, it's more, we put the constraints on the environment. 

So, we need to be more cognizant of that. And obviously I know Ellie sending this and it is already cognizant but really ask yourself that artificial versus natural overall, not just with moving environments but food and technology and cities and all these things like what are we really saying when we say that and make sure that you're not trying to confirm some bias by determining something's natural and that makes it just therefore better. And I believe this is a great cook quote but he says movement he's talks about balance specifically, but he says balance can't be coached it has to be grown. I think that's movement overall. Now brings me into the next part. She wanted to know how, how do we get kids to move more appropriately? Like what's the best way to set up an environment for this. And I think you have to talk about dynamic systems theory. And dynamic systems theory basically says that everything in nature is moving towards a set point, not set point as in it was predestined. As in, if you lay out a number of variables are a number of factors, they're all going to move towards the same natural end point and what determines that end point or what's called attractor States. And if we wanted to put a movement in front of that term and call it movement, attractor States, what we'd say is the environment dictates the movement.

So, if I sit in a chair, I'm going to have, you know, slight ankle, knee, and hip flection. Well, here's what always fascinates me. So, let's use this as an example. Everybody likes to say that sitting is the devil, right? And that you're going to get shortened, tightened, hip flexors and all that stuff. Sure. But then show me how in American society being in triple flection all day is going to decrease your amount of triple flection. We always say these things, right? Like, Hey, sitting is going to make your hips stiffer and they will, but also, we're in 90 degrees of flection. Why does it then make it harder for us to go further into fluxion because we always see this correlative, you sit too much and then your squat isn't great, or things like that. But realize that when we're talking about these attractor States in general, we're trying to set up an environment where that's a micro environment or macro environmental.

Explain what I mean by that to accomplish the goal and not necessarily coach what we need, and this is what we need to be very cognizant of and the movement coaching, rehab even sports specific coaching world. So, what's a micro environment. Micro environment is my office, not the office itself, but the environment I put that patient or person in to try to achieve the movement or outcome pain or relief, whatever it is that I'm looking for. So if I set up a micro environment, that's solely based on me telling them what to do from a movement perspective, we "A" we know that's not a great thing to do from a coaching standpoint because they have to internalize what I say and then pump out movement, not great. We want more external cues. External cues are of the environment, which is an attractor state. So, let's say I want somebody too put more weight in their heels and their squat. Terrible example because I think it's over coach, but let's use it. Well, instead saying put your weight in your heels, why don't we gently raise their toes up and pushes them into their heels? And they're going to find out real quick, how stiff their ankles are because of how shortened their squat becomes. So that's a movement attractor state, and we could set that up a million different ways. We could even call that reactive neuromuscular training or therapy and things like this are all playing into this attractor state. Now the macro environment is our daily environment, right? The things that we're doing every day, the houses we live in, the cars we sit in, the workplace we're in that's macro environment. And are those creating attractor states for good or bad movement. And again, how we determine those labels, you know, that's going to be on a very individual basis and actually what the goal is, is going to determine that.

So, when we're looking at, how do we, you know, create a scenario of an attractor state that gives us better outcomes, if we can determine better. You know, look at the things that are affecting kids the most. And I would say number one is technology. If we want to use attractor state in a different determination, it's like a fly to a fly zapper with, I mean, my daughter is only four months old. And if I make the mistake of holding her and check a text, I mean, she's locked onto that thing. Those things are designed to capture our attention. So that's an attractor state. That we need to realize that we have to, as the adult control and I think we all know that, but then also toys. So, there's been this movement in the movement world and the unschooling homeschooling world of these Montessori toys that are very basic in nature, but can be molded and changed per what the child wants to do with it. Also think that things that are outside, right, if kids are out exploring things like turning over rocks, playing in ponds, you know, like I was so lucky to grow up in a country environment where my parents felt safe. 

Because nobody lived around us where I could just run around and do whatever I wanted and had the opportunity to learn by messing up partially, you know, that's going to be in the vein of, Hey, something caused me pain. Hey, realized, Ooh, that I shouldn't do that. Whatever it is. I shouldn't kick Hornet's nest, Hornets, come out. I shouldn't flip over a rock without checking if there's a snake. All these things matter, maybe not as much as they used to, but for developing a robust, healthy human, they surely matter. And the thing I want to wrap up with dynamic system series, this idea that evolution is always progressing us. Right? And I've talked about this on the show numerous times. If we look at the idea of evolution it's always looked or it's always seen through the lens that we're moving towards a better goal. So even if you say, man, your posture is getting worse well that your posture is adapting to what you're asking it to do, right? So, you're getting better at sitting. That's a positive adaptation because that's what you've asked the organism to do. Now in this new book, which I'll be doing another show reviewing this book and, in its entirety, called "Breath" by James Nester, who also wrote "Deep" two really good books.

He talks about Dan Lieberman, the Harvard researcher that talks that worked with Irene Davis, a lot on barefoot mechanics. But Dan Lieberman out of Harvard talks about this theory of dis-evolution, right? That evolution is we're getting worse at being a robust part of this organism called earth. And if you look at all of the evolutionary theorists throughout time, you know, going back to Darwin and his contemporaries, they all had this idea that there can be dis-evolution or, you know, negative evolution. But they said, well, that's not how we have thought of evolution. So even if something's seems negative, it's actually positive because that's what you're asking the organism to do. Now, other parts of this would be, you know, is our quality of food asking us to do something different, maybe not, right. So, our food is affecting our health and that's not us trying to adapt to that food. We're just in a forced environment of poor food quality, a poor water quality, all these things. But our body is still trying to adapt. That's where we're seeing. That's why you see an auto immune issue. The auto immune issue is your body trying to attack the issue that's being caused by this food or this water or this light or this EMF and we got to realize that that has a shelf life. That's not dis-evolution, that's an organism working as hard as it can through the evolutionary process, as fast as it can within one generation and it just doesn't always pan out. 

So, I don't know where I stand on the dissemination tier yet. I would still go back to the Darwinian times, even though that, I mean, yeah, stuff changes, but that whole idea that, Hey, maybe we just need a different terminology for that or just say, Hey, moving towards a goal again. How do we determine if it's positive or negative or good or bad, and then getting into the next question it talked about, well, how do you create or when and how do we create free or, as Ellie determined organic movement play versus structured and when do we pull the trigger on those? So, the first thing know is that around five years of age, you can start actually coaching children. That's because from a cognitive and movement standpoint that the pieces are there, that we can actually probably just hold their attention long enough. But they can conceptualize external input of movement. And you'd say, well, I can tell my kid to do something at three years old and they do it sure, but the learning that's taking place is not going to really soak in. So, it's kind of wasted. This is where you have to make sure if we're going to be doing like physical therapy rehab, whatever it is with kids under this age, that hey, we got to make sure we're using movement, attractor states, we're using reflexive therapies. That's why I'm such a fan of dynamic, neuromuscular stabilization and reflex locomotion.

You can't coach kids into these things. So, I can't tell you how many times I've, you know, parents bring in kids that are toe walkers or they walked late and now there's different stuff going on. Like good luck getting a kid to go home and do a drill. We've got to set up an environment, micro and macro that changed that child. So around five years we can start coaching. Some of the question is, should we be right? Should we ever, you know, in this scenario, let's say a kid comes in toe walker and the parents freaking out, well, we've got to figure out why is this occurring in the first place, right? Is this a neurologic thing is an environmental thing? Is it a central coordination disorder or dysfunction? And what's going on here? So, if we were not going through the levels of competency, a movement is great Coke would put in his book movement. But if we think of motor learning and how that occurs, we've talked a lot about dynamic systems theory, motor learning is occurring due to these attractor states and the necessity for that movement to occur, right? And that's only going to be dictated by need and then need replicated time after time. Then when you look above motor learning skill acquisition, the fact that, Hey, now I've learned how to move. Hey, I want to do this specific thing and I need to actually have intentionality about it myself, or maybe there's somebody coaching me about that. 

So, think of trying to shoot a bow and arrow for the first time. Probably very rare that you know, a child, you know, so they didn't grow up in an environment where they saw mom and dad shoot a bow and arrow and they just find one on the ground and just like, pull it back and like hit a deer. You know, somebody, maybe they watch them. Maybe they, you know, somebody showed them. That's where we're going to make sure that like, are we at the stage where we can take that skill acquisition again? I said, that's going to start around five years old. And there's reasons for that. And then can we capitalize on that? That's also going to be individually based just because they say around five years, it doesn't mean that movement and cognition always match ages. And then think of free and organic play versus structured play. So, in terms of social engagement, free and organic movement, kids will, you know, socially engage. If you put five, three-year old’s together, they're probably all going to play together. There's very rarely an outlier, a kid it's going to get shun every once in a while, there is. But it's rare, that's built into our DNA, that's encoded in us, but also as we move through life, especially nowadays, we may pick up on some of these social cues that we feel we want to be more isolated. I'm going to pull myself whatever it is. And that's where creating structured play in particular. Yeah, we can think of structured play in two ways of him structuring things from a movement standpoint, I would shy away from that with kids. What I would say is get kids outside. That's the environmental shift for the structure, de structure through going outside, but then structure it with kids. And that's what sports are, right? We're literally structuring play with groups. There are rules. There's everybody has the same rules to adhere to. But that's why structured play is important because as we look at how we develop socially, well, that's how we've used movement from the time we were born to develop our central nervous system.

So, a big extension of our central nervous system is how we interact socially. So why not structure that? So, we're getting all of the bang for our buck with all those things. So, could we have a group of kids playing side and it's just as effective? Absolutely. But again, I would say don't structure the environment, structure the social aspects to it. And then you're also going to be amazed at how the natural, the organic structure within that system creates movement or games or ideas or rules that the kids come about with that actually accomplish the goal that we would be trying to get to happen anyways. The other thing that I think is going to be interesting when we get a group of kids together. So, say we get eight kids together or just 10 for the ease of percentages. And we look at the normal variants of central coordination dysfunction, which is about 30% of children. 

So, if we take three of the kids out of 10 and we say, Hey, we're going to stick them in a group with these other seven healthy movers, right? They are no blips in there, their motor development. What do you think those three kids are picking up even at the age of three or four or five, when let's say all the kids skip and squat and jump and there's movements that they can't do? That's an attractor state seeing that at a very young age, I need to fit in socially, which a big part of that is how we move. And they seem to can't do it. Their brain is starting to click, you know, 98% of our day is run by our subconscious activity, their subconscious and unconscious, sorry, is going crazy. Just why can't I do this? I should be able to do this. They, and like, we never had to tell them that. So that's where we need to get kids in socially, rich environments, diverse, you know, and that's tough to do nowadays, especially during COVID. But yeah, maybe that's why it's not so bad to get your child in daycare. Like I'm not telling anybody to, you know, I have my own qualms with that. I don't know how we're going to handle that if the time comes, but like that's a group of kids that they get to spend time with that, you know, in times of tribal society, they would have had tons of time with large groups of kids and children. And now it may be, you know, three or four friends in the neighborhood or, you know, and they're not going to school or preschool until five or six. Well, those things, the groundwork for these movement dysfunctions already laid. And maybe that's just because they weren't around enough, a diverse enough movement palette of who they were surrounded with. Specially if you're a parent and you don't move well yourself.

The other part of the social aspect with sport is performance for the rest of your life. Like we're learning a lot about social engagement and how do we work with the other people on teams? I know we know all that stuff. So, Ellie had a question, I know we're getting a little long, I'm trying to keep this under 30 minutes if I can about school. So, when we talk about school and how do we manipulate that environment with so much sitting, recess is being taken away the amount of time. It's just like being in work. I'm going to give you a quote by Frank Herbert, who was the author "God emperor of dune". Says, "dangers lurk and all systems, systems incorporate the unexamined beliefs of their creators, adopt the system except its beliefs and you help strengthen the resistance to change". It's a tough one. Like the only answer I have for you, if your kid goes to public school or even private school, that's still the standard, you know, sitting at a des. You see movements by like Kelly Starrett you know, the standup for life where they're getting kids in stand-up desks. That's a great move, but that may not be a movement rich environment. I mean, fidgeting around. It's great. But like how much movement are we doing for just standing all day? So, I'd say there's a big movement, obviously towards unschooling and homeschooling, then you control the environment. 

I don't know if that's the best thing for the last point we talked about, about social engagement and getting kids involved unless you have a co-op scenario that can work sometimes. Montessori schools there's a lot of schools that a big part of their learning is experiential and physical and getting out and doing things. So, there are options, again, some of these costs’ money and they're not available to everybody based on location. And then you see some of these nature schools or wilderness schools coming about. I haven't looked into it in our age just because obviously we haven't had a child of that age, but that's something I would be interested in our kid if we can. Because again, central nervous system development is largely tied to movement and what I see in school and what I saw personally, what I see especially nowadays, is we still learn a large majority of the information we learn is just purely information or skills that don't readily apply to the real world. And you may say, well, what's your going to learn about chopping down a tree out in the woods and building their own shelter? Well, there's probably a good bit of geometry physics you know, multiple things, but we're trying to get somebody to learn an environment that stimulates learning rather than makes them try to learn facts. 

So, the big goal of school in my opinion, is learn how to learn, become socially integrated. That doesn't mean become a chameleon, that means know how to interact with people appropriately, be respectful, be kind learn how to speak and then learn how to be creative and imaginative. That's a big part of being in an environment that allows you to explore things on your own or that experiential learning. So, I don't have a good answer if your kid's in a standard school system because there's only so much they can do before they become a trouble maker because their mom and dad told them to stand up every 20 minutes. It gets a little more specific here at the end. Ellie asked that or talked about how she sees a lot of kids around age six, seven that have already lost the hip hinge. Yeah, I mean, we see kids at five years old in the office that go through a top to rest of May. Can't touch their toes. Can't do a full squat. Coordination balance and skipping, and all these movements are just gone. And we kind of think, oh my gosh, you know, what do we do? My first piece of advice is let's stop freaking out about kids’ movements or early because things change with kids extremely fast. 

So, we can get very nitpicky, especially when we live in this world of, Hey, my kid's not on the right developmental path. Hey, my kid needs to be doing this but no, just kids are moldable, the chronological and both movement and then central nervous system development are all very widely. So, if we see big issues, that's where I worry but if you're like me and my kid can't skip, Hey, guess what? Create some games of skip, instead of saying, how do I coach better skipping? But talking about the hip hinge, she says, you know, why does it come lost? Well, environment does dictate some of that, but I'm telling you right now a huge part of this is that the person that they're watching most of the time, mom and dad have lost their hip hinge, never access it. And when we see kids around the age from three to five years old things called mirror neurons kick up in the parietal lobe and we see that that's when they start to really subconsciously and unconsciously absorb what's going on around them. Probably this is theorized for the benefit of when we lived in times where there's possibility mom or dad or both may pass away. I need to have skills to survive, right? Cook fish, protect myself, build fire, shelter, all these things. And if I couldn't pick that up without somebody explicitly telling me I'd be in it; I'd be shit out of luck. So, I think it's looking at yourself first. Does that mean you have to have a perfect squat for your baby to have her squat? No, but it sure helps for them to access it. Just like whatever language you use, whatever you watch on TV, whatever you eat, that child is becoming a customer that just because that's our environment. So realize the house is part of the child environment, but you as the parent, you are the child's environment, like completely because you created the house, you created the food situation, you created the love or the kindness, or you know, the opposite of that in that environment. 

So, it's you as the environment. And how should we find it? I think I talked on that. And again, we go back to the attractor states. Like if we, if we go outside of fixing the parent or working on the parent, like, what is that kid doing all day? Like, I can't tell you how many kids the parent brings in the kids slouched over in a gaming chair all day. And then they want me to work on that child's posture or give them drills, like, no, there's no drill. Get your butt out of the gaming chair you know, for the four hours you're in it, you get an hour. Or I saw Mark Chang, he's a martial artist and trainer out in California. I believe his kids he'll let them play video games, but they have to do horse stance for either while they're playing or before or after. So, like create kind of movement bookends if we're going to have time to sedentarism. Look, I played Nintendo when I was kid, but here's something that I have thought about a lot. The games that I play growing up, you got bored of, I mean, some of them you'd go far down the rabbit hole, but we may play for an hour and they're like, Oh, am I going to go outside and play again? Technology has changed. I mean, you're playing games now that are made to draw you in play these things all the way through. We see that they've figured out TV and Netflix to make us binge. So, we sit there for eight hours instead of just watching a half hour show. So, realize that stuff's not in our favor. So, you, again, as the parent control that part of the environment,

Ellie, also asked about spine. She said, when are the curves formed? Well you think by the time a child is upright walking more or less most of the curves of your spine. So, we have a lordotic curve in the several spines, we have a kyphotic curve and the thoracic spine, and then another lordotic curve in the lumbar spine. Those are pretty well set out by the time we're upright, but they fully become established by about the time we start to run, which is about three years old because we've had time to load axially more. But that is the process of up righting that starts taking place from literally about a week old, when children start to load their extremities and start to control abdominal pressure and abdominal wall strength and pressurization. And that's when we start to upright where we create axial extension through the spine and I mean, that continues throughout our life because we are in the status of our environment dictates something else. 

So, every time we do something to offset that we're trying to go through up righting. And up righting does not necessarily mean for those people out there that are just like crushing their t-spine on the foam roller, and then do an extension. That's not up righting that's mobilization. Up righting is trying to create again, a state where your body needs to create axial extension. She also asked how a child's spine is different than an adult. It's not really different at all. I mean, obviously there's a growth centers that are going to ossify as we get older. So that means that it's more, a little more flexible, a little more cartilaginous. Like we said, the curves are formed by the time we're pretty much load bearing. Obviously far more mobile, especially if we're pretty stiff. The biggest thing that I would say here is that they're just more susceptible to neurologic compensation. And what I mean by that is that's why you see scoliosis show up in youth, or it's kind of, we, I would say we collective, we, I it's assumed that around 95% of scoliosis as some sort of neuro and especially neuro ophthalmological issue that we're compensating for, how we're perceiving our environment by establishing curves in our spine to make it seem like we're dictating our environment at a kind of neutral equilibrium. 

So, there's a lot of like behavioral optometry and things like that functional neurology that go a long way for kids with that are experiencing, you know, issues with spinal curvatures and up righting issues. And then there is still that five to possible, 2% of kids with scoliosis or spine curve, up righting issues that are still idiopathic that we don't know a lot of theories about that, but I won't go into that but more susceptible. So, what do we want to be aware of? Hey, make sure your kid can see well, right. That's a big deal. The earlier kids get in contacts and glasses and have visual issues. The more correlation we see to things like scoliosis you know, it goes all the way down to like the food you eat, how a kid breathes. All these things matter for how their spine is going to compensate in the rest, their body. It's not just their spine, but we have a lot of vertebral segments and joints throughout the spine. So that's, we're going to see a mass amount of compensation. Last one Ellie talks about w sitting, she says, you know, is this a problem? Is this a compensation for something? This is not completely agreed on but I would say it's a compensation for poor spinal up righting or development, especially during stages where we see children load their hips during the developmental sequence.

So, when we see that a kid is starting to, or a child is starting to go through a rolling process and starting to load the hip and like a five-month position or seven months. And like, we go into DNS like a high oblique or low oblique position. There are certain children that skip stages, right? Wherever we see them you know, go right to you know, they skipped crawling, like I get that one all the time or they scoot and then they just go straight to walking. Well, that doesn't mean that your hip morphologically and neurologically had enough time to properly develop and be integrated, which means that maybe I want more input or I feel more stable if I take my hip to end range and then sit in it. So, when you sit in or when a child sits in that W position, their femur within that timing was in pretty much full internal rotation. And when they do that, that probably gives them more joint awareness proprioception of that joint, which creates more stability. And if you think when they do that, what are they doing sitting? So, they're trying to upright off of a stable base. So that's where, yeah. Again, are we going to coach them out of that? Probably not. And telling a kid not to do that is really tough, this is my nephew. 

So, what do we need to do? Create a movement attractor state, right? Where they need to load their hip differently and not take some nuance and some work, or you bring them to somebody like me and they create the micro environment and then help establish the macro environment at home. And then, yeah, I think obviously we know that that can over the long-term cause hip anteversion, which causes excessive or more internal rotation. And is that, you know, it can cause some pigeon toeing or you know, some toes pointing in when we're walking through the gate cycle, is that necessarily a bad thing? It's hard to label bad, good. If something doesn't cause pain. Interesting fact, most of your fastest sprinters, like Olympic collegiate are a little bit pigeon toed. The reason being for that, if you want to know, is that when you go through the gate cycle, as you swing your leg behind you and go through extension, you have to go through internal rotation of the hip, the more internal rotation you have to a limit, you're going to be able to wind up and create more torque in the hip, which gives you more drive just like a dry shaft off a car creates torque. So, is it necessary a bad thing? No. And I'm also not telling you to tell your kid to sit in and tell you a position to make them a faster sprinter. That's not going to happen either because there's also always a Goldilocks owner, happy medium. Man talked a lot about a lot of movement stuff for kids. 

And what got Ellie asking me all these questions as she had been following along and she's been following along with my blog series called the age of movement. Where I'm basically going from in utero and I'll go all the way into senescence or death, looking at the different stages of life and I haven't broken down into, I think about 15 or 16 categories now. And what should we expect from the movement at certain ages? What should we be working on at certain ages? And then there'll be, you know, specialty chapters in there on things like, you know, walking and breathing and growth spurts. So, there's just so much we could talk about, even on this, I could talk on each one of these topics probably for an hour or two, at least. So, I want to say thank you to Ellie for writing such a thorough email. I enjoyed it. And again, it makes my job easier to answer people's questions instead of just always create a scenario for myself to talk more. If you out there watching have more questions you can always email me at drbeaubeard@gmail or on social media @dreaubeard. I hope you guys all learn something that makes you better than before. And also, before we leave, keep up with that blog series because when all that's done, I'm going to be expanding everything and that's going to be a book probably coming out next spring called the age of movement. So again, hope to see you guys next time, take care.

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