Movement & Disability: Stacking Movement and Education for a Meaningful life
Move Your DNA with Katy Bowman
Nutritious Movement
4.8 • 686 Ratings
🗓️ 2 April 2026
⏱️ 68 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Inspired by a moving letter from a parent of an adult son with autism, biomechanist Katy Bowman and biologist Dr. Jeannette Loram explore the relationship between movement, health, and quality of life for people with disabilities.
They are joined by Kristina Montgomery, a special education teacher at a school for children and young adults affected by autism, and a behavior analyst working with Essential for Living, a curriculum designed for those with learning difficulties. Through her work, Kristina teaches an event-based approach to learning—one that moves away from abstract, isolated skills and instead “stacks” goals within meaningful, naturally occurring events. This approach supports not only skill development, but also health, social inclusion, and caregiver sustainability.
Together, they discuss the importance of choosing activities that are meaningful to the learner both in the moment and for future independence, and the shift from instructing a task to modeling it alongside the student. Kristina also shares how powerful movement stacking has been in her work, improving both the happiness and wellbeing of the people she supports.
This episode is a powerful reminder that movement truly is for every body, and that by embedding it into daily life, caregiving, parenting, and teaching can become more sustainable, and joyful for everyone involved.
Enhanced Show Notes and Full Transcript
00:00 – A Letter from a Parent of an Autistic Son
04:50 – Movement & Disability: Movement is for Every Body
07:57 – Podcast Sponsors
09:44 – Introduction to Kristina Montgomery
14:00 – Essential for Living: Life Skills Curriculum
15:58 – What Are Functional Life Skills?
19:45 – Movement, Health, and Wellness in Special Education
23:05 – What and Why is Movement Stacking?
37:00 – Designing Environments to Promote Movement and Education
44:12 – Event-Based Teaching Course
53:46 – Listener Question: Balance Training with a Sore Knee
Resources, Books and Courses Mentioned:
Kristina Montgomery
Learn more about Kristina and her work in special education and behavior analysis.
Event-Based Learning Course (Essential for Living)
A practical course on designing special education goals using event-based learning and movement stacking.
Includes 20% discount for listeners.
Essential for Living: Introduction Course
An overview of the Essential for Living curriculum and its core principles.
Includes 20% discount for listeners.
Grow Wild Book Club – Katy Bowman
A free book club for therapists and parents of neurodivergent children.
Connect, Move & Learn:
Join Our Newsletter: Movement Colored Glasses
Follow Katy on Substack
Try Katy's Virtual Studio Free for 7 days!
Made Possible By Our Wonderful Sponsors:
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Movemate:Â Active standing boards with smoothly articulating wooden slats. Designed to keep you moving without interrupting your focus.
Peluva: Five-toe minimalist shoes that move like you do—take 10% off with code NUTRITIOUSMOVEMENT
Thoughts/questions email us at podcast@nutritiousmovement.com
Your Voice on the Podcast: Read The CreditsÂ
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the Move Your DNA podcast. I'm Katie Bowman, biomechanist, and author. |
| 0:08.8 | And I'm Jeanette Lorham, biologist and movement teacher. |
| 0:12.9 | Everybody is welcome here. Let's get started. |
| 0:17.6 | Jeanette. Yes. I want to read you this letter that I got. |
| 0:21.0 | Oh. |
| 0:21.8 | Lovely. |
| 0:22.0 | I got it in person last year when I was at Anya's Barefoot Expo. |
| 0:31.4 | And I'm not going to read the whole thing because it's kind of long. |
| 0:33.8 | But let me, they're basically talking like, I appreciate your work, you know, moving more, |
| 0:40.2 | uh, changing our lifestyle around movement. The biggest reason for me personally, talking about the |
| 0:46.6 | benefits is our youngest son. He is 27 and lives, lives with us because he is autistic, |
| 0:51.3 | with the comorbidity of intellectually disabled. Finding you and your |
| 0:55.8 | material is an answer to a prayer, yes. I know that sounds dramatic. However, if you know how much time |
| 1:01.1 | and money we spent on speech, occupational therapy, etc., you would agree. I'm going to skip down. |
| 1:09.5 | Now back to our son and all the changes he has been experiencing, |
| 1:13.4 | everything we had tried since he was very young, felt a bit scripted to help with crawling, |
| 1:18.7 | walking, talking, eating, and just moving in general. Most of the therapies were met with a lot |
| 1:23.9 | of resistance due to it being extremely hard and too many demands. As a family of eight, |
| 1:30.2 | we have six boys. Oh, God help them. Although I have six brothers, so I get it. We're all stressed |
| 1:40.0 | with trying to help this youngest child. It would have been easier to pull my hair out than do all |
| 1:47.1 | that we had to do and with little or no lasting results. Now, after selling our couch and recliner, |
| 1:54.5 | getting rid of most of our chairs, purchasing a coffee table, cutting the legs down low for a place |
... |
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