 First and foremost, thanks to Erin and the ancestral health symposium for having me back for the second year. I'm very happy to be here and to present to you the sort of the next stage from our poster here. So you may, for those of you who were here last year, this is our poster, you'll notice the images here on the right. Since that time, those sets of images, those sort of six images have shared over 20,000 times on Facebook. We've launched a new brand called Building Your Baby from the Ground Up because of that success or the fact that those images went viral. First and foremost, just the medical disclaimer. We are not rendering any treatment here, so seek counsel from your physician if you have any clinical questions. So to start, our culture has this idea that in order to get to a point where we are crawling, sitting, or standing, we have to use these infant orthotic devices on the left, the bumbo seats or infant floor seats, or what we've deemed caretaker assisted movements, helping an infant move. And what we know is that we don't need those devices at all. We don't need these assistance because infants know how to move and develop completely and fully on their own. They have a hardwired or softwired neurological pattern that helps them move and learn to move through the process from zero to 18 months. So Building Your Baby from the Ground Up is our mission to empower parents, caretakers, daycare providers, and clinicians with actionable steps for helping infants around the world to move and develop naturally. And so that concept of developing naturally, what does that mean and how do we define it? So we say natural mechanical development in this case is a baby that is allowed to get into a position or movement completely on their own, like sitting up crawling or walking on their own two feet. And that's in contrast to what we're calling artificial development when we place a baby into these positions or when a baby experiences these positions through the aid of a device or physical assistance from a caretaker. So here is an example of natural mechanical development. So you may recognize this creature, she was at the symposium last year. And in this image or this video, you'll notice that the infant is in a neutral spinal state. The spine is elongated, they're very relaxed. It's in this position that infants learn to stabilize their core, engage the oblique chains from the hip to the shoulder. This child is struggling to get over, go it, go it, go it, go it. And successfully rolling over to a prone position. And you may notice that the infant's elbows are here on the ground, engaging with the floor. And what we know from developmental kinesiology is that the sensory engagement of being on the floor plays a role with the mechanical and motor output that the infant figures out how to do. So sensory input is important for mechanical and motor output. What I want to cover in the next several slides is what we call the four principles of baby-led movement. So we're gonna dig into a couple of concepts here. The first principle that we propose is that we want to forego all IODs or infant orthotic devices. Devices that artificially support an infant's biomechanical system. So you'll recall from the poster images, these devices on the left were calling infant orthotic devices, infant orthotic device, infant orthotic device. They're placing an infant in an artificial position that they can't attain completely on their own. Whereas on the right, you'll see, spines are elongated. They have stability on their own. They're attaining the physical positions fully on their own, not being placed in artificial or states of flexion or states of physical attainment that they can't physically get to on their own. So here's a brief example of a comparison between what we see in natural movement. So you'll see that this child is, their little legs are moving. The little head, they can't quite support it. It's not quite there. They have some stability of their elbows. There's some sensory input from their elbows. They're trying to engage with the environment in the world now. Well, you might see on your Instagram feeds with your friends and colleagues and family. We're obsessed with this idea that we need to place infants in a position so that they can view the world from an adult perspective. You'll notice that the low back here is in hyperextension. The head is more verticalized. The spine is verticalized beyond the point where the infant can do it on their own. So that artificial support starts to change the sensory input that drives the motor output for the infant. Principle number two of building your baby is to resist caretaker-assisted movements, and you'll see in this next slide the idea here. So we don't want to place an infant into a position that they can't attain on their own. So this infant can't get to a seated position on their own, yet we put them in that position so that we can engage with them on an adult or sort of caretaker perspective. This concept that we want to help infants stand or help infants walk, we put them in these positions beyond their own capabilities, and that sensory input of being in these positions alters their motor output. So here is an example of a caretaker-assisted movement, and I think you'll see. So we refer to that device as an infant orthotic device, so he's using this. This child isn't yet able to fully get to a standing position or a walking position on their own. But with the device, if we place them there, okay, they can stay there. This child was actually put in these positions quite often. So here's the perfect example here of what we're saying. So he can't get to stand in on his own, but the caretaker puts them there. You'll see that for the most part, his knees are locked out. Lumbar spine moves into extension. Look, she's actually said that she does this quite often, this sort of dancing motion. And you can see that it destabilizes the shoulder girdle, destabilizes the knees, destabilizes the lumbar spine. And the knees are locked out. You don't see this in a naturally developed infant. The third principle is this idea of getting on the ground. So we say instead of using infant orthotic devices or caretaker-assisted movements, simply get on the ground with your infant and encourage your daycare providers and the grandparents that play a role with the caretaking. Instead of reading a book like this, okay, let's try like this. This infant is in a very neutral position. Now, culturally, okay, your friends and colleagues will think that you're crazy for doing this, right? But the idea is to allow that spine and that biomechanical system to be neutral and in a natural developmental state. Principle number four is to educate the caretakers, clinicians, and daycare facilities that take care of your infants or the infants in your community. We have those educational resources on our website. We'll share some of those details later. We have some clinical posters that clinicians and daycare facilities can purchase as well. Now, I wanna show you just some of the guiding concepts and principles that almost allow us to make some of these statements and ideas. Wolf's law is sometimes contentious physiologic law that says bone development happens in response to the mechanical forces that are placed upon it. So in our culture, we can think about, okay, we tell people to lift weights at a later age so that they prevent osteoporosis, okay? So that's kind of our perspective here. But early in infant-motor pattern development, it's important because they're changing the mechanical input that the baby provides to their bone structure, provides the mechanical input that the bone responds to. Davis's law is that same concept in relation to soft tissue development. So the mechanical forces that are placed onto your soft tissue, your tendons, your muscles, your ligaments, changes their development. Had me in theory, this is maybe a bit more widely known. The concept is neurons, a neurological tissue that fires together, wires together. So we have this idea that when you engage the neurological tissue in repeated motions, that it starts to develop the pattern. The mechanostat theory is sometimes referred to as Wolf's law 2.0. Also kind of this concept of mechanical input drives the physiological mechanisms of what we see. Now, a bit more exciting is this idea of developmental kinesiology, and much of this came out of Europe and Eastern Europe in the 1950s, 60s, 70s, and now. So Vojta, Václav Vojta was a pediatric neurologist. Professor Kolash is at the rehabilitation school in Prague. And Amy Pigler, who was a pediatric physician in Hungary, and will detail some of their work here. This is Vojta, he discovered and laid out the concepts that infant motor pattern development is predictable and understandable. We have a roadmap of when an infant can reach certain milestones fully on their own. So about nine months, they can sit up fully on their own. About 13 months, they can begin to stand. So we have a roadmap of the neurological pattern, the software pattern that drives this behavior. This is Professor Kolash and I've had the opportunity to take courses with him. One of my primary mentors in this space, and I just love this quote. The nervous system establishes programs that control human posture, movement, and gait. This motor control is largely established during the first critical years of life. This is it. So motor control is driven by sensory experiences and the integral nature of that together. Amy Pigler, again, she was a primary influencer on Magda Gerber, who her work is more well known in the infant education space. Not necessarily motor development, but still this idea that less is more with how we treat our infants. Now, most of the research that we have in this space of infant motor pattern development is on walkers. So we're going to detail some of that. This is a quote actually from a physical therapist, not necessarily research. But statement says no equipment enhances a child's motor development. Because the data indicates a considerable risk and major, minor injury, and even death from the use of infant walkers, because there's no clear benefit from their use, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends a ban on the manufacture and sale of mobile infant walkers. And this actually, these devices are, walkers are banned in Canada already and in some European countries. Baby walkers are associated with a delay in achieving normal local motor milestones, use should be discouraged. Usage of baby walkers can delay the acquisition of independent walking and disturb the normal gait pattern. So you can see that, okay, our culture uses these devices because we think that it's helping our children walk, helping our children stand. In all actuality, it alters their pattern and delays the process. A bit more research here on the next page. Disharmonic and delayed motor development, contractions, calf muscles, motor development, mimicking spastic, diaplegia are considered to be caused by the early use of walkers. That's a case study. For some infants, the excessive use of baby walkers alters the pathway of no more local motor development. No advantage of the walkers. Now what I'm asking you to do here is allow me to extrapolate what that research says and why it might be working under the construct of the physiological mechanisms of development, neurological construct of motor movement patterns. We take this idea that the walkers maybe are not ideal and are altering motor pattern and gait development. And I want to extend them to this idea that any altered or artificial mechanical state may be compromising to their development. So you see here the bumbo seat or infant floor seat puts the infant in a state of flexion, significant flexion. We might call that forward head posture in an adult or if I were treating them in my clinic, they would have forward head posture. We'd correct that. Or we see this person on the right lovingly holding their infant. But in a position that the infant is not yet ready to attain on their own. Now this page is taken from the rehab school out of Prague. This slide is taken from them. And I love this quote, poor local motor development can be shadowed throughout a lifetime and what you'll see what they're pointing to on this slide. Rib flaring down low here on the infant and you can see rib flaring here. So we see these patterns reflected into adulthood. Now, you might remember the first video that we watched of the infant moving. The infant was on its side, rotating over, engaging the oblique chains and engaging core stability, engaging lumbar spine stability, cervical spine stability. The whole pattern to get to the point where they're rolling over. Now, why is that important? Well, these images here show this process drives the development of core stability. These images show appropriate abdominal control, appropriate abdominal control. If we don't develop those patterns now, we start to see destabilization of lumbar spine, overactivity of this musculature on the posterior chain. And then we start to develop the kyphosis that we see in forward head posture and many of the adults that I treat. Now, so just a brief view here and I'm not going to enlarge these to full screen. So what I want you to see here is his scapula are winging here, right? And it's possible that those scapula wing, because he didn't spend enough time engaging with the floor and stabilizing in a natural way. So what I want you to see with this infant and you're going to watch the small baby on the right here, watch this. So he's engaging, he's on the floor. That child is vertical, but here, now watch this, boom, look at that. We know that as the bear crawl movement or bear in yoga or in exercises. The core is stabilized, the hips are engaged, the shoulder girdles are learning how to move. So if you think back about that other video, the scapula were winging and unstable, that child perhaps didn't have enough time on the floor developing its own stability. And I think what's beautiful here is we can start to change the future of mechanics in an adult by altering how we treat them as infants. Now, again, I want to use this image, it's just mirrored here. Overactivity of the paraspinals of the spine. We used to develop this flexion, destabilized spine. And we see it mirrored here at a very early point. So this child is not yet ready to verticalize themselves on their own. They're being held in a vertical state. And you can see this child's head is forward because he doesn't have the stability to bring himself into a point where he's neutral and in an elongated state. So, okay, what do we propose? Okay, we'll altering the way we hold our infants. Instead of the caretaker-assisted movement on the left where the child's prematurely verticalized, let's hold them in a horizontal position that stabilizes and supports their spine. Now, we're not the only people talking about this. In the physical therapy world, in the occupational therapy world, they've started to use this term container baby syndrome. I actually like this statement, and you can dig into that as well. The idea that there's a syndrome developing by the way we treat our kids. Now, okay, we're gonna go through a few examples of this artificial development. So what you'll see here is this child can't yet stand on its own, but we're putting them in a fully verticalized position. So watch this right foot for a little bit. It's turning almost over onto the side. Sometimes he goes onto his little toes, but watch this knee for a bit. Look how this knee starts to develop this angle. We call it a valgosity, and in young athletes, that valgosity motion is what puts you at a mechanical disadvantage for injuries, say on the basketball court. And so, we're wiring these motor patterns. Remember that phrase, neurons that fire together, wire together, right? We're starting to wire these patterns together. And not encouraging natural development, but in fact, this artificial or poor locomotor system development. Now, okay, so here is this idea. And again, most of the research that we have is on walkers. This child can't walk on his own, and you'll see it in just a little bit. This child actually spent some significant time in these devices. So you'll see that his feet find the ground. I must say that no babies were harmed in the making of these videos, right? There's this child's not so happy here, but so now, okay, check it out. So the walker is an infant orthotic device. We refer to this as caretaker assisted movements. But you'll see that he's not able to do this on his own. And when we're supporting him here, his shoulder girdle is destabilized. His core isn't functioning, his lumbar spine is destabilized. His glutes aren't functioning the way that they should. His knees go into valgosity here. He's not using his foot as we would expect a normal human or adult to do. Feet, pardon me. Okay, examples of natural development. We're gonna come back to this idea. Okay, this is an important part of developing core stability. And here, this video shows the slow process of infant motor pattern development. Like the slow food movement, slow motor pattern development is important here. So here, the child's developing core stability. They're engaging their hip flexors in a sustainable and stable way, engaging of the oblique chains here. They're starting to engage scapular stability. If we were to put a hole right through that shoulder, we'd find that the scapula is engaging the musculature that's stabilizing that. Now, they're trying to move over, trying to roll, trying to roll, trying to roll, trying to roll, and then they lose interest. Now, we might have the idea, and often we do, is they're trying to roll over. Well, let's just roll them over. And what we argue is that the struggle of them trying to get there is important. So struggling to move, and if we had the sound on, you'd hear this little girl grunting like a truck driver, trying to get over. And that struggle is important. They're engaging the whole kinematic system here. And these are the neurological patterns that Professor Vojta discovered and knew existed as an inherent pattern that could be predictable and executable by infants without any assistance at all. And it's through this pattern of development that they develop incredible core stability. And without the process of struggling through it, we're putting our infants at a disadvantage. Time, sorry, Chek. Got it. So let's watch this video just a bit because I want you to see the infant move both from the supine position. So again, they're developing core stability. Breathing pattern here is stabilized. Now, watch this. So infants' legs are relaxed, they're engaging. Now, watch when an object comes into play. Boom! Look at that stability. Now, if you make any adult do that, that's out of shape. That's a struggle for them. But look at the infant just holding up, hanging out there. That's a core stability exercise. So we want to let them engage their core and their structure as they should. So what we'll see in the next video here is an idea that we don't want to place a child into a environment. And sorry, that video is not edited, so we're going to skip through that. So this idea, the baby lead development is best. We propose that a minimalistic evolutionary model is superior to any device or caretaker-assisted movements. And with the building your baby paradigm, we propose that parents and caregivers can intervene in a beneficial rather than a detrimental way by following the program and avoiding all devices or assistance that hinder or alter natural development and movement. Again, the four principles of baby lead movement, forego all infant or orthotic devices, any device that places your infant into an artificial position. Resist the idea of caretaker-assisted movements, helping them walk, helping them stand, helping them sit. Get on the ground yourself. You might begin to eat your dinners on the ground. You might begin to eat your breakfast on the ground. You might read books, laying flat on your back. It's a different way of engaging. It might be your own core stability exercises that you start to think about in this position, and educate your caretakers. And so this is the idea, so for those of you that have children of your own, you might recall going to the daycare facilities. And you see these devices, walkers, jumpers, bumbo seats, infant seats, all over the place. And so the idea is taking some of this material and sharing it with them so that they might have a realization we've already had other daycare facilities reach out and announce that they've gotten rid of their devices. And they're starting to follow the building your baby paradigm for their infants and they're handing our guides to their infants. You can find us buildingyourbaby.com at buildingyourbaby on Instagram, hashtag buildingyourbaby, email address hello at buildingyourbaby. For those of you that are interested, you can use this discount code HF19 for 25% off in the shop. You can buy guides. The idea is if you have a person in your life that's pregnant now, buy them a guide and just have it shipped to them. Or buy them a PDF and have it delivered to their inbox. We've had people say that after they've read the guide and after they've gone through this material, they've gone through and deleted items from their baby registry. Because they understand that those are not ideal, even though they're told by our culture that those devices are helpful. So try to get them before the baby's born. That's the most ideal. And I want to tie back this idea that so Erin uses this term and this term of evolutionary mismatch, right? We didn't see walkers a million years ago. We didn't see floor seats a million years ago. And for the most part, we don't see it in any other species on the planet, except ours where we use these devices. So if you have any interest in reaching out directly to me, there's my email again on Instagram. And if you want to see any of these videos again, I'll be around throughout the weekend. We can show you some of those and dig into some other concepts. So is that a good starting point? Okay, yeah, questions. Hey, great presentation. Okay, so two questions. One is how does the baby and the baby walk or how does that result in a fatality? What's the- Yeah, so that's on the extreme end, right? So in my world, I'm not saying that those result in death. The American Pediatrics Association really says, okay, those devices can easily go down a set of stairs. That's where the death occurs, right? So let's separate the physical harm of those things toppling over from the mechanical changes that I'm talking about. Yeah, so good question. All right, so it could be just, okay. So now maybe an extension of this thinking is that maybe you don't want to force the baby into any motion or in any position. So at nighttime, we say sleep facing up or facing down. I don't remember which one it is. What's your opinion on that? Yeah, so I can't make an official clinical statement on that, right? The standard statements are sleeping on the back is best. There's some research that says that that is supportive of this idea of reducing SIDS or sudden infant death syndrome. I don't have an official statement on that. In my own case, study of my own daughter, we would put her on her back. She'd fall asleep and she'd roll right over. So I don't have a good statement on that. Okay, thanks. Hi, Chris, thank you. That was great. I love your work so much. Thank you so much. My name's Stephanie Welch. The first thing that I ever came to AHS to talk about was called shoes are not paleo. And I just wanted to bring it up and ask if you would make a comment, because I didn't see that directly in there. In terms of shoes as both an infanorthotic device as well as a sensory deprivation aspect preventing, in the same way like hands, they're feeling the reaction of stuff in feet too. So if you just comment on shoes. Yes, yes, and so phase 1.3 of building your baby is to start to help people choose some of those devices appropriately. And it's true that shoes are a significant impedance to natural development. And so you might see a child in a set of shoes that, you know, in our world, in the ancestral world, we know that they're rigid devices, right? They're very, the soles are thick, they're tight, they're rigid, and they don't allow the infant to move appropriately. Which is why you see kids kick off their shoes as soon as they want to start playing, they kick off their shoes and go run. Because they feel more stable without those devices, if you will. And so it's true, there's a few brands that are out there, if for the most part, our daughter did not wear shoes. For the most part, if she did, there's a couple of brands that are very minimalistic and offer some safety on the bottom, but not a whole lot of support. So good question. And in regarding the sensory as well, because even when the infant was kind of like hanging there and kind of like tapping at the ground. But it's not getting, I mean, well, that's an aspect of the devices that you were showing too, but also on the ground when they do have shoes on, they're not sensing what's happening between their body and the environment. Like the struggle that you showed with them. You're exactly correct. And there was just that piece of research came out, and I'm sorry, I'm not citing it appropriately, but that showed shoes reduce sensation of the foot, whereas callus development does not reduce the ability to sense through the foot. So shoes alter sensory input, exactly correct. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you. I'm coming from this at a lactation perspective that in the lactation world, we talk about holding your baby all the time. You know how important it is. There's some cultures that carry their baby almost the whole entire first year. So I'm just curious, this seems a little different because you want their baby on the floor all the time. Is it, I'm imagining, and that position that you showed to carry them and doesn't seem sustainable, but if you're going to hold your baby a long time, so. Yes, good question. So it's true. Don't take our work as saying put your child on the ground and neglect them. Engage with them on the ground, and when you do hold them, typically in those traditional cultures, like you see those infants supported fully, like their spine is supported by the carriers. So you don't see them being placed in the positions that allow them their biomechanical system to fail early on without the stability and support. So we don't have official statements from the building your baby brand about infant carriers or sort of the slings, that sort of thing. A general statement is if the spine is supported, then the devices can be okay and used if they're not yet able to support their spine on their own, right? So if they can't physically verticalize themselves, then we have to provide them some support, otherwise they'll start to compensate with their mechanical development. Good question. Again, thanks so much for having me and for listening and check us out online. Thanks so much. Thanks so much, Chris.