Uphill Books

Movement Matters

Uphill Books

Movement Matters

publishing

What Do We Mean By #PracticeWhatYouPublish?

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We’re all changed by the books we read, but the staff and authors at Propriometrics Press strive to embody the ideas we work to bring to the world. Our team lives and models the ideas presented in our books and when on social media we like to share the way we individually fit our books’ ideas into our life by using the hashtag #practicewhatyoupublish.

When you see a #practicewhatyoupublish post you are seeing how we, Propriometrics Press staff and authors, bring the theories in our books to life. You can find these posts by searching the hashtag #practicewhatyoupublish on Instagram. 

Below are some examples of the way we embody our books.

Eat Well, Move Well, Live Well author Galina Denzel adds movement to her meetings.

Who packs new book pre-orders? Our authors (and their friends and family) do! Check out some dynamic packing and Movement Matters’s Vitamin Community in action.

How do our books get edited? Usually on the move! Eat Well, Move Well, Live Well author Galina Denzel mobilizes her hips while getting much needed editing work done.

The prep for a new book launch includes many packing supplies. To get ready for all the packing work, we train by taking them to the office on foot.

Our ideas are contagious! Even the audio engineer has learned to add movement to his day (the Whole Body Barefoot audiobook in process!).

Author Katy Bowman shows how the simple shift of cooking outside can add more movement, nature, and family-in-nature time to something she does every day. More on this “stack your life” idea in Movement Matters.

Always learning about, listening and scanning for wildlife, Dawn Again and Wolf Girl author Doniga Markegard identifies a downed sparrow under her window.

Dynamic Ager and Dynamic Aging co-author Joan Allen celebrates her 79th birthday on the Appalachian Trail.

And to see how the entire Propriometrics Press staff applies the principles of Move Your DNA to our working and reading time, check out our post Dynamic Reading and Writing.

For more Practice What You Publish examples, follow us @propriometricspress and our authors on Instagram: @nutritiousmovement, @galinadenzel, @rolanddenzel, @dawn.again

Our books are now distributed by Chelsea Green!

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Starting this month, Propriometrics Press titles will be distributed by Chelsea Green Publishing! We are very excited to work together with Chelsea Green, who shares our commitment to engaging and educational books that promote healthy, sustainable, and nature-focused living.

“We are thrilled to be working with Propriometrics Press and representing their titles,” says Michael Weaver, Trade and Export Sales Manager for Chelsea Green Publishing. “Movement does matter—both for human health and for connecting with the natural world—and Katy Bowman’s books, and Propriometrics’ entire catalog, are a timely and valuable addition to our list. They’ve already taught me personally to see movement in a new way, and I’m excited to share that perspective with as many readers as possible!”
What does this mean for you? All of our titles are still available through all of the usual channels: your local bookstore, Amazon, and wherever you buy our books! You can also find all the Propriometrics Press titles on the Chelsea Green website! Visit it to learn more, and check out their fantastic catalog.

Propriometrics Press is seeking a new Publisher!

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As Propriometrics Press continues to grow and we gear up to launch a few new titles (keep up with our website and our Twitter and Instagram profiles for updates!), we are hoping to add a new publisher to our team—someone who can oversee projects, timelines, and big-picture stuff. See below for more information and our requirements!

Propriometrics Press is seeking a publisher for our dynamic and exciting non-fiction micropress. We want someone motivated, with keen marketing and business sense, excellent communication skills, and a lot of vision. This position will take approximately 20-30 hours a week, with flexible hours that accommodate busy periods and lulls. We are located in the Pacific Northwest; local candidates a plus. You would be overseeing a small team making a big impact; our backlist is full of bestsellers and award-winners.

Your tasks would include:

  • Managing budgets for backlist promotions, reprints, and new books
  • Liaising with our foreign rights agent, distributor, and printer on all tasks
  • Keeping big-picture schedules on track, including lead time for marketing and promotions
  • Managing our editorial, production, and promotions staff
  • Creating and leading marketing initiatives for front and backlist
  • Helping to plan and organize author events and book tours
  • Bringing new book ideas to the table

You have:

  • At least 5 years’ experience in book publishing, including at least 1 year in a senior management position, as a publisher preferred
  • A thorough and proven skill with book marketing and promotions
  • Contacts at major publications for review
  • A passion for making thought-provoking books that aim to shift our culture into a more sustainable, human-movement-based future
  • An understanding of the Propriometrics backlist and mandate, and a keen eye for next steps

Please submit a cover letter, detailed CV, and a thorough marketing plan you created and implemented for an existing book to Penelope at [email protected].

Take a walk on the range

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Guest post by Dawn Again author Doniga Markegard

Just outside my front door there is a field of stinging nettles the size of half a city block. It is the healthiest plot of nettles I have yet to see.

It was not always that way. There was an old barn on the hill above, that once was a milking barn and then held moonshine during prohibition. The activities in the barn helped pay the mortgage on the ranch and supported the growing family of settlers. When my husband arrived on the ranch the barn was falling down, due to lack of maintenance. The new owners made money elsewhere and simply used the ranch as an escape from the modern day stresses and routine.

The barn was bulldozed into the ground. Remnants of the roaring Twenties and a family of farmers making a go at life in California would soon turn to dirt. That dirt would then be fresh breeding ground for seeds that were carried along the coastal winds, dropped by birds as they migrated or a fox as he marked a territory. The seeds that lay in the freshly disturbed earth were not those that dominated the surrounding grasslands. They were seeds that some call the name forbidden to utter in some circles, the dirty word that many groups dedicate themselves to seek out and conquer: Invasive Species.

Poison hemlock, ripgut brome and medusahead all are icing on the cake of the conqueror. As these species drift around the world, looking for an opportunity to propagate, we have a choice to view them as a problem or an opportunity. So when the dirt became home to Italian thistle and poison hemlock, we put in the pigs. In nature, waste equals food, so if we are to mimic nature, everything eats and is eaten. When we want to sculpt our lives and our landscapes, that basic principle can help us avoid dissonance. The pigs did what they do: eat everything. They ate the roots of the plants because we let them stay long enough to feast on the starchy taproots of the thistle. Then we moved them off and let the ground rest and recover from the disturbance.

Winter set in, and soon a diversity of plants began to establish in the pig fertilized and disturbed earth. We did not spread any seeds, just waited and watched as the drifters found a settling place amongst the diversity and chaos. The result is a field of stinging nettle that is so healthy that the top leaves are the size of my hand—despite the drought—rivaling those of the Pacific Northwest, where everything is greener and bigger. So when life brings us stinging nettles, what more are we to do than to eat, a basic behavior we share with all life on earth. The act of gathering, preparing food and then the celebration of eating helps us to tap into that familiar comfort of not only surviving, but thriving.

Each species has a role and once we begin viewing this diversity as something to celebrate rather than select, isolate and destroy, the better off our lives and landscapes will become. The ranches on which our livestock graze support 66 species of birds and 157 species of plants. In all this diversity there is food being grown. How we tend to that food source is up to each and every individual. For our family, in spring, an abundance of stinging nettle means it’s time to make stinging nettle chips!

Recipe: Stinging Nettle Chips

Ingredients:

Top 3 or 4 sets of leaves of the stinging nettle plant before they flower in the early spring

Olive Oil

Apple Cider Vinegar

Nutritional Yeast

Sea Salt

Instructions:

Harvest the nettle, be creative, collect as many as you can. See page 211 of Dawn Again to learn how to harvest without gloves. I also recently worked with my daughter Quince and I held a bag under the plant while she carefully cut the leaves with scissors. Enjoy the adventure of interacting with the plant.

Find a bowl large enough to fit all the nettles. Pour in the olive oil and vinegar about 3 parts oil to one part vinegar. Stir in the nutritional yeast until you have a slurry. Add in a couple pinches of salt to taste. Set all the trimmed leaves of the stinging nettle as well as the top group of leaves that form a bud. With a wooden spoon gently massage the oil mixture into the nettles until they are thoroughly coated. Pour in more oil as needed to coat the nettle. Take your time with this, part of the process is to massage out the stingers. Don’t tear the leaves, just work the oil into the surface. You know when it is ready when you pick up a raw nettle leaf, eat it and it does not sting your tongue. When you taste it, go through a sense meditation before you place the leave on your tongue. Then use your intuition to add more salt, fat or acid to the mix. See page 60 of Dawn Again for sense meditation. Preheat the oven to 300 degrees and place the nettles flat on a cookie sheet. Cook for about 20 mins, turning half way through until the leaves are crisp but not burnt.

Spring loaded

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As a company of book lovers, we equate any change in the season with an opportunity to talk about the books we are reading, planning to read, or have recently read. Here in the northern hemisphere, spring is springing, bringing days of longer light, chirpier birds, and a feeling of excitement about the coming weeks and months of warmer weather and beach days.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

For me, any spring read is one I can take out into the garden with me, but since I live on the east coast of Canada, and spring is being quite pokey this year, I have to content myself with reading near a big window, supervising the slow melting of the snow that currently covers my garden. To that end, there are a couple of old gardening books my parents, both avid gardeners, passed down to me. I page through them every early spring, dreaming of getting my hands dirty when the big melt finally comes. I’m also digging in to Baseball Life Advice by Stacey May Fowles as that season once again heats up. And lately I’m finding I really want to prioritize the voices of women. To that end, Penelope by Sue Goyette always has a place on my shelf, as does anything by Alice Munro, in this case the amazing Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage. And I’m loving dipping into Startle and Illuminate, a book of writing advice from Carol Shields.

 

 

Rounding out this stack are reference books that feel luxurious. I want to eat everything that Deb Perelman cooks, so I love reading—and cooking from—her book Smitten Kitchen Every Day. The Hidden Lives of Trees I am slowly making my way through, a pace I’ll likely pick up as the leaves return outside my windows. And then there is Lists of Note, a perfectly odd compendium of lists by people like Sylvia Plath and Jack Kerouac, Edith Wharton and Captain Beefheart. As a lifelong lover of lists of all kinds, I am infatuated with this book. The thing about lists is that they can reveal much more than mundane details—everything from love to grief, to writing advice, to notes on how to be a good person are detailed here. And finally, an Italian translation of The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. I don’t read this one so much as dream of being able to read it. Still, I like to open it and practice my pronunciation and challenge my comprehension.

 

Publisher and author Katy Bowman‘s stack


What are “spring reads”? To me they are those books that are grounded in the season OR they are books that help you do some deep cleaning. I read Animal Vegetable Miracle every year as I try to remind myself why I want to get out in the garden. Gathering Moss, Mind of the Raven, and The Home Place are books about an aspect of the natural world—and spring is where you’ll find me watching more birds, sitting on bare earth trying to pick things apart with my hands and eyes. Eat Well Move Well Live Well—while this is “52 Weeks of” book, I’m going to pick just a couple small chapters (“Fermenting” and “I Have Needs,” if you must know) and make that part of tidying house. Along those same lines, How to be a Better Person is like Spring Cleaning for my soul. “400+ ways to make a difference in yourself—and the world”, and I seem to need reminders for about 395 of them!

 

Co-author of Eat Well, Move Well, Live Well Roland Denzel’s stack

That big book is by Seth Godin, and it’s called What does it sound like when you change your mind? It got it when I attended one of Seth’s talks. It’s really heavy. Fifteen pounds, and because I didn’t know I was going to get it, walked to his talk. That meant I had to walk back. With the book. A couple of miles. That, my friends, is nutritious movement. The perfect spring workout. By the way, the book is so big and heavy that we put if on a book stand like it’s the Bible or a unabridged dictionary. We read it every day. It’s all kinds of big.

Next up is Orient Express, by Silvena Rowe. It’s our second cookbook of hers. It’s like if Mediterranean and Bulgarian cuisine had a love child that was extremely photogenic. Totally worth it. The book is filled with amazing fresh vegetables and vibrant spring colors that will probably look brown on Instagram.

Dawn Again was hidden on my wife’s side of the bed, and our ‘spring clean’ brought it forward, so now I can finish it. Good timing, because there so much about the outdoors in there. Spring is the perfect time for the inspiration.

Tacos, by Mark Miller. This gift from Galina has an amazing recipe for Tacos Al Pastor. I love everything about tacos, Galina, and al pastor.

Fifth Avenue, 5 a.m., by Sam Wasson. This is all about Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The making of, the angst of, Audrey, Truman, Fred. All of it. In Truman Capote’s book, Holly is a prostitute, and I’m reading this book and I’m like “OMG, I was so blind…” How embarrassing.THEN… we watched again, and I wasn’t blind. Holly is not a prostitute in the movie at all. They made her a ‘society girl’ or something like that. Something that doesn’t really exist, like the fun, jazzy cocktail parties that we wish actually went on all the time in the early ’60s. I’ll probably watch it again soon. I love that movie.

That thing on the top is my kindle. That’s where I keep most of my science fiction and vampire stories. Vampires prefer winter, so for spring, I’ll be focusing on the stars.

Debbie Beane keeps the wheels moving at our sister company Nutritious Movement, but she’s just as big a word nerd as the rest of us.

 

All of my books right now are centered around growing and exploring, which are often put on hold as the snow piles up around here. We’re still waiting for it to melt (to stop falling, really) so some vicarious living through books is in order. Words for the Wild is my trail-side inspiration, and I’m re-visiting the essays with my kids as we get closer to backpacking season. Closer to the Ground is one I’ve been meaning to read for over a year now, but it starts in the spring (or rather, as the author is Ready For Spring To Start), so now’s the time to begin. California Field Atlas: exploring my home state anew with this beautiful inspiration to travel and be outside. Robbing the Bees is a cool history of humans and honey, as I try to decide whether this is the year we try again with bees. The Earth Speaks is a childhood friend, also re-reading with my kids. Gardening at the Dragon’s Gate is about gardening both the earth and the mind, apropos of spring, and July and Winter is to help me figure out how to grow more than just lettuce and peas in my short Tahoe growing season.

 

Co-author of Eat Well, Move Well, Live Well Galina Denzel’s stack

 

My spring reads are the books that point me back to what is wanting to be born or be renewed. Right now, my spring reading shelfie looks like this: Blue Horses by Mary Oliver and The Chaos of Longing by k.y. Robinson—I read and write poetry, and the more writing wants to emerge, the more I find inspiration and company in poetry. There is a discipline in being available to the writing that wants to happen and reading others’ poetry helps me stay open to it. The Book of Awakening by Mark Nepo, as there are beautiful daily encouragements to keep looking out, yet staying connected to looking in. Belonging by Toko-pa Turner is one of the most moving reads I’ve held in a while, and invites us to embrace our deepest nature, and re-remember the skill of belonging and find our way back, both rooted and free. The archetypes in the book, like spring, are eternal and repeating, and invite what is eternal in me to show up. Standout 2.0 is my reminder that I have practical strengths in the world, and is a great teacher in how to show up at work and in the marketplace, with ease and grace, showing my greatest talents. It’s very affirming and has been a great professional companion for me and our work online. And last, but not least, I am re-reading Dynamic Aging—as I have committed myself to support my goldener students and create a local book club for them. I am inspired by the stories and women in the book and am preparing to pass on the spirit of Dynamic Aging—if there is a message of continuous renewal and hope through movement, this book is it.

Co-author of Dynamic Aging Lora Woods’ stack

My reading this spring is Rick Steves’ Portuguese Phrase Book and Dictionary + his Portugal.  Fado music is in my immediate future as my brother and I are backpacking (and driving) around Portugal for 30 days. My most common phrase will be Fala ingles? or Do you speak English?

Propriometrics Press designer Zsofi Koller’s stack

 

Spring is a time of expansion and movement, and these are all titles, that to me, explore pushing the edges of our current realities. Be it against our social and mental constructs (Fight Club), our gendered boundaries (Women Who Run with the Wolves), our own natural settings and movement (Wild) or the fantastical explorations of the imagination (The Space Trilogy), I love how spring creates new growth and fresh possibilities.

What about you? Are there books  to which you return each spring? Or is there a stack of new-to-you reads just waiting for your attention? Drop us a line in the comments and let us know!

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