Interview with Miranda Esmonde-White

hi everybody I am going to be chatting today with trainer Miranda Esmond white and you may recognize Miranda from her PBS specials and her dvds like classical stretch and keeping fit and she is also a New York Times best seller of aging backwards and forever painless and she's also considered one of America's greatest advocates and educators of healthy aging and we're gonna go ahead and we'll be sure to provide all the links to your books and your DVDs and your website down below this post um so I want to welcome you and thank you for taking the time to chat with us our Kaleidoscope fighting lupus community will really appreciate this information and insight you'll be providing as I had discussed with you earlier sometimes you know it kind of comes piecemeal so wherever you can kind of fill in the gaps and get information it's really really beneficial and my pleasure thank you for us here from Adana spirt in her field so I'm going to talk about this subject because I do come across it a great deal in my work and my travels around the state said and the world it's very prevalent - they really it really is more so than I ever understood and I'm learning yeah yeah so I guess we're ready to get started okay so can you share a little bit about what motivated you to develop your fitness program yeah what might be so I started developing it about 25 years ago so just to give you a little quick overview is that I was a ballerina professional and opened when I broke my foot in several places I have to change careers now stumbling around to find a career I opened a dance and fitness center and so this is a long time ago in Jane Fonda era of fitness and I didn't like I was teaching a lot of aerobics and step aerobics and all that weights and things but I didn't like what it was doing to my body and my clients wanted to have the ballet elegant look and they didn't like the sweat and all this so I I'd always wanted to do something that was a little more serious and was aerobics and just the pounding so I created I worked with my background and I studied a great deal of Tai Chi and worked with physiotherapist I work with doctors and stumbled sort of stumbled across creating this program but very very early on in the first two or three months of putting this together which is a gentle stretching program that uses classical music or all kinds of music like oriental music Russian music African music beautiful classical music and New Age was in any type of music so it's all mixed stuff to work with the feelings so it's not all pounding it's it's more you know what if it says for what a lot of the students were asking and also a smoother workout that left your muscles long and lean so what I learned and people very very early on with because most people are in pain that's one thing Supper is a shock is that the world is actually in pain there I had like you know hundreds of students in my fitness center and slowly as I was talking to them you know everyone is in pain and then I started teaching teachers over the years that professional fitness instructors all they do is teach fitness in many many of the hundreds of different types of fitness ninety nine percent are in pain so so what what motivated me to choose hone in on this program so I started to really study the science of the human body and look at the body as a whole and because I owned the fitness center I could do what I wanted in there it's rolling me and I could offer class that start was just using my own center and my students sailing pneumatics experimenting on them and they were having a wonderful time and they were becoming pain-free this was the thing so I had to once they were becoming pain-free I had to figure out what had I done program doing that was that was different from other programs it how it was it actually what what was causing the pain to make and then what was causing the pain how to what were we doing it wasn't causing pain because we were still doing fitness and everybody was losing inches over their audio role they were still doing their aerobics and they're running in there but they just added this program three times a week and they were losing inches like three inches in roughly the first month is what people would loose and then your body stabilizes so what it was it's gentle it's a very gentle program so we were trying to figure out why I was trying to figure this out why was this an fitness program that was not causing pain so I sort of had to go backwards of it and this has taken me on this wonderful exciting journey but I have now I work with some of the most senior scientists in the world at Harvard McGill University Oxford blended you know on connective tissue pain the brain you know different things it's so it's in a nutshell sort of gives you an idea so once I started looking I saw that the body had to be looked at as a whole just stop looking at the glutes and the quads and we had to stop looking at the cardiovascular system and start to see the full body related to the cardiovascular system like when you prick your finger one cell will bleed and we've got trillions of cells so how does the heart and that little finger the baby toe relate how are they related and house and then what's covering that cell of trillions of cells and connective tissue and what is that stuff and his brand new connective tissue was even in medical textbooks ten years ago connective tissue so you know the whole this was connective tissue didn't exist when I started in the fitness world you know you know so so it's a very new science and sometimes researchers around the world are looking into connective tissue now trying to figure out what is it there's some amazing research on active tissue right now that dr. Helen launched a man is doing both the Harvard analysis taking it to to DC on cancer and tumors in connective tissue and how stretching can get rid of disease literally help get rid of cancers so this is like a different way of looking at disease just looking movement she's very much involved in movement and moving the the connective tissue how does that impact diseases and health and and so this brings me to purpose you know and fibroma money otra vez really a medical world as a fast as it is is in its infancy and it really is yeah yeah and and and I agree with you everything is about us I mean I belong I'm just you know with my own illnesses and injuries everything is so interconnected and we're just starting to understand that and just starting to make those relationships and I think I agree I mean they need to be made because it is so it's just such a holistic that's what the program is that was one of the very first things I realized was full body had to include it what I didn't realize was what is the full body you know like okay you're thinking muscles all the muscles but there's more to the body than muscles okay well then you've got where's the blood go tell you but the full one and then nervous system and you've been the brain going and connective tissue system which is part of the bust muscle system the muscles bones and connective tissue are in triumvirate so they're equal value in that movement of your body system tissue and we will it's called the muscular Spoleto different the muscular skeleton you say it and you don't hear the word connective tissue in it because connective tissue didn't exist when that word was put together but it should be the three in the same thing because the connective tissue connects your bones and your muscles as a unit those wouldn't exist would just be flopping around doing nothing your tissue and your bones need your connective tissue or they'd be floating around your body so the connective tissue is connecting everything which is and that includes messaging from the brain so you know so the brain is involved in the whole thing and then you start realizing when you start getting to the brain being evolved and everything then you have to consider stress and love emotions joy sorrow just depression you have to bring in the full body you don't you're being you're not being correctly able to fix the full-body if you say well that's not part of it well that's unfair to the person that needs to know yes that is part of it the full body is part of it don't eliminate one part because you don't want to hear about it all together it all works together yeah so how can stretching a liability you know you're both on my boat this is lupus is still soaked and mysterious condition so whatever I say could be wrong okay it could be women because I mean I haven't met any men who come up to me with it but a lot of women with both lupus and then fibromyalgia which is connected to the lupus and you know one of these women well they're they're all in tremendous pain pain is like that's part of the that's why they were there talking with me it's the pain and it's full body and it needs this it seems this is how I understand it is that the messaging that okay I'll start from the beginning your connective tissue and your muscles everything has a pattern as a you know their their muscles are tubular and pattern and you pull on the length of the muscle in order to get it to move she put a muscle that lifts you that's here that will lift up you wouldn't so that's here that will pull you forward and a muscle that's there that will pull you back this is our linear linear waves worthy for the muscles there in tubes and for the connective tissue that comes in these beautiful wave linear patterns but when things start falling apart all that gets sort of disorganized so you want to reorganize it all and get functioning right guys the path the connective tissue loses its patterns it's disorganized and this is partly from who knows what or one thing we do know it's from inactivity injuries but their neurological reasons also why something would get disorder nice giving reorganised whatever reason it needs to get reorganized it needs help so exercise is a means of help or whatever thing is that the body needs to be moving a certain way in order to be pain-free and the connective tissue which is lying surrounding the cells surrounding the muscles surrounding the bones everywhere in the body it needs to be moving it needs to be able to move give give give move and it can't be congealed but if we don't move it gets congealed and anytime the human body gets locked a message is sent to the brain saying you know alert so it's not moving something's wrong fix it so the message is always pain because that's the message that something's wrong pain is nothing but a message so it's saying something's wrong we've got non movement or whatever so what we do in this program is we manually because we're not able to fix whatever is causing the brain to stop it manually make the muscles move so we take the locked muscle in gently show it what it's supposed to do again so you just sort of gently move it and that will unlock under the connective tissue it's gentle it's going to be slow it's got to be gentle it can't be harsh as the and then when you're in the pain but there's happening all over your body so it's not a message from like let's say a patch of cells that aren't moving it's the full body so the message of pain is loud and screaming at the person which will make anyone upset and depressed like nobody likes to be uncomfortable I hope you likes to be uncomfortable tune in being for a long period of time so that is enough to make anybody in a bad mood and then start feeling hopeless moving just moving will start to unlock the glute the blood stuff and II and just show the muscles this is what you're supposed to do and this certainly feel better but the moment they start moving the pain message disappears because everything's going on so that brain is happy they're going again even though the they didn't get moved because you got healed they got moved because you moved them you annually did it but then so the pain gets relieved so the person who's in this horrendous pain gets a period of time in their day where they're not in pain because they manually removed what's causing the signal to be sent to the brain but slowly because they haven't healed condition it will come back so then they have to do the exercise as a game so that's why you have to you're not going to get rid of it but what what people have told me we stick with this program because a lot of people do it morning and evening if you're in pain these programs are like 22 minutes because they're from my TV show possible stretch so there's about three or four hundred when we have a streaming site so people can choose the gentler workout so they because there's workouts that are much stronger and rougher let the soft the stretching the connective tissue they want to start with the slower very beginning workouts even if they were once an Olympic athlete they want to do these very slow movements because they have to think of it as retraining the their their tissue all the neural neurological messaging your chain you're retraining it it's like it's it's like a baby forgot how to walk so you stand up and you kind of moves the baby's legs and then it collapses when you stop doing it but the baby really learns how to walk so people are a person you know so people who have this condition do these exercises and evening and they say that after a while it's it goes away because seems to it retrained whatever it is now every single person to a tee it includes a lot more than the exercises they change their diet you know they look at what to eat there they're not just there looking at a holistic way so I don't want to say the exercises are the cure but Sir sizes without the exercises you don't get the pain gone away you're doing everything that you need to do you're not showing the body how to get out of pain but if you do the diet you know the usually it's close to a beacon type diet but every place different you know when I say it the diet because I'm not a dietitian but that's what most people say they found that that one works because once you're out of pain then you start having hope and then your depression can go away it's very hard to deal with some of the emotional signs of it and new relationships improve and you can start thinking clearer because you simply can't can't deal with some of the emotional parts the depression until you get out of pain and you know and you're feeling hopeless so so the you combine and the the diet will seems to have a magnificent the combination of diet and exercise and gentle gentle gentle stretching the two together get rid of the pain because the diet is doing the chemical stuff chemistry so you know healthy food greens little vegetable your new wheels full grades start poisoning your body also assess no sugar and refined sugars yeah you just you just feed your body real stuff that it eats and then do the exercises the food alone won't do it so you're you're going to be depressed and the exercise we'll be interfered with they'll do it but it won't work anywhere near as well without the food part so the tool really are really saved to the book so anyway just I'll answer your question oh yeah I mean I think it's it's you know as someone who I think our first instinct is in this day and age to is when you exercise you go out and you go out at heart and having just joined a gym myself you know just a traditional you know change him and meeting with a trainer who put me on this fairly for me you hadn't yeah I know the rigorous you know routine when I hadn't been you know real I had been in school and working full-time for four years so my you know admittedly exercise is pretty low on my priority list and I'm realizing just this week how oh my god my shoulders hurt my arms hurt my leg hurts my hip hurts because my body is being pushed into all of these really intense and you're like it's being destroyed by your trainer who doesn't know any better right sighs your trainer you are training your body to age rapidly hate the message you're doing something wrong I'm 170 I am in zero pain stuff when I used to do all that rough stuff I was in terrible pain people who treat who destroy their bodies age rapidly you do not have to exercise this suppose your body needs exercise but it needs correct gentle exercise to be strong you can be really strong but not not destroy your body your body should it's the mentality we have in training is the complete opposite to the word training what we're actually doing is destroying it's not building destroying and it I don't think why this is so informative too is that I think you know when you have lupus and you're already like you said you're feeling down you're in pain you kind of can see the broader picture and you may you know honestly not know the broader range of exercises that may be available so I think even you know individuals with lupus are thinking I gotta join a gym I can't do that I do tired it's gonna hurt and I think just talking about this and giving them these other options that it doesn't have to be and it shouldn't be like that you can use your extra think that exercise is medicine you use your head your exercise is medicine not and your your body is meant to last hundred a hundred years or more it's not arthritis lupus nothing everything is created that way our muscles are created to last until we're ready to die Derik dirt they do not have to age it's we treat them so what you're doing right now is aging your body and so people with lupus they don't realize because the mentality of exercises.you everybody immediately thinks oh this is going to be too hard and it'll hurt me and they're not thinking as exercises moving and move corrected and gently full bodies you might do tight gentle gentle stretches gentle movements flowing movements that are just teaching the body it's like love to your body teaching your body that it's not going to be hurt anymore teaching it how it's meant to be muscles are just meant they're meant to be strong they're meant to be able to move joint yours for some good posture everything's supposed to move you know you're not supposed to be all buttoned up and in pain so it's so much easier to exercise when you understand what your body's meant to do exactly like this no to be even just you're supposed to be able to put your sweater on without any problems reach and Bend and twist and turn not playing with lift you know forty pound weights and everything constructed athletes not like Olympic athletes pro football players all these high levels athletes are horrendous paint all are aging at the age of 35 they have hip replacements and knee replacements and drugs and you name it so forget that so that's why when lupus people with lupus they think exercise they're thinking that you know everybody thinks that like you went to the gym and the trainer did that too you know because everybody thinks my my mission in life is to get people to understand that that's the wrong way of looking at making her body fit you know if that's not Fitness that's destruction Let's Get Fit yeah properly it's a great mission so for their lupus and fibromyalgia people I just say suggest that they do the diet whatever you've got tons of stuff I think on your blogs and gentle gentle full body stretching morning and evening and breathe with it become as they're doing it know why they're doing it understand that they are retraining the fibers trillions of fibers they're retraining those fibers so that the fibers aren't crying out in despair so they're retraining their fibers and the moment it moves them and they retrain them even if it's for the morning they'll feel better and then it will start even even if they can only do like two or three minutes at a time and it might they might start off and you know it's just 2 or 3 minutes and I know that and then they slowly add a teeny bit until they can do 15-20 minutes and that's all they need and then we didn't depending on the severity you know some people aren't that severe but the very the most severe that I've met actually the pain is beyond the beyond but even then they get out of pain within two or three months and they just stick gently with it and when you find a solution but but have faith and understand because when you understand what you're doing and you do it gently and you know okay this this is what I'm doing it might still hurt right now but it might hurt less you know just give it like give it like 30 seconds just to see me do that in within that 30 seconds things might start feeling it tiny bit better the patience is what I'm saying with the knowledge of what's what they're doing so that kind of leads me that into my next question how would you suggest somebody with lupus start a fitness regime well this is where the I have to say I don't know any other program that is safe like like eccentric because none of them are designed with this mission that I was talking about to not hurt you they're all too hard in yoga Stewart Pilates is to your heart they're all too hard and they're not full body and they're not working with the deliberate full body no stress so there's no holding a position the constant moving sliding everything getting everything just to move you know the miracle of moving just so we have a or eccentric website has eccentric Stevie so I would suggest they go on to that okay and they look up you know connective tissue poor or gentle workouts the gentlest stretching workouts there are there they can there's I can't remember but you can sign up monthly cancel what everyone it's not a single thing so it's really good it's it's not expensive so they try that out and try many different workouts because there's several hundred on the website and then and but do them very slowly and I'm very very patient like depending on each person cuz you never have it it's different people might do the 22 minutes right away easy and other I'd only be able to do two or three minutes remember I just don't say I'm a hopeless cause I'm telling you one thing I have never met a true hopeless class and I've met some really really people in Prentiss quadriplegics you know all kinds of people and nobody nobody people who does medical community have given up on gentle exercise gets them moving what never thought they will became so don't give up just be patient and trust in the magic of the human body even though you may feel that your body has betrayed you then say no don't don't don't say no to that say I'm going to something happened and I'm gonna fix it and it could take time but don't give up it sounds like you're saying to to be very mindful when you're in the actual practice just being very aware of your breathing aware of your mindset aware of what you're doing oh right oh important your emotions and be aware that you're saying nice things to yourself be aware of your depression and say I'm moving in a different direction be aware of any negative thing and say no negative negative isn't serving you so just feel hope just just be trying to put as much positive emotions into them into your mind and you know what just say to yourself okay this is my challenge in life and I'm not going to let negative emotions destroy my life I'm going to be positive because then you'll do it know if you're always saying no no no you will not do it but if suddenly feel hope let yourself ignore that the hopeless feeling you're feeling say no that's I'm not going to feel hopeless anymore because all of that is playing into the books so you don't want to play into it you want to you know yeah well and that is kind of a great segue to the last question I was gonna ask you of a piece of advice that you would give to somebody experiencing lupus who you know there are days when they're suffering severe severe fatigue they're having a lot of pain maybe you know they didn't maybe they were great the day before and so they kind of went at it a little too hard but then they wake up the next morning and they're almost immobile or they're in the middle of a full you know lupus flare okay what kind of advice would you give to somebody who you know may have just started one of your exercise programs and you know wakes up and finds himself in that condition kind of what would you say to kind of motivate them and and just just don't first of all don't work too hard number one and then if you have if you if you if you want to find the blame something to blame then just say to yourself no I'm not going to blame them something I blame myself I've got a condition this is something that doctors even know about so you know like take the blame away you know you couldn't have had a wonderful day and then the next day you can't move and you're in horrendous pain and everything this list you feel like you've gone backwards don't you know this is these stories that you're over and over again and the people who just keep on going one step forward and no matter what happens don't look for the blame just understand it okay this is part of the condition it's just my cross to bear in lace and I'm going to and I'm gonna and I'm gonna not let it get me down I'm not gonna throw blame I'm not gonna blame but don't work too hard don't exercise too much that's one of the main dates exercise a lot but when I still up you see this gentleman that's not pounding the pavement and doing you know just trying to lift your arms up and down that are just twisting a little bit just gentle do it a lot do what I'm doing just flow fluid with your feet with your knees just really move it's a lot all they pump not heavy exercise so when I talk to exercise I'm not talking about maybe I'm not talking about the game axis right you know so do it a lot but breathing and and then when when you have a bad day don't look for a reason why that you might have done something wrong the day before because it's part of the condition is a good days and bad days right and nobody knows why so don't even look for why just say okay that's just part of the thing and I'm not going to let this bother me as though I've done something wrong and I'm going backwards no that's part of the condition that's part of globus you just understand that you haven't made a backward step at all that's the situation you're in this is it it'll be here Aaron there eventually hopefully there will be cure but in the meantime I know for for anecdotal facts from the students that this does help a great deal when people with really still what I'm saying okay well it's made me rethink my own exercise after last week you know and I'm going to be visiting this year the site and like I said I will link everything down below so people can access this information as well the sites for you all so it's 80% for you you're you know not I mean we have a whole healing division but it's for normal people or just just to stay the way we want to be right to be vibrant for the rest for lunch you know please walk free yeah we fully straight strong and vibrant energetic and yeah you want to be that's what I want to be I don't need to be a bodybuilder yeah unless you want to be a buddy yeah I got me personally maybe there's somebody out there who does but not me personally well this has been great Miranda this info is just gonna be I think I think it's so difficult for anybody with lupus to you know find a fitness routine much less find one that works for them and the in you know just a start one might much less find one that works actually for them and I think all the information you provided I think again using that word holistic I think it gives a really good holistic approach and view to you know how how any you know whether you have lupus or don't have lupus how everybody really should be approaching fitness and their body and their mind and you know like I said it's me me and I do not have lupus you know it's made me rethink my exercise regime and program and I hope that it's given people who do have lupus the motivation to start you know researching looking on your site you know figuring out like you said is there you know it super general program that you know they can attempt to do for two or three minutes at a time and maybe their days there won't be able to but just to keep like you said just keep moving forward baby steps because it's progress it's all progress even the bad even the backward steps are progress right right you may take two steps backwards but you may take three steps forward so it all you know eventually still moving you ahead and you're learning I think a person is learning from all of that you know as I have learned in the last week as well you know pushing it a little bit too far yes it set me back what I also learned something very valuable and not to do it again and I can you know progress and move forward in a different way so I can attest to definitely what you're saying and I think this just will give individuals with lupus another tool in their tool kit you know of things that they can turn to you know for for you know pain relief for you know enhancing mobility like you said for you know emotional health I think it's just a very you know like you said holistic approach to all of those things on how they are integrated and how they're so integral to each other in supporting you know your mind in your body and in your overall health and like you said I mean it'll triple down all the way to how someone speaks to their doctor you know why they communicate with their family how they you know how they learn to prioritize themselves which i think is so important I think so many of us just don't do and I think this kind of will enable people to you know prioritize themselves yeah so yeah so thank you so so very much for spending time with me today thank you yeah thank you okay take care you

Channel: Kaleidoscope Fighting Lupus

Views: 11,300

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: lupus, kaleidoscope, exercise, pain, stretching, interview, health, pain-free

Id: qc8zp5Agppw

Length: 38min 43sec (2323 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 12 2019