Esmonde-White - Aging backwards: fast track: 6 ways in 30 days to look and feel younger

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Aging Backwards

Forever Painless

Aging Backwards: Updated and Revised Edition

This book contains advice and information relating to health care. It should be used to supplement rather than replace the advice of your doctor or another trained health professional. If you know or suspect you have a health problem, it is recommended that you seek your physicians advice before embarking on any medical program or treatment. All efforts have been made to assure the accuracy of the information contained in this book as of the date of publication. This publisher and the author disclaim liability for any medical outcomes that may occur as a result of applying the methods suggested in this book.

AGING BACKWARDS: FAST TRACK . Copyright 2019 by Miranda Esmonde-White. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST EDITION

Digital Edition MAY 2019 ISBN: 978-0-06-285943-3

Version 05062019

Print ISBN: 978-0-06-285941-9

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED WITH LOVE TO YOU ALL,

OUT OF MY DESIRE TO MAKE THE WORLD A

HEALTHIER, FITTER PLACE TO LIVE.

Contents

A s a child, I listened to the adults around me joke about getting old. Id hear my young parents laughing about the fact that someday theyd need nurses and wheelchairs and endless medication. For my parents generation, loss of mobility, poor balance, chronic pain, hip, knee, and joint issues, and low energy were inevitable. They simply developed a cheerful acceptance: que ser, serwhatever will be, will be.

They lived very active lives, skiing, swimming, and gardening. But even all of those athletic pursuits wouldnt be enough to halt and turn back the aging clock. They didnt yet know (nobody yet knew!) that the weakness, immobility, and lethargy associated with aging are not normal; what is normal is to remain vibrant, active, and pain free well into our senior years. They didnt know that a few simple actions could help them remain pain free and youthful.

Back then, no one understood that if you didnt use muscles, theyd atrophy, your tissues would start to congeal, and movement would become stiff and painful. And unquestionably it would have been taboo to suggest that doing the wrong kinds of exercise would rapidly age the body.

Now we know differently! With the benefit of several decades of research, we know that inactivityor the wrong kind of activityis exactly what ages us fastest. And we know that we can turn back the clock just by learning how to move all of the muscles, connective tissue, and joints in our body.

When I was younger, I embraced my parents attitude about aging. I assumed that Id age in just the same negative ways as the generations who had gone before me. Well, something unexpected happened instead.

I didnt get older; I got younger.

I didnt get weaker; I got stronger.

I didnt develop more pain; I became pain free.

After suffering from broken bones, cancer, and all kinds of other medical issues, Im now approaching seventy and Im healthier and fitter than ever.

Much to my excitement, I recently literally ran up the 120-step Coba pyramid in Mexico and then I skipped down, not needing to hold on to the rope railing for aid. Despite their youth (all of my staff is under forty), some of the youngest members of my team struggled to navigate the steep, scary steps.

How is this possible?

Ive spent years researching aging, and I know that aging happens only when we let it happen. When you move the right way, you have the ability to age backwardsto reverse stiffness and stuck tissue; get the juices flowing in your body; build strength, agility, and vitalityand stay young and limber for a very long time.

Now I also know how to jump-start the results more quickly than ever before.

THE FAST TRACK

My love of movement inspired the start of my career at age ten. Thats when I joined a professional ballet school. Later, I became a full member of the company of the National Ballet of Canada. After breaking my foot in seven places, at age twenty-one, I retired from the stage and opened a dance and fitness center.

For a long time, I was on the hunt for the perfect fitness program for my clients: something that would help them build long, lean, ballet-dancer-shaped muscles; that wasnt as high impact as aerobics but equally strengthening; that could be done to classical, international, and modern music; and that was safe. I noticed too many of my clients experiencing injury and pain from the then-current high-intensity workout trends. When I couldnt find a suitable program, I decided to create one myself. (Yoga and Pilates werent widely available yet.) The Essentrics fitness program is the result of many years of experimentation, scientific research, and fine-tuning. Designed to be done daily, by anyone, from cradle to grave, Essentrics is a simultaneous stretching and strengthening program to rebalance the full body in just 30 minutes a day. It is the basis for the popular television program Classical Stretch, which first aired on PBS in 1999 and continues to reach millions of Americans daily.

Since then, Ive spent many years teaching, researching, and tweaking the fitness technique. Ive worked with thousands of clients all over the world and have seen the dramatic and permanent changes in strength, weight, and body shape that people experience when they use Essentrics. Perhaps at no time are the improvements in appearance, health, and fitness more apparent than at my retreats.

Participants in my retreats range from age thirty to eighty. Many have lost hope for a healthy life due to years of rapid aging and chronic pain. At the start of a retreat, some participants show up in a state of depression, having silently given up on a better future. This is normal aging, their doctors have said while prescribing joint replacement surgery or medication.

Over the course of seven days, including twice-daily exercise classes of 30 minutes each, Ive watched as participants literally grow younger before my eyes. The changes are immediate: their skin starts to glow, the tension of chronic pain lifts from their brows, light shines in their eyes, their backs straighten, and their limbs move more fluidly. They feel real hope, many for the first time in years. Anne Legasse, age fifty-five, arrived thinking she might not be alive in ten years because of her health problems. Now she says she can see my older self living to be a hundred like my grandfather did because Im getting stronger every day. Le Rowell told me the retreats have been a gift for aging well. At eighty-three, she is standing tall, reaching those top shelves, and getting up and down with ease.