Major Points:

1. With yoga and proper nutrition, the aging body and mind can feel better, younger, and live a vibrant life.
2. Menopausal women can also accrue benefits from yoga and proper diet  through a variety of mechanisms but decreasing inflammation is one of the major benefits.
3. Baby boomers do not accept the aging model of their parents

 

 

00:45                                     This is the 120th episode of Changing the Face of Yoga and my guest today is Anne Noonan.  She is a Silver Yogi and a food coach and she specializes in showing women how to age backwards with Yoga and mindfulness. She has a passion for showing the woman facing her second half of life that these years can be full of vitality rather than ill health or frailty. After going through her own health journey of insulin resistance, adrenal fatigue and varied menopausal symptoms in her forties and found a way to holistically turn back her inner odometer and is now thriving in her 60th year and looking and feeling younger than she did 15 years ago. She not only turned those health issues around but has transformed in the process. She now teaches women facing similar health and aging issues that through mindful, functional yoga-based movement, breath. and eating for health, you can most certainly find your strength, flexibility, and youthfulness. Welcome Anne

02:01                                     Thank you, Stephanie. Fantastic to be here. Look, everything you just said is pretty much a perfect summary of where I've come from. I did experience pretty serious health issues and I had to find my way, so to speak, through the quagmire. I had to find a direction that wasn't completely medical and it was stumbling across yoga. It was learning to eat for an aging body. And then combine it with the right movement for an aging body. And once I could see the results happening for me, it was like a calling. I absolutely have to teach this to other men and women who are facing those later years. So you're pretty right. You summarized that really well.

02:56                                     Okay. I think we should start off what you made a statement which I thought was interesting, which was we're aging very differently to the way our parents aged. Can you kind of explain that and what new things we might be dealing with that perhaps our parents didn't or vice versa?

03:22                                     We women, let's say we are, I'm 60 so I'm a typical baby boomer and I would hope maybe don't you know them, maybe people who are listening to this might also be in those baby boomer years. So we're the people who were born between 1946 up to 1964 and we have all had parents who may have come from the war years. Our parents are now, if they're still with us, they're now pretty much in their early eighties through to about 90 and just over 90. And in that era they aged very differently. They had different things occur in their life. They had different stresses. They had a different mindset towards aging. So by the time our mothers, us Boomer women, by the time our mothers were say 50 or 55, they were planning retirement or they were considered over the hill, sliding down the other side and starting to think and move their way into old age.

04:30                                     I'm not going to say that absolutely every single, elderly mother back in those days, there's some who aren't, who are an exception to the rule. But generally they did have a different attitude to aging. Now we are the daughters and we are the children of those elders, the silent generation.  And we have so much more technology at our fingertips. There's so much now about nutrition. There's so much extra knowledge and things that are right there on a silver platter for us to choose from. And as far as media is concerned that the way the world has changed, there was an expectation, there's a big expectation on us to keep working, to remain employable, to continue giving and contributing to the community around us. So we cannot afford at the age of 50 or 55 to slide downhill into age. It's just can't be.  As baby boomers age, we don't want to age like our mothers. We don't want to have the mindset - some might be a little bit thinking a little differently - but generally we want to stay healthy. We want to stay vibrant and God help us, we're pretty vain. We want to look darn good too. So there is a different attitude. So there must definitely be a lot of new things available for us.

06:07                                     So really we have many more opportunities or we're making many more. I sometimes think we're making more opportunities because we do not accept that previous model of aging. At least most of us don't. I don't think.

06:23                                     You're pretty right, Stephanie. We are refusing to accept it. And I'm noticing it, in like general media, if we look at the celebrities, for instance, some celebrity may not make the remotest difference to us, but even in Hollywood, Judy Dench and Helen Mirren and Meryl Streep's roles, these older women, Glenn Close, these older women starting to really lift their profiles. I guess if there's any filtering out from what's happening in the world of celebrity, it's wonderful to see the older woman is starting to become lifted, starting to become a little bit more noticeable. And I'll tell you what, the older woman still has incredible knowledge, experience. She's got goals to kick still. She's got such contribution to the world that the rest of the world and the media would, at their own peril, ignore the older woman because I think she is stepping up. And someone said, I can't remember what some entrepreneur said a while ago, it's the older woman who is going to soon be the disruptor. She will be the business disruptor. She's the decision maker. She is the one with money and she is the one whose health needs to be careful. Seriously.

07:50                                     Yes. I think I agree. I think we have perhaps a position of power that is not recognized yet but is still there. And I think probably it is that we have a deep (okay, I'm talking about myself obviously) but a contentment that perhaps we haven't had before. I mean we went to school, we raised children, we had our careers, we did all of that stuff and now it seems to be a time of, as someone said, we're done with the biological and we're looking towards the existential.

08:27                                     Yeah, that's such a good way to put it, isn't it? That's so good. And we are looking to the future now we're ready. It's our time now. You're right. We raised our kids, but then again, we might've raised our kids, but we're possibly dealing with a spouse who might not have the same attitude as us. We may be dealing with a spouse whose health is changing. Some are divorced. Dealing with elderly parents still. So there's probably still a little bit of that stress on us. And of course a lot of us are dealing with the diagnoses that come with middle to older years. We've got barriers, maybe autoimmune, different things that might've popped up that we might not be too pleased with that we might have to deal with but doesn't matter. We've still got a lot of years that this body has to serve us in and we definitely want to know that those years are going to be vibrant.

09:26                                     There was a show on TV last night: Catalyst. It was good about aging, stopping the aging process or aging backwards. And one of the doctors said we don't want our later years to be a long, slow, degenerative downhill process. We want those later years to be so fruitful and vibrant so that when our last year's come they're quick and they're done. So we want them to go right up to those last years really being vibrant. I have found eating the right way was emphasised in the show. They really went down into diet and the way you moved and the variety of yoga combined with the way you eat is just that perfect combination to make that possible.

10:22                                     Let's talk a little bit about that. I think you said in what you gave me, that the aging body requires balance, agility, flexibility, hormonal balance, calm strength and cardio and all of these are possible with yoga. I taught seniors for 10 years, so I do have some experience in this area and yes, all of that is possible, but I think it has to be managed correctly because not everybody can do everything.

10:57                                     That's right.  In my classes, my classes might range from a 45 year olds all the way up to about anywhere between 75, 76 year olds. And I then do a special functional movement class for the 80 plus up to about 90 plus. So if we talk about that age group, 80 plus up to just over 90 year olds and admittedly they are very limited with what they can do. So we work from the chair, we make it gentle, we keep the stretch, we did the left and right brain cooperating with each other. We don't go into any strong agility or cardio. Sometimes getting up and out of the chair is enough for them. And I know I can kind of puff them out after about 30 minutes. So we're very mindful with that age group.

11:53                                     My general yoga class between 45 and 75, there is a dramatic range of ability amongst those girls. It all depends on what their younger years did deliver to them, what state their body is in. And it's such a variety amongst that age group. So we're careful, again, careful and mindful as to what level might individual students want to go to. But we concentrate specifically on balance first and foremost, balance agility and getting the muscles stretched. So as soon as they feel release in the body, as soon as they are releasing the tension around the hips and hip flexors and the hamstrings and sometimes the upper body and shoulders, as soon as that feels a little released, then we can start coming up into building strength. And when it comes to cardio, again, I truly believe the older person really does need to bring cardio and a little bit of high, medium to high intensity interval training to keep their heart healthy and vibrant.

13:08                                     And Yoga will offer a reasonable intensity in very short spurts depending on if their body's responding well to it. So I'm finding with the different programs I do that we can bring agility, flexibility and balance or not only the body but also the mind. Once the body can find balance. So too does the mind, because we can become even with age, even mindfully. That's why it's such a mindful practice. As we age, we can start to become a little bit,  the word irrational is not the right word but lose a little bit  of our balance. We can sometimes become a bit more reactive rather than really think it out and respond to things calmly. That's why yoga is so good because it will train the mind to think, breathe before we respond and then respond to our situations mindfully, which creates balance in the brain.

14:16                                     Then when you train that attitude with balancing the body on your one legged poses, some the various things we do to train balance. You've got this lovely mind to body connection happening and it's perfect and I see bodies improving all the time. In my older age group of students, I am seeing such fabulous results. They’re calmer. They can feel their minds are sharper, their bodies released and then when they start to improve then we start to liven the class up a little bit with a little bit of high intensity. They sometimes think I'm half killing them. I'm not, but they feel fabulous after the class.

15:03                                     What exactly do you mean by high intensity? I mean, what would that look like in a yoga class?

15:11                                     Well, what that looks like. For instance, when you bring high intensity into Yoga,, you only kind of bring it in for a very few short minutes. So let's say you're in downward dog. I call, it's like a burpee version of a downward dog in downward dog. We then start to come up on the toes, bend the knees slightly, and we encourage the little jumping. Now young people will jump in and out of downward dog quite easily. 50 plus doesn't find that as easy. So we bend the knees slightly, jump forward to the hands, gently come up, reverse down, come on up and then back down. Jump back into downward dog. Now we can liven that up a little further. Jump forward from downward dog. Gently jump a little bounce up into reverse swan dive, back on down again, jump back into downward dog. Let's say we do six of those. That starts to get the heart rate pumped.

16:12                                     Now we can do chair pose. Let's say coming back into chair pose comes back, you've got that nice deep squat. The arms come forward. Normally we would hold in chair pose, but to make chair pose a little high intensity we then swing the arms down, come up, jump, a little bounce up and then bounce back into chair pose. Swing the hands back down again, swing forward, jump up. Little chair pose, little yoga moves with a bounce. So, and that starts to just lift and of course different level of intensity depending on who's in the room. And that not only tones the body, it helps with weight loss, it lifts the cardio, and it's quite incredible. I specialize too in teaching water yoga. So not water aerobics, not water fitness, not water running, water Yoga. So once we're in the water again, yoga based move in the water, you're coming to your warriors, you come into all of these moves. But then swinging the arms through into chair pose and back again through the water also creates that little bit of resistance against the muscles.

17:28                                     And it starts to build the heart rate up. We do a little bit of yoga walk through the water. So moving the spine, moving the hips, moving the arms, and then we speed up a little and it's amazing how the water resistance makes the heart work. But I'm a great believer too in making it fun. We have to heal the body and healing the body is also very relevant to laughing and we've got to laugh and I make sure it's fun. I caught up with about 12 of my students this morning, just before this podcast and they were saying that we can't wait for water yoga season to start again. Because it's some of the heartiest laughs they ever get is at water yoga. I know they when get out of the pool,  they are feeling good and that's such a reward for me. It's great.

18:17                                     It's great. You've also added some nutritional advice to what you're doing with your reversing the odometer idea. Do you feel that it has some Ayurvedic basis or is it more of naturopath, dietitian kind of thing?

18:43                                     I'm a qualified nutrition coach so it's more nutritional to mop up the inflammation. I know Ayurvedic is a wonderful way to eat. I didn't go the Ayurvedic route. I went the nutrition coaching route. So because I'm also dealing with 40 plus 50 class and beyond woman when we are at this age, we're holding more inflammation as the years have gone by. We hold a lot of inflammation and that's what we have to deal with is reducing the inflammation. First off that's why I love yoga so much because yoga is instrumental in helping the inflammation, mind body, inflammation to settle. But particularly nutritionally I run the roll back your body's odometer course. I run a five week transformation course and I speak and show how to cook and such with a very antiinflammatory approach to your food. I'm also a qualified diabetes food advisor.

19:51                                     So I teach people how to bring their sugar levels down, how to eliminate sugar from their diet, but not rob yourself of beautiful tasting food. How to bring high level macro and micro nutrition into the way you eat and mop up the inflammation. It's not a magic bullet. It's a slow process. If we've got our body into such a state at say 55 or 60, it's taken years to get our body into whatever state we might be unhappy with now. So it's kind of take a few weeks, maybe a few months, up to a year or more to really get that body into the state you want it in by changing a few habits with eating. So I'll teach people how to if they want. If a woman is a wonderful baker and she loves her cakes and her slices and she's been baking all her life. Well, we show them how to tweak up the baking.

20:53                                     Let's take the white flour and the white sugar out and find something else to substitute in the baking so that you can still enjoy your baked goods. Let's say a woman's an amazing cook. We work out the correct, the better quality fats, the better quality vegetables to bring into your cooking to bring the weight down, bring the inflammation down, which in turn makes the body feels so much better, clarifies the brain, sharpens the thinking and makes the joints start to feel less painful. Brings inflammation down everywhere through the body. So the combination of the right way to move, the right way to eat and calming the mind and uniting the body and brain together, body and mind together is in my opinion, the best way to reverse aging. And I'm all about reversing aging or aging as well as possible throughout these years. I am passionate about it.

22:00                                     You say that Yoga helps in reducing inflammation. Could you expand on that a little?

22:07                                     I can pretty much go by my own personal experience. I'm 60 now. Back when I was 47 I had to face a hysterectomy. I was just in a terrible state. My menopausal symptoms were through the roof. My weight was through the roof. I was aching everywhere, everywhere. And these symptoms started in my very, very early forties and that decade was hideously painful and coming into my early fifties, I had to figure out what did I have to do to make this body of mine feel better, deal with stress levels, deal with the way I deal with the pain and age better. And of course I knew, always knew exercise was important. So I went to, I had no idea of yoga back then, just had heard of it as this weird practice as you do, some wacky practice.

23:05                                     Somebody said Yoga, I forgot about it and thought, well I need a PT. I need to become part of a gym. That's probably what I need to do. So I was doing the circuits. I was powering along. I had a PT who would thrash me the moment I would turn up. Anne, on the field, round you go, do a few laps of the field and come back and we're going to do our calisthenics and such. What was happening to me was my inflammation was worsening. It was just worsening. My body shape wasn't changing, I wasn't losing weight. I wasn't feeling better. My inflammation was ramping up and I don't think this PT realized quite what she was doing. She was looking at me thinking, well, why isn't your body changing? Why aren't you changing the way you're eating? What's going on? And I didn't realize back then about what I was doing, how I was eating and the whole combination of what was going on with me. I was worsening and I was putting on weight even though I was thrashing myself at the gym. I soon realized sometimes that a vigorous form of exercise does not do an inflamed, midlife body any good at all. It can send you downhill. This is what was going on with me.

24:24                                     Okay, maybe I'll just stick to walking. Maybe that's what I need. I'll Just stick to walking. So off I go and I start walking every morning. My husband's really good. He'll get up with me, come walking with me. But what was happening was my knees were getting worse. My hips were tightening up, even walking is not doing me any good and I'm not losing weight again. Wasn't right. Someone said to me then try yoga. Yoga, what's Yoga? Oh look, I have nothing to lose. Okay, fine. I'll try yoga. And of course this overweight, achy, inflamed body walked into my very first yoga studio, but at this stage I was over 50. So what do I do? I walk into a Bikram Yoga class and there's even the instructor looked at me like Are you sure? "This is my first time at yoga."

25:29                                     She said, "You've never done Yoga before?" Nope. Never done yoga before. I might've followed a DVD a hundred years ago. I don't know. I've never done that before. “Have you ever done hot yoga before?” Never done hot yoga before, but of course everyone's around me going, oh it's addictive, you're going to love it. And she goes how about you stand behind that lady over there and you just watch what she's doing and just follow everything she's doing. Mind you that lady over there was a bodybuilder and powerlifter. Her body was just exquisite. And here's me at the stage when I'm thinking, I am such an unhealthy lump. I thought I was about to die in that class. So I made it through and got out and of course the instructor comes to me "Are you alright? Yeah, I think I'll be okay. Well, I went back for a second class. I realized I had to hydrate phenomenally. I didn't do Bikram again, but just those two classes of Bikram then led me into a slightly more sane temperature, more yin, and the more gentle yoga and such. My body was changing. Even after those two classes, there was a level of release. There was my knees. I just felt, oh my God, what's happened here? Something shifted, like dramatically shifted because I knew how good I felt afterwards, but okay. All right. All right. I'm going to try. I went to my local yoga studio just down the road from me. I thought, oh, I'll try a few classes there and I had this almost addicted. I have found my nirvana. I have found what my body has been screaming for all these years. It wasn't high level training, it wasn't a PT, it wasn't thrashing myself out at a gym.

27:27                                     It was yoga, so my body was calming. That was step one, calming. My breath - I learned how to breathe, which did wonders for my heart and my mindset. My joints started to feel like the inflammation was reducing. My weight started to behave and reduce, my strength, particularly upper body. The moment a woman feels her strength boost, the moment a woman feels stronger, her competence goes through the roof. And the moment I felt my strength build, I could see my core was strengthening, my clothes started to look better, even my skin, because I  tried a few more warm classes and more. I did go into the hot yoga a little bit, not as hot as Bikram, and then the next level of hot, my skin just started to glow. So considering an inflamed body was showing all of these levels of improvement.

28:32                                     I could say Dear God, if Yoga is doing this 50 class body, this amount of good, and I'm surrounded by women complaining about how their menopause is just making them feel dreadful, then this must be the perfect combination for many, many, many, many other women out there. And it's proven to be exactly that. So I had to go to a few yoga classes, obviously myself and really feel the difference. Then I thought, right, I have to get my certification in it. So I went and studied and got all my titles and my training done and even while I was doing all of that, I was just purely using my own body as a petri dish. I had to watch and observe what I was going through and that was great that I was in a class with a few other older women as well and I watched how their bodies were responding to it.

29:25                                     It's now I'm learning with all the material I have read and I've been a teacher now from when I was about 52 or 53 when I qualified now I am 60. With all the material I've read now I'm finding doctors are prescribing yoga for the menopausal woman and for the older age men and woman. Yoga is becoming more and more and more recognized in mainstream western medicine. It's been recognized in eastern medicine forever. With Western medicine, they are really starting to wake up to the power of yoga, and because it still can be strong. I can still be a workout or it can be gentle. That's what I love for that reason.

30:08                                     I love the diversity of it. You can have almost any kind of class you'd want. I don't expect you to have the answer to this, but I would like your opinion. I was not having health problems when I started yoga, but I did start in my early fifties, and I also recognized the tremendous benefits. But what you see in the media is not the older woman taking perhaps a more gentle class or at least not as strong a class as might be available. And how do we get that message out that this is for everyone. This is for older women, menopausal women. You know, you're teaching people up to 90. I've done that too. I've taught 90 year olds and they're great fun actually. How do we get that message out that it's not pretzel poses, it's not having to be flexible to start with. It's not all of those things.

31:16                                     You are so right Stephanie, that irks me too. I see Instagram, people think yoga is about gorgeous young bodies in beautiful gear, moving their bodies into the most unnatural pretzel shapes that the older woman does get a little terrified of it. That's probably why I took so long to do yoga cause any googling I did was, oh, these beautiful young things flipped upside down and ridiculous shapes. I've had many a conversation with the older woman, a couple of which, oh, I'm not flexible. Oh No, I couldn't, I'm not flexible. I could never do that. Oh, I can't get up off the floor. I could never do yoga or Oh no, that looks too hard. I'm not 25 anymore. I don't want to wear yoga pants. I could never do yoga. That is such close minded attitude. That was probably my own as well when I was first looking.

32:17                                     So I make sure I bring myself into pretty normal yoga poses. I can't even do the pretzley stuff and I'll make sure I put photographs of myself and my students on Facebook, on Insta. We need more older women like us, Stephanie. We need more of the older teachers, all the yoga students getting on social media and showing not only is yoga wonderful for the older body, but it's also to show the young girls. Look young girls you will be great if you continue with your yoga at this young age. You also age well someone, some Yoga Guru said a while ago, yoga is a the fountain of youth. I totally believe it's the fountain of youth simply because it makes your body feel so good. So we have to get more older women out there not being afraid and putting their images at it so that people can say yoga is phenomenal.

33:22                                     I have one of the best books in the world at the moment written by Suza Francina . And she wrote The New Yoga for people over 50 so if your listeners are interested in these books, The New Yoga for people over 50 and The New Yoga for Healthy Aging by Suza Francina. They are the most fabulous books about getting yoga out to the older community. And she used 70 plus year old and 80 plus year old models in her book and they look incredible. So the moment we start saying 70 plus and 80 plus year old gorgeous models in their yoga gear doing their yoga poses, that will be what the world needs to see. So I want to get more of that out there. I see that, what's that lady's name, she's 101 years old. Yeah, she's that good. She's inspirational. That's inspirational.

34:34                                     And I hadn't really thought about that. But you're right, we just need to get our own photos out there of us and our students.

34:45                                     And we social media driven, we are image driven, we are video driven. So the only way to really get it out there is to join the social media. We can't keep this to ourselves. We've got to put it out there. The baby boomer woman is one of the biggest demographics on Facebook. We have to let these images be seen so that older women can go, oh, if it has done that for her. I'm sure I could do it.

35:22                                     We've had a lovely talk. Is there anything that you would like to go into in more depth or that we haven't covered at all that you think you would like to tell the listener?

35:39                                     I'm very grateful Stephanie. I think we've  had a fantastic chat. As you can probably tell. I can go on for hours probably. I guess by the time the listeners are hearing this, by all means head to my website: annenoonan.com. au. I'm starting water yoga classes, so you've never tried a water yoga class. And if you're in this region, by all means yell out. in October as well, we'll be ticking off our Rollback the body's odometer eight week program. And I'll have that on my website as well. We do have an odometer and we can roll it back. And this is what we teach everything from nutrition to gut health to attitude, to mindset, to yoga, meditation, anti-inflammatory eating. It's a very comprehensive program and we create community as well. And that's the other really important part about aging well is having a like-minded community around you. And we're growing all the time. Quite wonderful. That's probably about all I can think of to add to that.

36:49                                     Contact details:

                                                 Facebook: AnneNoonanYogi

                                                Instagram: anneNoonan01

                                                Website: www.annenewnan.com.au.

                                                Thank you so much and it was a fun and informative podcast and I love your passion about your subject.

37:32                                     Oh, absolutely. Absolutely passionate about the woman or man for that matter facing the second half of life who thinks they're on their downhill side and they think all is lost and they can't change anything. You absolutely can. You absolutely can turn things around without a doubt.

37:51                                     Thanks so much.

37:53                                     Lovely talking to you Stephanie