- [Becky] Sometimes life gives you an opportunity to reflect on what you would do with a clean slate.

Our guest on this episode is Miranda Esmonde-White, creator, producer, and host of American Public television's longest-running fitness series, "Classical Stretch."

♪ I've thrown away my compass ♪ ♪ Done with the chart ♪ ♪ I'm tired of spinning around ♪ ♪ Looking for direction ♪ ♪ Northern star ♪ ♪ I'm tired of spinning around ♪ ♪ I'll just step out ♪ ♪ Throw my doubt into the sea ♪ ♪ Oh what's meant to be will be ♪ (bright guitar music) - [Becky] Miranda Esmonde-White is a New York Times Bestselling Author, and one of America's greatest educators of healthy aging, celebrating 25 years of her popular fitness show, "Classical Stretch."

A former ballerina with the National Ballet of Canada, and author of books on aging, health, and fitness, Miranda established her career with the creation of the globally renowned Essentrics workout, a science-based dynamic stretching and strengthening technique, which became the basis of her long-serving public television career.

- To stretch, but safely stretch your spine.

In front, tuck it under.

Push back, right back, tuck it under.

Push straight back.

Other side.

Tuck under.

Using the power of your arms, so it's as if you're pulling the circle from your arms right through your whole tailbone, okay?

- In addition to "Classical Stretch," Miranda is also the producer of a critically acclaimed book and docuseries under the "Aging backwards" umbrella on public television, as well as "Forever Painless."

Esmonde-White continues her work throughout the US and Canada with classes specific for numerous professional athletes, including the Montreal Canadiens and the School of Cirque de Soleil, as well as Olympic medalists, celebrities, and ballet companies focused on strengthening, conditioning, and restorative healing.

In addition to an accomplished public media career, Miranda continues to operate her successful distance education and fitness company, Essentrics, with her daughter, Sarah, in her native home of Canada.

She's also entered the world of professional theater.

She was in Nashville to receive a Nashville PBS Public Media Award for Outstanding Service.

Miranda, it's so exciting to have you in the studio, and you know, you are the recipient of our 2024 - I know.

- Nashville PBS Public Media Award for all your great work for public media.

Thank you for that.

- Well, first of all- - Thank you for being here.

- Well, first of all, being here, I mean, you've been my host, a wonderful host, - [Becky] Great.

- More fun than ever, and Nashville is insanely nice.

I love Nashville, I wanna move Nashville.

- (chuckles) Well, come on.

- And I'm thrilled to get this.

I mean, all the work I've done, I've enjoyed doing, it's been fun, but to get an award for it is even more fun.

- Well, you've been on public television over 25 years.

- Yeah.

- I know American Public Television is your distributor.

You're on the Create channel, you have your own online channel, you have had such a career in fitness, and in health, and in really helping people age backwards.

- Yes, yes.

- That's one of your series, right?

"Classical Stretch" and "Aging Backwards."

Why public television?

- Well, public television is really a natural fit for me, because it's a very truthful network.

Everything I do on public television is vetted by senior members of the medical world.

All my pledges have been vetted by both the director of Integrated Medicine and Connective tissue at the NIH.

- Wow.

- Really senior doctor, so there is nothing, and she's also edited my books.

She's also done - Wow.

- The forward for one of my books.

So what people get, and then there's a doctor who's the head of Alzheimer's research in the world.

- Wow.

- He's had as many as 50 research projects going internationally, so you know what you are getting on public television is honest, it's the truth.

It's scientifically solid.

It's not like, "Oh, we're scientifically designed," because I can tell you, (Becky chuckling) there's a lot of claims to be scientifically designed, claims that they're fully balancing the body, and they are not.

They're actually injuring people.

- Wow.

- So, I like public television because of the integrity.

It's so honest, people can actually trust it.

- Oh, absolutely, and we have here in Nashville, we have a dedicated fan base that watch your show every day - Ooh.

I love them, yeah.

- Monday through Friday, and you really do make a difference in people's wellness.

I mean, I see people, they're walking up, you know?

- Yeah.

- They're walking straight, they've got a little bounce in 'em.

In fact, you've got a great bounce, and what is that about?

What creates that just really lovely posture, and your bounce?

- So, I love the question.

How long do we have?

(both chuckling) - Not that long.

- Okay.

(chuckles) The first thing that you need to have a bounce in your step is a balanced body, because if something's crooked, like let's say, your hips are crooked.

So you're sitting on that not lovely chair, let's say, we take an inch off the leg.

Well, you'd be unbalanced.

- Right.

- You'd be wobbling all over the place.

So what happens to people just in their daily lives is become unbalanced, it's normal.

So you have to rebalance the body on a continuous basis.

So it's like, brush your hair, brush your teeth, wash your body, you have to keep it healthy.

The balance of your body needs to be healthy, also, but people don't understand how to do that.

The way to do that is through what's called maintaining the full range of motion of every joint.

So here's my arm, and I can move it in the full range of motion, but a lot of people can't.

They can only go that high, or their elbow starts bending, they round it, it gets blocked, it's tight.

- Right.

- You know, they can't move their hips.

- Right.

- So as we age, we lose our range of motion, and if you have no range of motion, then you cannot move.

So is that enough?

Should I go on?

(laughs) (Becky laughing) - Well, it does make me think about a statement you've made about aging as a choice.

- Yes.

- Right?

So... - It is a choice as long as you know the choice, but unfortunately, you know, my program, I created it.

I work with doctors, scientists, you name it.

I work with specialists, but I also work with myself, my own intuition, my own thousands, tens of thousands of hours of teaching fitness, and teaching literally hundreds and hundreds of people, thousands of people.

- Right.

- So, if people don't know that it's a choice, then they just do what they're told to do.

So you're told to do fitness, so you go and you do something that's going to actually injure your body.

So many fitness programs injure people's bodies, and when you're injured, you can't move, and then all this stiffens up, and then you age rapidly.

We've got four scientific studies - Oh, wow.

- Published in medical journals on aging, on posture, on pain, but we're getting really big ones.

One at the San Diego Military Facility.

- Right.

- Which is the biggest military facility in the world.

Only in America.

- Of course.

(Miranda laughing) And so, they're using some of your techniques?

- They're studying them.

- Oh, okay.

- They're using them on the veterans.

One of our head teachers in "Classical Stretch" also happens to be the chief pain officer in San Diego, - Oh wow.

- And she's been working with the Wounded Warriors, doing this program for pain relief, so it's a non-opiate answer to pain relief, and the results are incredible.

So they're doing, presently, there's a huge study on pain there.

- That's so great, yeah.

- And it'll come out in, I don't know, in a year or so?

- Oh, great, so we'll - So the whole world will know.

- Catch up with you.

That's right, we'll catch up with you about that.

So let me just ask you were a ballerina with the National Ballet of Canada.

- Canada, yep.

- You're from Canada, right?

- I'm from Canada, yeah, born out West.

- There you go, and so, but you started studying at 10 at the school - Yep.

- That they have, right?

- Yep.

- And you went all the way up through, and then worked professionally?

- In the company, so I was in the school, then in the company, then broke my foot.

- Yes, and we're gonna talk about you breaking your foot, but I wanna ask you, what was that like to actually get to be a ballerina in a professional company?

What was that like?

- Well, it was, first of all, I started at 10, and at 12, you know, I mean, this is a school where you do ballet right in the school, so it's a boarding school.

- Okay.

- I left home at age 10.

- Wow.

- Basically, that was it.

And you do ballet classes, math, history, ballet, this Russian dancing, - Wow.

- You know, Spanish dancing, and all this stuff.

And so, I started dancing with the company very young, because they needed extras, more swans, or more flowers, and, you know, whatever they needed in the company, they'd bring the school in.

When I was 12, I danced, not danced, I was the page boy, page girl, page boy, with Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev.

- Wow.

- So for two weeks, I was on stage with them.

- Wow.

- So it's a beautiful world to be in.

The ballet world, it's very disciplined, really, really, really difficult.

I called it sexy nuns, (Becky laughing) because, you know, we're in cloisters, basically.

- Sure.

- You just live in a studio.

- Sure.

- You know, and yet, you are free to live a life, but you don't, because you're in the cloister.

- 'Cause you're constantly working.

- All the time.

- Right.

- And I just loved it, I loved dancing.

I loved the leaping, and kicking, and turning, and, you know, the drama of the orchestra.

- Right.

- The whole thing.

I just loved it.

- Did you travel everywhere?

- Did a lot of traveling, yeah.

- Wow.

- I remember leaving a trail of blood on the stage in Seattle.

(Becky wincing) - Oh my gosh.

- I think it was "Swan Lake," you know, and little bourees, or I can't remember which, but... - [Becky] Why was that?

- Well, pointe shoes.

- Blisters?

Oh.

- You know, blisters.

You know, back then, I mean, I'm 75 now.

- I can't believe that.

- So that's back how many years ago, you know?

- Yep, yeah.

- Before they had the fancy- - [Becky] Right.

- Probably could heal blisters faster, you know, and we didn't have very fancy pointe shoes.

(chuckles) - [Becky] Wow.

- But you learn to suck up the pain.

- Right, and just keep going.

- And it's fun.

It's fun, and it's what you do, it's your life.

You enjoy it.

- Right, right.

- And weird, yeah.

- So you broke your foot?

You actually broke your foot, and you were a young dancer.

- Yeah.

- But it ended your career- - Seven places.

- Seven places?

- Seven places.

I really broke my foot.

Like, I'm an extremist.

- Oh.

- Yeah.

(laughs) - You know?

(chuckles) So I didn't mediocre break my foot.

I really broke that foot.

- Wow.

- And they told me I would be in a wheelchair by the age of 30.

- Oh my gosh.

- So, no, I'm not.

- Yeah, no, not at all.

So that break, though, caused you to stop dancing?

- There was a tour coming up, and I couldn't rejoin the company, and no, I was finished.

- So then you moved into this amazing fitness program.

- Yeah, I had a little in-between career.

- What was that?

- I was the national sales and marketing manager for Hasbro Toys Canada, so I spent a lot of time in Rhode Island.

You know, isn't that weird?

- It is very weird, how did you... Was that because you were an entrepreneur and were- - Yes, it's my personality.

- Wow.

- Yeah, I had to make a living.

- You were making?

- I was making stuffed dolls.

- Oh.

- And the president of the company thought I was really an entrepreneur when he saw me with this display of dolls at a big toy fair.

- Wow.

- And so he hired me as... (chuckles) - And so you had a stint in corporate?

- Yeah, yeah, it was fun.

- In big corporate.

- Big corporate, yeah.

- Wow.

- It was cool, I liked that.

- Did you?

- Yeah.

- Yeah, but then you left that to open your own studio?

- Yeah, because I'm a single mother, so I had to support my daughter, and with Hasbro, I was traveling roughly two weeks a month.

- Oh.

- And so, I would take my daughter up to my mother's.

My daughter loved going to visit my mother, but she had to stay in school, you know, these inconvenient things?

(Becky chuckling) - So I had to quit that job - Sure.

- And have a stay-at-home job.

So I thought, "This will work, I'll be at home.

She could come to the studio after school," and so, it seemed to work.

- Yeah, oh, I think so.

- And then I created the program in that studio.

I built a studio.

It was in the beginning of the aerobics movement.

- Okay.

- Jane Fonda was my heroine.

- Right, right.

- And nobody else was doing it, and it was fun.

Again, it was fun.

Craziness, really bad for you.

Aerobics is really bad for you.

- Because of the impact on your joints, yeah.

- Pounding, the impacting on the joints, the muscles are all contracting.

Your joints are made to last your lifetime, like, - Right.

- 100 years.

They should be in perfect shape.

There is no reason why our joints have to be damaged except for the way we treat them.

They're brilliant pieces of engineering, but we compress them and bang on them.

(fist thumping) - Yeah.

- Our muscles tighten, we unbalance the body, so like the chair.

- Sure.

- You know how you'd... - Yeah, you would rock.

- If a door, you know, if a door was unbalanced, it would pull on the hinge, so the whole door would start to rip and tear, whereas that little, tiny hinge, if it was well-balanced, it can support a massive door, but the moment there's an imbalance, everything starts ripping and tearing, and rubbing, you know?

- Boy, that is so true.

That is just so true.

That's a great analogy.

- Yeah, that's our body.

- So, - It's our body.

- That is our body, right?

- It is our body, yeah.

- So in '99, you started with a PBS series, "Classical Stretch," and you have just literally healed thousands of people through your series.

- Tens of thousands, I would say.

- Tens of thousands, without doubt.

- I would go more than that, you know.

- Yes, yep.

- I know I'd go more - In the many years that you've - Than that, yeah.

- Done it since then, but your parents also had a public television show.

- Oh yeah, yeah.

- It was called- - "From a Country Garden."

- "From a Country Garden."

- Isn't that cute?

- That is so amazing.

- Oh, they were so cute.

(both chuckling) And they started older in life, also.

- Did they?

- So they were in their fifties when they started, forties, fifties.

I started this in my fifties.

- Wow.

- And they started in their... And you know, they were like Julia Childs.

If you see their show, it's adorable, and my dad's the funny man, and my mother's the straight one, - I love it.

- 'Cause she had no sense of humor, and he was really funny.

He'd be pulling stunts behind her back, and people loved them.

- Oh, I love that.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- And it was on for a long time.

- Yeah.

- It was on for almost 20 years.

- Yeah.

I competed with them.

I'm 25 years, so I think they were 17 years.

- I think you're right.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Think you're right, yeah, you've gone longer.

- Yeah, yeah.

(chuckles) - You've got a longer trajectory on public television.

- Pushing harder, I'm gonna be more than that, too.

- Yeah, and your daughter has joined you in your work.

Tell us about that.

What did she bring to your work that was really unique and different?

- Well, she's really different from me.

Like, I'm an artist, and I'm also like a scientist now.

She is a business woman.

She has a different mentality, and you need different mentalities to build a company.

- Right, right.

- You can't have identical, you can't have a bunch of artists, you'd have a complete, nothing would happen.

(Becky chuckling) You know, they'd all be happy, you know?

- Right, right, right.

- But nothing would happen.

So she brought, like, the marketing, and another partner, there's three of us, and you need, you know, to do anything in life, you need a solid company, just like you have here.

- Of course, of course.

- You know, you need a solid company with lots - That's true.

- And lots of people, equally important, making the whole, It's like a house, making the whole structure function.

You know?

- That's so great.

And so the- - You can't function with crazy me, you know?

(both chuckling) - And your company is called- - Essentrics, yeah.

- Essentrics.

- I will tell you why - Okay.

- Before you ask me, - Well, I was gonna ask you.

- Just in case you don't ask me, - Okay.

but I will tell you why ahead of time.

- All right, go ahead.

(Miranda laughing) - So when your muscles contract, okay, it's called concentric.

It's going concentrically to the center.

So that's a scientific name, concentric.

- Okay.

- So Sahra asked me at one point, "What on earth are we doing?"

And I said, "Well, we're stretching out, and we're doing what's called an eccentric movement," which is this way.

Concentric this way, eccentric this way, and eccentric, okay, so put your arm out, and I'll show you, okay.

- Okay.

- So pretend you've got a weight.

- Yeah.

- A 50-pound weight.

Bring it in, you'll puff up your muscle.

- Yeah.

- That's concentric, and your muscle gets shorter.

- Right.

- It's concentrating, it's getting concentric.

You're carrying a 50-pound weight there.

Okay, keep the weight in your hand, and lengthen it out.

That's thinning this muscle, but it's still supporting 50 pounds.

- Oh.

- So it's getting stronger.

- Right.

- And it's called eccentric.

So we called it Essentric, but with two S's instead of C-C. - Oh, I love that.

I just love that, and you mentioned movement.

You are kind of creating a movement.

- I am, yeah.

- Aren't you?

What's your thoughts on that?

- A healing movement.

So everything I've done, I had no plan, which is hard for business people to grasp, (Becky chuckling) because you're supposed to know- - Well, you're a visionary.

- There are no, yeah, I'm a visionary.

I have no vision until it happens.

- Right.

- Okay, so it's not even a visionary, 'cause I think they're looking.

I don't even have that much.

- [Becky] Right.

- So I'm doing what's needed, or looking at what's actually really happening.

So, I realized that when you rebalance your body, and when you move eccentrically, you're liberating the joints, okay?

- Okay.

- And when you balance the body, every joint then functions, that makes you age backwards, because what makes you age faster than you should is everything contracting and getting unbalanced.

- Right.

- And then you wobble around the world, we can't move.

So then, and I also, in my program, said, "The one major rule is I want nothing to stress a joint."

So there's no, like, standing on your hands, or there's no stress.

I want zero injuries, so I created a zero-injury program.

So then, much to my shock, that's actually a healing program.

- Right.

- Once I started realizing this was a healing program, and then Helene Langevin, who is the head of the NIH Integrated Medicine, she knows what I'm doing, because she got healing herself with this program.

So are very close friends now, because we talk about - Oh wow.

- Connective tissue and everything.

- Sure.

She was in my car one day, about 10 years ago, and we were talking about, and she said, what I'm doing is soft medicine.

And I was like, I was shocked to hear coming from her mouth.

- Right.

- Because she's, like, worshiped in the scientific world.

And she said, "There's hard medicine," like, you know, - [Becky] Sure.

- Surgery and pharmaceutical.

- Right.

- That's hard medicine, but this is soft medicine, and now, I realize it is, and literally, like, 80% of chronic pain can be treated with this program.

Chronic pain, with movement.

- Sure.

- Correct movement.

- Right.

- But people don't know what correct movement is, and this is the only program that does safe, correct movement.

- So just consistently staying with it - Yeah.

- And doing it?

- It doesn't take long.

It just takes, like, - Right.

- Sometimes people, like, within one program, one day- - All right, I'm gonna shift you.

- Okay, okay.

- I'm gonna shift you, because before we run out of time, - Oh, okay.

I talk too much.

- You know, the premise of this show is clean slate.

- Oh, cool, okay.

- What would you do, Miranda, with a clean slate, either personally or professionally, or maybe for your whole community?

- Or for the whole world?

- Or maybe for the whole world, what would you do?

- If I had the power, I would...

If I had the power, a really huge, like, let's get PBS bigger.

- Okay.

- Okay, bigger megaphone, I would get everybody understanding their bodies and getting out of pain.

We don't need the pain.

We don't need the world to be in pain.

So I would do everything I could to convince people, like, you know, we had that discussion in your studio here.

- Right, okay.

- To convince people they don't need to be in pain, - Right.

- 'cause people believe they need to be in pain, but when you get people out of pain, you get families out of pain, you get lives changed, depression disappears, anxiety disappears, stress disappears.

There's a happier world.

So this is what I want, that's my clean slate.

- I love it, I love it.

Also, (Miranda chuckling) it's something that I know you're doing that maybe people don't know about you.

- Yeah.

- Is you're entering another creative area where you - Yes.

- Are a Tony Award-winning producer.

In the time we have left, you have to tell us about that.

- Okay, so one of my best friends is a Broadway producer, and I've known him for about eight years, and so he was telling me about his show a few years ago, so he showed it to me.

It was in, you know, sort of preparation, you know, and I gave him some feedback on it, and, you know, we're friends, so we talk.

- Right.

- And so, as I saw what they were doing with it, I said, "Oh, I wanna invest in your show."

So I became a producer, a co-producer of the show.

- Right.

- And it's called "The Outsiders."

- Oh.

- "The Outsiders Musical."

- Wow.

- And Angelina Jolie is also a co-producer of that show.

- Wow.

And we just got the Tony Award for the top musical.

- Yeah, and several others, - 77th.

- Right?

- And yeah, four Tony Awards.

- Wow.

- Top Director, and it's a book that most kids have read in America, so everybody knows the story, and it's been such a thrill working with the kids, and with the whole other producers.

And it was a shock to happen in my life because, you know, (Becky chuckling) I invested in it.

I thought it was a really good show, and there's some amazing choreographic numbers in it, but the energy in that show, it is really worth seeing.

It's a beautiful show, I'm really proud.

(Miranda chuckling) - Yeah, I don't blame you.

- A Tony, a Tony!

- I'm so proud of you for continuing to just reinvent yourself, reinvent all of us, and helping us live our best lives.

I just am so proud of you for that, and I wanna thank you - Thank you, thank you.

- For that.

- Thank you.

- Anything you have - thank you.

- Before we leave?

Anything you wanna share?

- No, but I love that.

No, exactly that, like, life is such a...

I've had a rough, rough life, and I have had so much fun.

(Becky chuckling) You know, the rough doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter.

- Yeah.

- We get sick, we have problems with our families, all those things.

- Yeah.

- Just keep moving forward, because life, it's such a beautiful adventure.

- Yeah.

- It's so good.

It's so exciting.

I don't think people, you know, sometimes when people look down, and they look at the world, and they say it's... No, it's not.

It will move, the sun comes up.

(Becky chuckling) It's a beautiful thing to be alive.

It's just so exciting for everyone.

- I agree.

We love you, Miranda.

- Aw, thank you, I love you, too.

- Thank you for being here.

(Miranda chuckling) (bright guitar music) ♪ I've thrown away my compass ♪ ♪ I'm done with the chart ♪ ♪ I'm tired of spinning around ♪ ♪ In one direction ♪ - Miranda, this was your first time in Nashville, so you have to tell me, what was your favorite part?

- Oh my God.

(Becky chuckling) Well, food.

- Yes.

- 'Cause the food here is ridiculously good, and the Parthenon.

- [Becky] Mm.

- [Miranda] I'm crazy about that place.

And what's it called, Cheekwood?

- [Becky] Cheekwood.

- [Miranda] Cheekwood, oh.

- Phenomenal.

- Yeah.

So what am I supposed to say, which one?

Tell me how to choose.

- Just don't.

- And I'm just starting.

I'm just starting to get to know Nashville.

I love Nashville.

- Will you come back?

- And I haven't even done any of the music scene here yet.

(Becky chuckling) Yeah, of course I'll come back.

- All right then, that's all we need to know.

(bright guitar music)