Chautauquans tend to be busy people involved in multiple activities, projects and lifelong learning experiences.
Breathing while so engaged isn’t given a passing thought most of the time — actors, musicians, vocalists, and elite athletes excepted.
Since that’s not good for one’s health, it’s heartening that there’s a simple fix.
It’s a boon, too, that physical therapist Gaynell Anderson can explain and demonstrate why it’s essential to give considerable consideration to breathing better.
At 9:15 a.m. Tuesday at the Chautauqua Women’s Club House, Anderson will close the CWC’s 2024 Chautauqua Speaks series with an upbeat presentation titled “The Power of Breathing for Health, Strength, and Energy.”
Anderson has not only earned her Doctor of Physical Therapy degree, but also advanced certifications in three concentrations: orthopedic manual physical therapy, health coaching, and hypopressives with apnea.
It’s a common misunderstanding that physical therapy is all about using therapeutic exercise to treat injuries. There’s a form of preventative and wellness therapy that enhances the respiratory system and, consequently, nearly everything else in the body.
“There are simple things people can do to improve their overall health as they age,” Anderson said. “It’s not that complicated because the body does the rest on its own. Eat right, drink enough water, sleep, move and breathe. Take away any of (the first three) and you’ll die. Breath optimizes all three.”
One of her 14 specialties is breath strengthening, which involves performing simple exercises “without devices or the necessity to go to a gym” — something more habitual than periodically taking a few deep, slow breaths to chill out.
According to Anderson, “breath affects stress responses, belly fat and digestive health, overall strength and energy levels, brain clarity, and health longevity. … Breath has big, big, big communication with the gut. … Your core is engaged through your breath.”
That’s impressive.
Born and raised in greater Buffalo, New York, until the Blizzard of 1977 prompted her parents to move the three youngest of their seven children, herself included, to what at the time was the quaint, undeveloped fishing town of Naples, Florida — where alligators, panthers and myriad other wildlife roamed — Anderson found herself on the beach and in the ocean, rather than on the ice rink and ski slopes.
“From a very young age I was intrigued by the human body,” she said. “I started off pre-med at the University of Florida in Gainesville. There was a class of about 500 students … and the underlying theme was to weed kids out.”
She said she was there during the late 1970s when, “if you were a woman and wanted to be a doctor, you couldn’t. I wanted to have lots of kids, so I switched to PT. People were a lot different then — we were looked at as lab techs.”
After leaving the University of Florida to attend another school in Florida, and getting married to someone who had never seen snow, the couple decided to move to Buffalo. Anderson said she transferred to Daemen College for physical therapy, completed her undergraduate degree there, and remained in Buffalo for over three years.
Returning to Florida, she “taught as an adjunct professor in the doctorate program for physical therapy” at Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers, and “worked with the Miami City Ballet during their performances in Naples … for seven years.”
When Anderson started out, a master’s of physical therapy wasn’t available. Later, “people my age were grandfathered in,” she said. “When Congress made a transitional three-year doctorate, I thought, they did this to teachers and (others), so I’ll jump on this and start now.”
While she was earning her Doctor of Physical Therapy at Florida Gulf Coast University, she said she was still teaching in the doctorate program, and taking on students from different colleges as interns.
Moreover, she was raising four children as a single mom. While spending their summers at Chautauqua, Anderson said she taught the New York State Boater Safety Course during lunchtime at Boys’ and Girls’ Club, as well as at the Chautauqua Marina in Mayville.
With her doctorate, Anderson started her own clinic, Absolute Physical Therapy of SW FL in Bonita Springs. A few years later, she opened Absolute Wellness of SW FL.
“The wellness program was a big thing for me. … The beauty of PT is we’re in a position to treat the person holistically and naturally, without prescriptions,” she said. “We’re adjunct, in partnership with their medical doctor. Just the awareness of physical movement, sleep, nutrition, and breath, all fall into the realm of care of a physical therapist, so it’s a beautiful window of opportunity.”
Launching and owning one business, let alone two, presents many challenges.
“In having to be controlled by third-party payers — insurance — you couldn’t survive,” Anderson said. “You had to sell things or open up a cash business, or you closed your doors. … Collecting from insurance companies is a full-time job in itself; I had to hire a company to do it.”
In 2017, Anderson sold both businesses, though she said she stayed on for three years so that her clients wouldn’t go elsewhere.
Transitioning from the commercial to the nonprofit world, Anderson and three family members co-founded A Euphoric Living Foundation in Naples in 2015. Their focus is community-wide health and wellness education.
With her sister, Jill, an estate planner and life coach, Anderson has been co-producing and interviewing specialists for a podcast called SpelLIFE, which uses the first letter of “the eight realms of wellness and health” — spiritual, physical, environmental, leisure, local, intellectual, financial, emotional.
In addition, she provides “concierge services specializing in abdominal and pelvic health, and recovery health.”
And, through TriCore Wellness in Naples, she designs “individualized health and wellness programs integrating nutritional, fitness, and recovery health programs to optimize longevity health.”
This means that “I evaluate someone, (find) their imbalances, and design a program that’s as easy as possible (so they can) keep working, because once you get to where you want to be, maintenance is easy,” Anderson said. “… We monitor and revise their program according to their progress. Then their program is just like that of an athlete.”
Based on years of hands-on professional experience, Anderson believes that “knowledge is key to gaining and maintaining optimal health.” Knowing how the body works empowers and drives people to “take an active role in (their) own health and wellness.”
Anderson said that on Tuesday morning, Chautauquans will learn how to “breathe right” and utilize their breath. They will also learn about “its relationship to the body as a whole for health and wellness,” because “if you look up ‘breath,’ it basically just talks about the lungs, but it’s a community.”
Happily, “with breath, the results are alm
