Empowering people through movement

This interview with Judith Sachs was recorded on July 7, 2022 and transcribed using Sonix AI. Please check against audio recording for absolute accuracy.

Peter Bowes: Judith Sachs welcome to the Live Long and Master Aging podcast.

Judith Sachs: Thank you so much, Peter. It’s wonderful to be here.

Peter Bowes: Yeah, great pleasure to talk to you. Looking at the work that you do, it made me think aside from, I guess, breathing and other essential bodily functions just to stay alive. Movement is a common denominator, isn’t it? From the moment that we are born, in fact, probably way before we’re born. But movement stays with us all of our lives, and the challenge is to maintain that movement to a significant level to benefit our health.

Judith Sachs: Yes. And actually, science is finding now that even elders such as myself, I’m 75, that the best thing that we can possibly do is to I’m not even going to use the word push, but to move ourselves beyond where we thought we might actually be moving and to not simply be content with maybe a chair yoga class or a little bit of standing meditation with Qigong movement. But to really do something that is both aerobic and cardiovascular and also challenges the brain. Because we do know that as we begin moving, there are various different centers in the brain, the basal ganglia at the bottom of the brain that controls balance, which is now my new go to, everybody needs to learn balance. And also up at the top of the brain where our motor control is. And since I have been working with people with Parkinson’s, a lot of dopamine is is created here. And that’s one of the brain hormones that really helps us to move in a smooth and steady fashion. So we need to be working on the whole brain and really think about what that implies in terms of getting older.

Peter Bowes: It’s interesting and I want to delve into those issues with you, and especially the one of balance, which I think is fascinating and underestimated by a lot of people as an essential tool to to optimize the our ability to to balance as we get older. Just before we do that, though, let’s talk about how you got to this point. You’ve got a fairly unique background in terms of the combination of medical experience and especially through your parents and a life in the theater.

Judith Sachs: Yes. So my both my father and my grandfather were physicians. My grandfather was was known as the Broadway Doc. He had a lot of the New York Philharmonic as patients. Eddie Cantor was one of his patients. And my father, after World War Two, actually went into business with my grandfather and he got the girl in the in the bargain – my mother – and I grew up in a medical family where my father in those days kept a little black bag up at the foyer of our apartment in New York City. And if people called at 3:00 in the morning, he was out the door. Families really counted on the doctor as part of their family to increase wellness. I have to say, however, that when I once stood on my head in front of my father as I was getting all excited about yoga, he said, I don’t know why in the world you would want to do that and bring all that blood to your brain. So we had a little bit of contretemps about what makes you a healthy person. But I do think that it’s in my blood. And what I found as I went into theater and dance was that part of the reason that I didn’t want to do those as a profession was that it’s not really the healthiest thing for your brain to always be auditioning and putting yourself in front of people and saying, Am I good enough? And so what I actually did was I continued to teach those things. And I went into the book writing business with doctors. So I collaborated with a variety of different physicians. I wrote some books myself on movement and stress disorder. And at the end of all of this, our daughter was about to go to college and we realized we needed some more cash in the family. My husband was also a writer and I got a job with a pharmaceutical marketing company. One of those places where you write Ask your doctor if X is right for you. Because I did know about medicine. I knew about health care, and I did know a lot about the Internet at that point. And one of my last jobs for them was the distinction between Parkinson’s disease and essential tremor, which is a difficult but benign condition. And in looking around for a picture to put on this website, I found 50 people with Parkinson’s disease doing the Jets and the Sharks from West Side Story. And when I called to get permission to use the photograph, I called the Mark Morris Dance Group in New York City because that was the credit and found that they were training teachers in Philadelphia the following weekend. And I said, Oh my goodness, I’m a dancer. I would love to go. I was at this point 65 years old, and it was the beginning of my new life, which I have been living ever since, where I now can in this big stew of information and joy and celebration of the body in terms of its movement potential, put all of these things together in a variety of new programs, as well as a dance program that I have been doing with with people first in studios and then, of course, after zoom in their own homes.

Peter Bowes: And you are indeed involved in quite a variety of different programs, different disciplines, but the central, the dominating factor is movement, hence the name of your company. Anyone Can Move.

Judith Sachs: That’s right. And I just go back for a moment to the idea of balance. It’s not just to teach people how to stand on their own two feet. There’s a reason we have that expression, meaning that we feel stable, we feel confident, We feel like we want to get up every day and go do whatever we have to do. But balance is also something inside. And I think again, in the last few years it’s been severely shaken. So what I try to do in all of the work that I do with people is to give them a sense of how the brain and the body work together to keep equilibrium and to keep us feeling like falling apart is is an interesting expression because it has falling in it, which means we are out of control. We are out of balance and coming apart, meaning everything that we’ve been trying to assimilate is no longer stable. We don’t have that center of gravity. So that’s a big part of what I try to teach people.

Peter Bowes: And this some people would see it as a struggle with balance. As you get older, it is ultimately part of the aging process and the processes that you’ve just described, failures as we get older, I think the the central point is based on the work that you do, is that there is something we can do about that failing ability to to balance, to stand on one leg or to stand still for a longer period of time, which I know a lot of people actually find quite challenging.

Judith Sachs: So I just I just want to go back to a word you just kept using, which was fail. And I, I just want to try and remove it from everybody’s vocabulary. And and because failure means that there’s no recovery. And I do in fact feel it’s a slow process. My Tai Chi teacher used to say a little, a little, a little, a little. And each day, if that’s all you can do, if standing still is all you can do, actually balance in terms of what we need it for. We don’t have to stand on one leg, but we have to perambulate across the floor, which means that and if we were on video, I’d show you. But we have to have one heavy leg when we take that first step and then our back leg becomes the light leg. And for a second we have to take it off the floor as we bring it in front of that first leg. And that’s how we walk. That’s how humans move. We don’t walk on all fours. We would have a little bit more balance maybe if we did. But I just talked to people mostly about moving on two feet, but there is always a possibility for better balance. And one of the things we do in class is simply shift weight from one foot to another foot. You don’t ever have to take a foot off the floor and then when you feel up to it. You just begin to really make that first leg heavy and the second leg light.

Peter Bowes: It’s interesting to me and this is perhaps at a more extreme level, but I used to take part in obstacle course race events, and one of the challenges was a balance beam. And this is a beam probably standing five or six feet in the air. And initially I actually found it very, very difficult. Much more difficult than some of the larger jumps or some of the more challenging obstacles. But I built one at home and just practiced and practiced and practiced every day and significantly got better. It was a matter of getting on there, focusing and using my arms. But after quite a short period of time, I gave myself confidence, which I think was a big part of it, but actually got better to the point that I could get from A to B without needing anyone to hold my hand at the side.

Judith Sachs: Absolutely. Now, one of the hardest things about a balance beam or a tightrope, and I’m not going to suggest that anybody out there listening to this podcast do this is that we don’t have a broad base, right? I don’t know how wide your balance beam was. I’m assuming it was maybe 4 to 6 inches.

Peter Bowes: I was going to say four inches thereabouts.Yes.

Judith Sachs: Four inches, yes. So that’s a very tough it’s almost like a tightrope. And what we want to do is get people to balance while they have a nice broad center of gravity so that each foot the nice thing about the human body is it’s kind of divided in half from the torso and trunk to the two legs that split out on either side. One of the reasons that people fall a lot as they get older is they get one foot tangled up in front of the other as though they were going to be on a balance beam or they were going to be on a tightrope. And what we want to do is get them to stand like a sumo wrestler to begin with so that they have that great broad base. We think of the body as having a center of mass. So you’re the bottom half of you is obviously heavier than the top half of you. You want that center to be balanced in between the two legs. Now, for some people who have had a stroke or people who have in any way had a cardiac rehab, where one side of the body started to be a little bit weaker than the other.We have to work toward that very slowly. And again, anybody out there who has had balance problems and who is falling, I would really recommend having a great either Tai chi teacher or some kind of physical therapist who can work with you on this. But it’s definitely possible. And we can remove the word fail from the idea of balancing. Part of it also, Peter, I think is in our mind, not the brain, but in the mind. As you said, as you practiced more each day, you became more confident, You got up there and you said, Oh, I remember the brain says, I remember doing that. I did it before. It was tough, but let’s see if I can do maybe a little bit more today. Some days will be better than others because we wake up in a new body every day, but we have to give ourselves the opportunity to do it. And having some sort of daily routine, some sort of thing. It doesn’t have to be the balancing, but just something that tells you, I’m in this body. It’s my body. I’m the boss of my body and I can progress with this body.

Peter Bowes: And I guess one of the essential components here is that we do things in our lives that can help with issues like balance before it becomes a significant issue for us. And essentially at an extreme level, I suppose that’s what I was doing because that was to take part in a competition, but it wasn’t something that was affecting my everyday life. But I guess ultimately it was beneficial just on the assumption that as we age balance could well become an issue for us. What can we do in younger life apart from just acknowledging it? What can we do to help ourselves as we grow older?

Judith Sachs: Again, we should be doing this at every age. And you’re absolutely right that once when your body is in the best condition it’s been in, so if you’re in your thirties or forties, that this is the time to really stay on top of all that kind of new appreciation of what it can do. So I would say starting something new and I go back to my wonderful Tai Chi teacher who talked about having beginner’s mind. And after you’ve done whatever your swimming or your tennis or your volleyball for years and years and years, it’s not that it becomes boring, but your body is sort of clicking into that mode and that’s wonderful. It’s wonderful to be doing that and to have whatever they used to call cross training. So that you’re doing something that is, say, you know, speed walking and something that is tennis. I just started tennis at 75. Okay. So the idea of having beginner’s mind means you haven’t done that thing 10,000 times. And I go back to my tennis. I did play when I was, I guess 14 or 15 and then, you know, so I haven’t played in a while. However, I know a whole lot more about exercise physiology now than I did then. And I am so aware now of the fact that I have to be pivoting. I have to move my trunk in opposition to my legs. My arm has to extend and reach out with the tennis racket and my brain has to say, Oh, that’s where that ball is. Go, go try and make contact with it. And when I first began doing this, the 10,000 things that I had to think about were overwhelming. And luckily I have a partner who sort of at the same level that I am. She’s 20 years younger, but again, had not done this in a very, very long time. And as we were working with one another and we specifically didn’t want to do I don’t know if you know what pickleball is.

Peter Bowes: Oh, I’ve heard a lot of people talk. I’ve never played pickleball, but a lot of people, a lot of friends are getting involved.

Judith Sachs: So people move. They move to that because it’s it’s about half the size of a tennis court and there are four people playing as opposed to two. So that’s one eighth the amount of space you have to move. And the racket is more like a very large ping pong racket. And I thought, I don’t know, I don’t want to do that. I want to have beginner’s mind about tennis because I know that part of my body has muscle memory for how I used it in in the old days. And sure enough, I would say we’ve now been playing maybe two or three times a week for a couple of months and we are amazed. We still can’t serve. But but we are getting this thing back and forth over the net. Both forehand and backhand. Backhand is just like, Oh, oh my goodness, it’s so hard. The more that we do this, the less of those 10,000 things we have to think about. So I go back to your initially saying, why do you start this when you’re 30 or 40? You want that muscle memory. You want the idea that the body remembers how it reacted when something came at it. And then when you get to be 75 and a kid is coming past you on a skateboard, you had that muscle memory to immediately dodge, pivot, turn and get out of the way of the skateboard so that you don’t fall over. And I cannot tell you, sadly, how many of my contemporaries have had an experience like that. You have to be the body wants to be alert. And so rather than than use the bad word you used, I’m going to use if the body is slightly stiffer, it’s slightly going to sleep. It’s less reactive as we get older. And there certainly are a variety of physiological things that that slow down or cramp up. But the muscle memory gives us that ability to have beginner’s mind. At the moment we need it. So if a projectile is coming toward us like a skateboarder, we can safely get out of the way.

Peter Bowes: I think what’s interesting is and you’ve just nicely described really what is a combination of activity that exercises both your mind and your body. It is both physical and mental and it is the, I says, quite unique combination of those two extremes at the same time that is benefiting you.

Judith Sachs: I think that’s really true. And I have been working this this past two years on a program where I deal with couples where one of them has some kind of movement disorder, has has been ill, has been injured, and the other has been called the care partner. So we had when they came to me, a patient and a care partner, and I have said in this program, which is called close contact for couples, I want both of you to be helping each other. I want both of you to have that beginner’s mind about your relationship. Many of these people have been married for 40, 50 years. But I want both of you to be the assistant and the assisted and to whatever extent you can do it. Some people are in wheelchairs, but they may be able to help their partner, say, with a hand exercise. It’s again getting into the mindset of I’m not helpless, I’m not old and forgotten. And I do feel that the younger you start this kind of participation with somebody else, and if you are by yourself living alone, that you again are using yourself as a partner to encourage yourself. Each day you can have two of you on either side of your mental ability. And it doesn’t mean that there aren’t days when you feel like, Oh, this is just so hard. I mean, it really it really is. And I have to say, perseverance is is everything on days when you don’t have so much energy. That would be a great day to do some chair yoga or some qigong just standing. But it really adds up. The benefit really adds up.

Peter Bowes: And you mentioned earlier that you work with people with Parkinson’s disease dancing in particular. How does that work?

Judith Sachs: So I come from a 20 year program called Dance for Parkinson’s, which was piloted by the Mark Morris Dance Group 20 years ago, when one of the audience members in a talkback with with Mark Morris asked if there could be a class for people who had a movement disorder. Because just the way that a dancer has to think, Oh, I’m going to take my arm and I’m going to make a beautiful, smooth arc with it, how do I do that? How does my brain tell my arm where to move in space, with what texture, with what speed, with what cadence? In the same way a person with a movement disorder, whether it’s Parkinson’s or MS or somebody recovering from a stroke, they also have to think like that or essential tremor. How do I get that spoon to my mouth so that I can have the soup that I wanted for lunch? So in a dance class, we deal with that all the time. We deal with the rhythm of movement, we deal with the quality. Is it going to be soft? Is it going to be jerky? Is it going to fit the the marching beat of the music we play, or is it going to go against that? Sometimes we will create a piece together, but we also do a lot of improvization, and that means the dancers have to use their brain to think, think ahead. But what we do is we’ll sometimes pick music specifically that will evoke a particular mood. And most of the people in these classes, if they danced, maybe they went to dancing school a little girls who did ballet or tap when they were five or six. Most of the people in these classes have never danced, and so they have beginner’s mind about how do I want the body to move to music? And I feel that a lot of the work of myself and all of the dance teachers, this is an international program. I think it’s in something like 40 states of the United States and maybe 46 countries around the world. All of us teachers come from a particular dance background. I studied with Alvin Ailey when I was very young with Arthur Mitchell from the New York City Ballet. I also did a lot of Bob Fosse type jazz things. I also, oddly enough, studied flamenco and Indian Bharatanatyam dance when I was a teenager at a dance camp. And I bring all of those things into the Dance for Parkinson’s program. We may be doing seated dancing where we are imagining walking through a jungle in India and we are being the elephant. So our arm is being the elephant’s trunk, and then our head is rearing back and forth to take the trunk up in the air and down. I hope you can all imagine this. And then we can become a flower using our hands to bring fingers together and then a fan as we take fingers apart. So a lot of it has to do with the imagery that we as teachers offer to students who, again, they may not know what plié is or what a pas de chat is. We try to stay away from jargon and simply use the idea of this is a movement that can turn into a dance.

Peter Bowes: And you mentioned music. We talked on this podcast before about the power of music, especially with people with neurodegenerative conditions, that ability of music to activate something in the brain or the mind, however you want to describe it,associated with physical activity is quite extraordinary. I’ve seen it myself in people with Alzheimer’s. How it can just ignite something that is is clearly there, and whether it is muscle memory or something else that in effect brings people back to life in some respects.

Judith Sachs: Yes. A colleague and friend of mine made a film called Alive Inside, where it is demonstrated people who had been in vegetative states from dementia for years and years, their their children or grandchildren were asked, well, what kind of music did he like when he was a teenager? And they put headphones on these people. And it is it is simply astonishing, the wakeup that happens in the brain and watching bodies move. In one instance in this film, the person was a Broadway dancer in the 1930s or forties, and they actually played a clip from a show that he had been in and his feet began doing the choreography that he had done 50 years earlier. So, yes, it is extraordinary. I, too, in my own class have seen people walk in with profound tremor, with enormous contracture. That means when the body is completely like turned into itself, very rigid hump back and head facing down. And I turn on whatever, whether it’s blues or jazz, big band sound, sometimes gospel from the African American church. And there is an extraordinary reaction of a recognition of the brain to something that eases perhaps some of the symptomology. But there is actual research about the production of dopamine and the fact that different areas in the brain can light up when certain areas have been deadened. So it’s not that suddenly they’re producing dopamine because when they walk out of class, they may have the same tremor, but the brain is such an amazing interior space, we don’t really understand its potential at all yet. When we do, we hope to cure Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. But at the moment we can be using music for this beneficial and healing effect that it has.

Peter Bowes: And what do you think this knowledge of the beneficial healing effects of music, what do you think it tells us about how we live our lives and the younger years in our twenties, thirties, forties? It can have this extraordinary effect on people in later life with some of these conditions that you talk about. But surely it’s there to help us as we’re younger as well.

Judith Sachs: It certainly is. And I think the fact that you see people all over walking around with the earbuds in kind of driving down the street is is great. One of the things that concerns me is the decibel level that a lot of young people use to listen to their music and sometimes the the lack of variety, because I do feel that music is not just this great big block of stuff called music. There’s such a variety, just the way there is of dance, and that the more people can begin to incorporate different types of music, different performances of music, even if you listen to one person sing Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, and then you listen to Leonard Cohen sing Hallelujah, you get a whole different flavor, same deal. If you listen to Handel’s Messiah, sung by one group in Africa as opposed to a group in in New York City, there’s a big flavor difference.

Peter Bowes: This is the Live Long and Master Aging podcast. Our guest for this episode is Judith Sachs, the founder of Anyone Can Move. Now,Judith, what do you say to people who and maybe I will use that word again who feel that they are failing and might say, actually, you know, I can’t move anymore. People who almost feel defeated by the aches and pains that come with aging and that can happen in fifties, sixties, seventies. It’s a different time for all of us. But there are many people, perhaps including myself, at certain times, where you almost feel defeated by what you feel is happening to you.

Judith Sachs: I certainly know people who feel that way. I have a very dear friend who has had a variety of different physical problems throughout his midlife to later life, and rather than just sounding like a cheerleader, I mean, I always ask people, they always say, you know, the movement you will do is the movement you enjoy doing. But if somebody does not have that background, they don’t have that past of playing sports or going for walks in the woods where everything is beautiful and it smells good, or going to a dance class or a fencing class, if they don’t have that. I mean, I, I would suggest finding another person, maybe not the person they live with because they will be too familiar with the ‘Oh, I can’t do it today.’ But to find a buddy who is not an Olympic walker or jumper or whatever, but is a person of of about their own physical ability and perhaps in their generation and then that the two of you make a kind of pact you know we’ll start out once a week and one of us is going to pick what we do. And I think I mean, going for a walk right now is is kind of the best beginning. Going for a walk in a place you don’t know. Again, it gives you a beginner’s mind. I found that during COVID, I live right in the middle of the city and I would get in the car and drive 10 minutes to this bird sanctuary that was right next to the airport. I have no idea why it’s there, but it was my saving grace. I would go early in the morning and I would see birds and I would not hear traffic. And walking through the woods really made me feel much more in control of my emotions. And I think that defeatist attitude, again, it was pervasive. It still is in many cases. But I think having somebody to do this with to be able to make a commitment, I mean, one of the reasons perhaps that I have started tennis and continue tennis is it takes two. There are two of us. Not that one day I may say, oh, I just can’t do it today or it’s too hot outside, then find something to do together inside. There are a bazillion things that you can look at on you. Just Google easy exercise for the top of the body. If you have an Apple Watch. Oh my goodness. You have an entire fitness library. I have to say most of the instructors are very young, which I find kind of not so great. But there’s one young man who has a prosthetic leg and there’s another woman of size who is one of the instructors. And that is very exciting for me to see that no one in in the Apple family is considered either debilitated or not appropriate as a teacher. And you can, of course, because you are by yourself with your device, you can do as much or as little as possible. I think when I told a friend of mine about this who was again, not an exerciser and there’s a range of things you can do from yoga and meditation, you can just do the cooldown. The cooldown is 10 minutes and really just involves breathing. That is one of the best ways to start. And I again, I don’t like to use the word exercise or get in shape, in shape of what you are in a shape, your body is in a shape. But to make yourself feel like movement is a part of your day. So lying in bed to begin with, stretching a little bit, taking a few bigger breaths and longer exhales than inhales. I also happen to teach qigong and pranayama breathing. All of that can get you in the mindset of, Well, what am I going to do today with my Apple Watch, with my buddy, or with something I have never tried before?

Peter Bowes: And I think it’s interesting what you say about finding someone else, finding a partner, finding a group of people that doesn’t necessarily have to be the person you live with, that it’s someone outside of your very inner circle. And there is things, something I think there’s something invigorating about that you can feed off the enthusiasm of other people and of course you can support each other as well.

Judith Sachs: And I think again, for people who are not die hard, you know, go out there and sweat the fact that you might be able to have a conversation. They always actually say that whether you are a walker or a runner, it’s very good to keep yourself at a level where you can carry on a conversation because, you know, again, you’re not going to do yourself any harm. I don’t want people to go out after this podcast and decide that they have to run a marathon. That’s really what I am not talking about. I’m talking about little, little, little steps and something that you will do on a regular basis or some several things, because variety is the spice of movement.

Peter Bowes: It is. And I would say to people, please don’t listen to this podcast and rush out and run your first marathon. I would say actually go and speak to your doctor first because we’re all different and long distance running has unique challenges and clearly can be dangerous for some people depending on your physical condition. Let me ask you this, Judith. This is a podcast about human longevity. We look forwards generally rather than looking backwards. And I’m curious to know what your longevity aspirations are as far as your own life is concerned.

Judith Sachs: So my father E. Milton Sachs, who died at the age of 93, worked at the – he had sold his medical practice, I’d say, probably ten years before his death, and then went to work at the Ladies Garment Workers Union. And he only did he only did examinations where he could sit down. So he did gynecological and rectal exams because he said, I want the patient is already on the table. I don’t have to stand on my feet. And when they closed down the facility, I think he was probably 92 when this happened. And I said, you know what? You should call the unemployment agency and you should apply for unemployment insurance because you got laid off. And he said, really? Okay. So he called up and the young man on the phone said, And can you tell me your age? Doctor … Oh, your date of birth, Dr. Sachs? And he said, 1910. And the guy said, Yeah, sure, buddy, And hung up on him.

Peter Bowes: Oh, no.

Judith Sachs: So I do absolutely hope to be teaching people to move and dance when I’m in my nineties, but I may do it from a chair, you know, the great Russian ballet masters, after they had stopped dancing with the Bolshoi or any of the companies, they were the people in the room who taught the younger dancers. And I have a great mentor in Amsterdam and she’s in her late eighties now and the kids can’t keep up with her.

Peter Bowes: Well, Judith, you’re clearly the kind of person who embraces life and enjoys every moment. You’ve got such a wide variety of activities going on. And I think that is a big part of it. It is not necessarily having to always look to the future. It is embracing the moment. 

Judith Sachs: It is. And I like this moment and the next moment and the next moment.

Peter Bowes: Well, that’s just the point, isn’t it, that if we like what we’re doing, it invigorates us. It gives us some enthusiasm and I think it gives us meaning. I’ve met so many people, some some very, very old people, over 100 centenarians that still have that get up and go that drive to be physical, but also sociable as well. And I think it’s the combination of the two. We haven’t really specifically talked about social connections, but then I suppose we have, haven’t we? Because a lot of what you do involves being social.

Judith Sachs: Yes. And I think again, that’s sort of what gives us balance. You know, we talked about the center of mass of the body, but there’s also a kind of center of mass of your life where you are on one side and those you love and those you associate with are on the other side. And the more balance and equilibrium you have about that, hopefully you will be wanting to move together as well as talk together and eat together and take trips together and go listen to birds in the morning together.

Peter Bowes: Judith I think that’s a great final thought. This has been really interesting. I wish you all the best with everything you’re doing. Thank you very much indeed.

Judith Sachs: Thank you, Peter.

Peter Bowes: My pleasure. And if you’d like to find out more about Judith’s programs, I’ll put the details into the show notes for this episode. You’ll find them at our website, LLAMApodcast.com There’s also a transcript of this conversation. You’ll also find more information in the notes section of the podcast platform of your choice, whether it be Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, which is our latest outlet for the podcast, or one of the many other places that you will find our episodes. The LLAMA podcast is a Healthspan Media Production. We’ll be back very soon. In the meantime, thank you so much for listening.