Mirabai Holland teaches Manatee to get fit

Mirabai Holland doesn’t follow health and fitness trends; she starts them.

“My dad had bad rheumatoid arthritis in the late 1970s, and he got a knee replacement and was having trouble rehabbing his knee,” Holland said. “I started moving him in the pool, and he felt so much better. I realized how powerful movement and exercise can be and can help mitigate all the problems with aging. It set my path, and I’ve been developing fitness techniques ever since.”

Holland, a Longboat Key resident since 2009, has become an influential figure in the fitness and health world. She currently teaches fitness classes at Bayfront Park three times a week, and since 2013, she has worked with Manatee County on its Your Choice health program, which teaches more than 7,000 Manatee County employees how to lead a healthy lifestyle.

“It’s a program to help people mitigate age-onset problems,” Holland said. “Since we’ve implemented it, these people are lowering their blood pressure and their bad cholesterol and raising their good cholesterol. We’ve had good results.”

Holland has created several fitness DVDs, which are sold on QVC and Amazon and also available for streaming on Amazon. Several more videos are in the works, and she has her own YouTube channel.

Holland discovered her love of exercise through dance.

“As a young kid, I was active, but I didn’t really like sports,” Holland said. “I had a physical education teacher who was trained as a modern dancer and had us do it. I loved doing that, to create movement within.”

Holland received her degree in education at the University of Denver and attended the Boston Conservancy, where she studied ballet.

“I realized very quickly I didn’t like to be conservative with my dancing,” she said. “It was very strict, and that wasn’t me.”

Holland opened her own dance studio in New York that focused on movement for the non-dancer. She obtained her Master of Fine Arts at New York University, which was when she helped her arthritis-stricken father. She then received a degree in exercise physiology from Columbia University.

“I have a real desire to mold science and combine it with art,” she said. “The art part is more fun and personal, while the science part says why you do it.”

Holland developed a consulting company that allowed her to work with many people and places around New York City and the world, including developing Indonesia’s first destination health spa. She also served as the director of the fitness and wellness program at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. Her proudest achievement, however is her work in the medical fitness industry.

“My biggest accomplishment is bringing the possibility of good solutions to people with age-onset problems,” she said. “Some of these people went from hardly being able to move to stepping  and walking around.”

In the 1980s, Holland developed the first osteoporosis exercise program in the U.S., something that is still used today by the National Osteoporosis Foundation. Prevention  magazine named it as the best workout for bones.

“Exercise is good, but you also need to ear better and figure out how to manage your stress,” she said. “I try to teach people that.”

In addition to teaching fitness classes at Bayfront Park and developing Manatee County’s healthy living program, Holland writes for the Huffington Post’s healthy living section for those over 50.

“We’re right at the very beginning of the baby boomers really aging,” Holland said. “We don’t look as old as the people a generation ahead of us did at our age. People are wanting to stay active and healthy longer and longer, and that’s very possible.”