S8E29: Ageing with MS with Véronique Gauthier-Simmons

Veronique (00:00)

Your body is not your enemy. And that’s something that took me a while to understand because, as I said, I was very reluctant to embrace the diagnosis.

 

Geoff (00:14)

Welcome to the latest edition of the Living World with MS Podcast. Joining me on this edition is Veronique Gautier Simmons. Veronique PhD is an international yoga teacher, teacher trainer and founder of Taming the Walrus, an approach that integrates movement, breath awareness to support healthy ageing. Based in the Algarve of Portugal, she teaches online classes worldwide, leads yoga teacher training and hosts international retreats focused on vitality, resilience and lifelong wellbeing.

 

Overcoming MS (00:45)

Just a quick note to say that all opinions are those of the guest and do not constitute medical advice.

 

Geoff (00:53)

So welcome Veronique.

 

Veronique (00:55)

Well, thank you. Thank you so much, Geoff, for inviting me back on the podcast. And I’m really looking forward to this conversation.

 

Geoff (01:05)

So to start off with, could you briefly introduce yourself, your work, and your connection to Overcoming MS?

 

Veronique (01:12)

So I’m yoga teacher, breath work facilitator. And I discovered Overcoming MS 15 years ago, And it really fitted in perfectly with my approach to healthy living with MS. And I became a facilitator for a number of years. And actually the book that I’ve written, the first chapters are really kind of development on what I was sharing in the Overcoming MS webinar and retreats so there is a really deep connection between my work and Overcoming MS but now I’m focusing more on healthy agEing that’s my new focus.

 

Geoff (02:05)

So you yourself were diagnosed with MS in n999. could you give us three words which would describe your journey with MS so far and why you’d choose those words?

 

Veronique (02:18)

So the first one definitely is reluctant. mean, nobody really wants to be diagnosed with MS, but some people kind of embrace it more easily than others. And I didn’t. I was really reluctant to change my lifestyle when I was first diagnosed. So it was really like, no, I’m going to fight. I’m going to resist. I’m going to push.

Then the second word is learning. I did a lot of learning with MS. So professionally, I was in a completely different area. So I have a PhD, but it’s all about economics, European integration, knowledge economy, innovation, nothing to do with health. But being diagnosed with MS, especially 25 years ago, there wasn’t that much out there about MS except two treatments and that was it. So I started to explore alternative approaches to managing MS. So I looked at Chinese medicine, yoga, Ayurveda and so on.

I was drawn towards physical activity and exercise in particular. So I did a lot of learning thanks to MS. And I would say the third word is transformative. Because even when I’m looking back at the way my life was and the way I was when I was 30, and now it’s like, who is that? It was so transformative. I mean, I’m a completely different person. When I was diagnosed, I was smoking 30 cigarettes a day, but I was also spending six hours in the gym doing spinning, aerobics, squash.

 

I was an adrenaline junkie. I really was. I was into bunch jumping, parachuting, micro-light flying. I needed adrenaline. And the two words that I hated most were balance, equilibrium.

I hated this. I was like, no way, I don’t want a life like this. It’s boring. I want to push. I want to push barriers. And now I am teaching yoga and breath work. it’s kind of ironic. But I’m very happy. I’m much happier now than I was when I was 30. So it’s all good. Transformative in a good way.

 

Geoff (05:11)

So you mentioned reluctance and so you came to yoga reluctantly as an alternative to going to the gym and ultimately became a yoga teacher. So what happened to make you fall in love with yoga?

 

Veronique (05:25)

Well, first I had this idea that yoga is all about sitting still and very boring.

But as I said, I was doing spinning, I was doing aerobics, but that’s when I had my first symptoms. I had my first optic neuritis when I was playing squash, and I had balance issues when I was doing step aerobics. So I knew that my body was not enjoying that, and I thought, okay, I’ll try yoga. Okay, well, if everybody’s doing yoga, I’ll be bored. And then I realized it’s actually really challenging.

Okay, yoga can be so many different things. There are so many different types of yoga. But I started with Ashtanga and Iyengar and it requires a lot of strength, balance, flexibility and a quiet mind. And I didn’t have that. Definitely not the quiet mind. So it was far more challenging than I thought, which I liked.

And then it made me feel so good. It really did change the way I felt about myself, my body, my life. And it was so good that I thought, okay, it’s too good to not be shared. And that’s why I decided to become a yoga teacher, because I thought it really helped me so much emotionally, mentally, but also physically that, yeah, I wanted to share it. And for me, yoga is not about what you do. It’s not about the poses that you do. It’s about how you do it with awareness, with presence, with focus. And that is what makes the big difference.

 

Geoff (07:16)

So you’ve also recently written a book about yoga or about many things called Taming the Walrus. So could you tell us what it’s about and also tell us a little bit about the title, why Taming the Walrus?

 

Veronique (07:31)

The book is basically what I learned from living with MS and becoming a yoga teacher for MS that relates to aging. And so when I was diagnosed, with MS, when I started to look into yoga, I started to look at how yoga could help manage MS symptoms. So how to reduce inflammation, how to promote regeneration, to improve balance, to reduce cognitive fog, to get more energy.

So I developed my own approach, bringing a little bit of yoga, a little bit of Pilates, breath work. Everything that works for me is good. And then 10 years ago, when I turned 50, I thought Okay, maybe now I should have a look at yoga for aging. Maybe now it’s the time to kind of look at what yoga can do for me now at this stage in my life. And then I realized it’s the same or very similar. I’m not saying that MS is the same as aging, yeah? But from a yogic point of view,

When we look at aging healthily, we look at reducing chronic inflammation, at improving balance, reducing cognitive fog. We look at the same issues as when we look at MS or similar chronic health conditions. And I thought, wow, that’s great because MS already prepared me for aging. And it’s not just that also that when you, and you know that yourself, when you live with a condition like MS, you learn to relate to your body, to your mind differently, to listen to your body. And that is something that a lot of people who don’t have chronic health condition, when they turn 50, they are like, my body doesn’t do that anymore. And they are surprised. And I see that with my husband. Very, very healthy, but turning 55, 60 today, actually, is like, he’s surprised that his body is a little bit sore when he goes for a 10K. Well, I learned that 30 years ago. You know, living with MS, I find, prepares us to age better, And that’s what I wanted to share in this book. Now the title, it’s also the title of my yoga business, Taming the Walrus. The Walrus comes from a dream that I had before I was officially diagnosed with MS, so 25, 26 years ago. And I kind of knew it would be MS. I had been told a few times it’s likely. But I had this dream, and I swear I hadn’t taken any kind of drugs before, or any alcohol. But in my dream, I went into a garage, you know like the French houses with the garage underneath. So I had to go in the garage And a huge walrus came to me. She was gigantic.

 

She was like touching nearly the ceiling, but I knew it was a female for whatever reason, I don’t know. She had long eyelashes. She did not want to scare me, but she was coming, you know, like wobbly like this, boom, big, big, gigantic walrus. And she gave me a riddle to solve. And I woke up, I couldn’t remember the riddle.

But I knew that this was one of these dreams that matter. And it took me a while. But I realized in my dream, the walrus was MS.

Because if I had to choose an animal to represent MS, I would choose a walrus. It’s big, it moves slowly, you don’t know where it’s going. And also, because in French, walrus is morse. Morse is mort, which means death, and MS. And I thought maybe at the time that was connected as well.

So that’s why for me the walrus is MS, but it’s basically any big challenge in your life. You know, someone else might have a walrus that represents, I don’t know, another chronic condition or a divorce or any big challenge in their life.

Now the taming part, comes from the little prince. You know Saint-Exupéry? So as a French person, we are raised, educated with the little prince, is our bedside table book. And in the desert, the little prince meets a fox.

And the fox says, can you please tame me? And the prince doesn’t know what it means. What do you mean, taming? And the fox explains, taming means to create a bond, to become kind of nearly friends. And first you need to observe me. You don’t interfere, you observe. And then the next day maybe you come a bit closer and you start interacting with me. And then once you tame me, we are together for life. And you are responsible for me.

So I know that taming in English is slightly different, a little bit more about control. But in French, it’s really about this developing a relationship and learning to little by little understand and influence. And I thought, that’s what I want to do with MS and with my own body.

You know, this idea of taming the warlrus. It’s not control, it’s not hard, it’s not fighting. It’s getting to know. So, long answer, but, Yeah, that’s where it comes from.

 

Geoff (14:48)

And it’s I’ve the picture on the book it’s not a scary walrus. It’s quite it’s a big walrus, but it’s not aggressive. It looks like quite a friendly walrus.

 

Veronique (14:57)

We had just about the illustrations in the book. They are beautiful and we found an amazing young graphic designer who really got what we wanted from the illustrations. yeah, her name is in the book and I highly recommend her, by the way.

 

Geoff (15:17)

And if people want to get a copy of the book, is it available now at most sellers?

 

Veronique (15:25)

Yeah, so it’s available on Amazon. Amazon UK, Amazon IE as a Kindle and as a paper book, beautiful paper book. And it’s also available from yogamatters.com, which is a UK-based company for those who don’t want to use Amazon.

 

Geoff (15:53)

And in your book you insist on the importance of sensing the body and developing the skill of interoception. So can you explain what it is and why that is important?

 

Veronique (16:04)

Yeah. So for me, that is non-negotiable. It’s the first thing. And that’s why yoga is so good, because it trains us to develop interoception. And I think it’s one of the skills that is going to be like a big, big thing in the future. It’s the ability to sense the body. So right now, our body, so we have loads of sensors everywhere. And it’s constant communication between the body and the brain. The brain is in the body, but between the brain and the rest of the body, there are constant signals being sent. Chemical, hormonal, electrical, of signals. And these signals, it’s basically data.

It’s the data that the body is sending so that the nervous system, the brain can adjust everything, keep us alive and keep us safe. And that is the aim of our nervous system is to keep us alive and to keep us balanced and safe. That all that matters. But we tend to live nowadays in our head.

Yeah, we tend to think but not sense. And that is the problem. So one little thing that I ask my students to do in retreats, for instance, is I ask you, you sense your right foot?

 

And most people are like thinking about their foot. Now, if I ask you to close your eyes, with your eyes closed, how do you know you’ve got a right foot?

What are the signals? What are the sensations? Maybe there is a little bit of buzzing. Maybe there is the contact of the air or the sock on your foot. But it’s something we need to train to sense the body. And that’s, know, in yoga, runs scanning the body. That’s what we do as well. And this is basically data that you need to be aware of to make the right decisions. And if I can just give you one example. Like, very often, my mind at the end of the day, we say, are you tired? Just go and relax. Just stop doing anything. Just go on the couch. But if I sense my body, my body will say, I need to move. I need to move. And that’s what I need to listen to, to my body, not to my mind, because the mind can lie. So that’s what it’s such an important part of yoga and of the book is learning to read the signals that your body is sending.

 

Overcoming MS (19:28)

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Geoff (19:40)

So in the book you talk about strengthening, stretching, speed work and yoga. So could you explain a bit about each of these and whether there’s more importance on one than the other or altogether?

 

Veronique (19:55)

Okay, so I’ll start with the second part, so the importance of each of them. And for me, it’s a little bit like, you know, if you ask a nutritionist, should I eat spinach or should I eat chickpeas or should I eat fish or, you know, the nutritionist will tell you, eat the rainbow, have variety of food to make sure that you get all the nutrients that you need. And in the book, I talk about move the rainbow. Because for me, and I’m not talking, so I’m talking in general about healthy aging. The idea is bring in movement bring in movement, various movement as much as possible. That’s how you ensure that you’ve got a wide range of benefits. Because they all have amazing benefits. That’s the thing, you know? And I was really so amazed when I discovered that, you know, strengthening release molecules in the bodies that are like, it’s like an internal pharmacy. For instance, there’s research now showing that if you strengthen your upper arm, so if you move like this, it releases a molecule that will protect you against diabetes too. You know, it’s like, wow.

But the body is a pharmacy and that’s why pharmaceuticals sometimes they just reproduce chemically a substance that is already in the body like melatonin or interferon. It is something we produce ourselves. And we’ve got all these amazing benefits of strengthening. It’s quite mind-blowing to see how good it is for us to protect us against a whole range of different issues. And stretching is also super important and there is a research with little yoga rats. It’s where the researchers took rats, injected some inflammatory substance, and then half the rats went on and lived their normal life, and half the other group they were stretched. That’s why they were called yoga rats and they were doing like 10 minutes of stretching. The yoga rats had more of a substance called resolvin that is derived from omega-3 and helps to reduce inflammation and repair tissues. So stretching reduces inflammation in the body or helps to reduce inflammation in the body and help to repair tissues. So we need that as well. Speed training is so important for cognition, you to keep the brain healthy. And as we age, one of the biggest risks is falling after a certain age when you fall and you break something and then it leads to other kind of side effects. Speed training. Pliometrics. So important. And yoga for me is non-negotiable because of this interoception skills that we develop as well as the mental, the calming effect.

So everything has benefits. So the main thing is, I would say don’t focus too much on exactly what you need to do, more do something. That is the most important part. And also I want to say that for people with MS, it also depends if you have a function loss, loss of function, then you should do functional training.

I strongly believe that we need to, as Professor Jelinek so nicely says, we need to be the captain of our own health ship. We need to decide what is right for us. And it’s the same for exercising, for physical activity. At the end of the day, you know what your body needs if you develop interoception. And look just at the two of us. Yes, we both have MS, but you’re a young, strong man.

And I’m a more senior lady with weak fascia and weak bones. So we need to do something different. That’s why I think it’s important to really take responsibility for your exercise regime as well and decide, you know, I don’t like that. Why would I do that? I like that. It’s good for me. I’ll do that. So, yeah.

Everybody needs to find their own way. I like programs and protocol at the beginning. helps, definitely helps. But after a little while, then you can become more independent and try different things

 

Geoff (25:50)

So as another thing apart from this the more physical aspects, your book your book also covers breathwork. So could you tell us a bit about what you mean by breathwork and does this also support people living with MS?

 

Veronique (26:08)

Yeah, so I completely fell in love with breath work probably 10 years ago and I was looking at breath work as a very accessible practice because I thought, know, even when you are tired or when your movements might be limited, as long as you live, you can breathe. Right? So you can do breath work. Breath work is consciously changing the way you breathe to influence how you feel. Yeah? So there is such a strong link between the breath and how you feel. So the breath really reflects and you can, I’m sure, observe that in your own life. If you are anxious, you will breathe in a certain way, maybe more from the upper chest, maybe more shallow. When you are relaxed, you breathe more from the abdomen.

When you are in a rush, your breath is fast. When you are calm, your breath is slow. So in breath work, we intentionally consciously change the breathing pattern to influence our health, our wellbeing, to trigger relaxation or sometimes also to create an artificial stress to let the body adapt. You know the same way as you can go into a cold bath to stress your body so that it adapts and gets better. We can do that with breath work as well. We can create stress but we know that we can come out of stress easily so that when it happens in life, we are ready for it. And it’s so powerful. It is also vast. are so many different techniques. And then when you start to use breath work, you realize it helps you in so many different situations. Like I have one of my students, she told me a few months ago that when she was doing the MRI scan, usually she really doesn’t like to go into the MRI machine. She thought of breath work and she used breath work to calm down, to relax.

When I did my training in breath work, I was doing case studies and I looked at using breath work for fatigue management, which seems to be also a good way to manage your fatigue. You can get more energy, you can relax, so many things you can do with the breath. Quite a wide range of exercises, yeah. And you can do it on the chair, you can do it on the bed, you can do it on the floor, anywhere.

 

Geoff (29:19)

Is there a simple breath work practice that listeners could try today?

 

Veronique (29:26)

Yeah, so shall we do something that helps to calm the mind? Yeah?

 

Geoff (29:32)

Yeah, excellent.

 

Veronique (29:34)

So it’s not something that you want to do necessarily in public because it might look a little bit weird, but it’s called the bumblebee breath. And it’s such, for me, it’s like wiping the screen, know, like completely letting go of all the thoughts. And you can do it using your thumbs to close your ears and you place your index middle fingers on your eyelids. Or if you want to do it without, if that doesn’t feel comfortable, you do it without. And you’re going to…

 

Geoff (30:07)

Obviously if people are if are driving while listening to the podcast, I recommend we don’t your car probably don’t do this.

 

Veronique (30:12)

Yeah. Thank you so much, Geoff, for saying that. But then do it without your hands and just inhale through the nose and hum like a bee as you exhale. Ff you can just hum on the exhale and do it three times and then notice how you feel.

How do you feel now?

 

Geoff (30:46)

It is very calming, yeah.

 

Veronique (30:48)

It is amazingly calming. And it works because of the vagus nerve, so the longest cranial nerve that connects the eyes, the ears, goes through the throat, down all the way to the guts. And because of the vibrations, because of the sounds, if you close your eyes and ears, it’s even more, you really trigger the relaxation response. And for me, it feels like suddenly my mind is like, so chilled. So cool. And it’s so easy. That’s all you need to do. Three times and it helps you to reset. So that’s my effort.

 

Geoff (31:28)

And just a minute, yeah. Just yeah, you don’t have to it’s not half an hour of meditation to reset.

 

Veronique (31:36)

But just paying attention to your breath, just noticing if you breathe through the nose, which is ideal, or not. If you breathe in your upper chest, which you want to avoid. Just being aware of your breath is already your first step that everybody can do, even while driving.

 

Geoff (31:56)

So you write also about deep rest. So can you explain why deep rest isn’t just a nice to have thing but is central to people living with MS?

 

Veronique (32:09)

Yeah, so you know all the benefits that I mentioned about strengthening, stretching, speed work and so on. The benefits are not going to be there if you don’t rest properly. Yeah, so if you think for instance of strengthening. When you strengthen you basically break the muscle fibers yeah and then they repair making the muscle stronger but this repair only happens if you are in a calm restful state yeah.

Resting, deep resting. So I’m not talking about watching Netflix while having a beer. That’s not deep rest. What I mean by deep rest is really, you know, stillness, silence, scanning your body, yoga nidra or what the neuroscientist Huberman calls non-sleep deep rest. This gives your body the time to repair. It gives the time to your body to cleanse the brain. You know, all the toxins that are in the brain.

 

So it really is non-negotiable. If you don’t have restful time, sleep or yoga nidra or these kind of practices, then you won’t have all the benefits of the physical activity. And that is so important. That’s why we have relaxation at the end of yoga practice, to kind of take the time to rest.

So it’s essential, really essential.

 

Geoff (34:12)

And another topic, there’s a lot of noise we hear now on the internet about longevity. Some of it very positive, but some of it also there’s supplements, there’s biohacking, extreme protocols, there’s some guy in America who’s trying to live forever, I believe. Your book takes a different approach to this, so how would you describe what sets your approach apart from what we hear on the internet?

 

Veronique (34:42)

So first, I think it’s great that we are talking about longevity. For me, longevity is not about living as long as possible. That’s not my aim, but it’s to have a quality of life, to live with vitality, to live with, I always think of the sparkle in the eyes. Sometimes you see someone who has these shiny eyes and is happy to live. That’s what I’m talking about.

And because I am so convinced that our body is intelligent, it has all these amazing systems in place, it produces all these amazing substances, then we also have medicine that will help us, treatments that will also support us. But for me, my role is to support this natural intelligence, to give my body what it needs to do its work as good as it can. And that for me is the key to healthy aging. It’s to make sure I’ve got the physical activity that will support my bones, my muscles, my ligaments, my brain, that I will rest and relax, that I will calm the mind with breath work or meditation. And also, I find that sometimes the longevity discourse is all about the physical body and the performance of the physical body.

For me, it’s not. I know people who are beautifully aging with a smile and they might not run a marathon, but they are happy. And for me, it’s all about the body, the mind, and the spirit. We are not just physical body. We are not. So we need to look at the bigger picture.

It’s not just the muscles and the bones. They are essential, but it’s not just that. It’s our emotions, it’s our sense of purpose in life. All this for me is important. And that’s where I think it’s a little bit different. And yeah, that’s how I position myself in a way, slightly on the side of the longevity discourse.

 

Geoff (37:27)

And so another thing that you describe is that healing it’s not an absence of symptoms, but a return to wholeness and inner alignment. So could you describe a bit about what that means in practice, especially when you’re having a harder day?

 

Veronique (37:43)

Yeah, and I know it sounds a little bit abstract until you experience it in a way. And that’s about, for me, this holistic approach. So it’s not just the physical body. And it’s about the whole layers of the physical body, the energy body, and the spiritual being as well. And maybe the easiest is to ask you and the listeners to think of a time in their life that can be yesterday or a bit further away where you feel so good in your life and your body. You know when you feel yes, this is what I’m meant to be doing. And it can be because you are with your family. It can be because you are doing a job that really is rewarding. You have the energy to do that. And then it doesn’t matter in a way if you have some physical symptoms or not. You can still feel whole. Does it make sense?

 

Geoff (39:03)

I think so, yeah.

 

Veronique (39:05)

Yeah, it’s this idea that, yeah, you feel that you can rest in your life. You feel healed. You don’t struggle anymore. And that for me is what matters at the end of the day. And when the time come for me for my last breath, I want to feel this, yes that was worth it.

 

Geoff (39:37)

And as a final point, if someone is listening to this podcast who’s just been diagnosed with MS or they’re having a difficult time with MS, what’s one thing that you would most want them to hear?

 

Veronique (39:54)

Your body is not your enemy. And that’s something that took me a while to understand because, as I said, I was very reluctant to embrace the diagnosis.

I felt that my body had betrayed me, that my body, because it’s autoimmune, you feel like it’s attacking me, it’s the enemy, I need to fight it. But at the end of the day, your body wants to protect you. OK, it got a little bit maybe the wrong way, but the aim, it wants to protect you. It attacks your mind and shield because it thinks it’s the enemy. But the aim is like a child being badly behaved, but the intention is good. But that is, yeah, that is much better to see it this way, I think, and then try to tame your body. Try to connect with the sensations and to feel when do you feel best, what is maybe draining your energy, and obviously, I’m not mentioning in the book the diet. I’m not mentioning other things, but it is also an important part. But the body is not the enemy. And you are not just the body. It’s body, mind, and spirit as well. And I wish I had been told that.

 

Geoff (41:29)

Okay, with that, thank you very much for joining us. I’d encourage everyone to have a look at the show notes for a link to your book and also your website. but if you search for Taming the Walrus, you’re quite easy to find online. So yeah, I’d encourage everyone to check out both your website and also have a look at the book as well. Thank you for joining us,

 

Veronique (41:48)

Thank you. Thank you for inviting me to join you. Thank you. And have a lovely day, everyone.

 

Overcoming MS (41:59)

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