Where this book excels is in convincing me that I want to do the essentrics program, the gentle and fluid workout former ballerina Esmonde-White developed 25 years ago. She is in her 70s and says that even though X-rays show arthritis in her body she is active and pain free because of the program, which she developed after people in her yoga and fitness classes asked her to create a workout that didn’t make them hurt more afterwards.

The first chapters show why using all the muscles and joints in these ways keeps the fascia loose and flexible and our bodies strong and pain free. The program is taught internationally and the poses and exercises in the book are shown by an impressive and diverse group of doctors, nurses, athletes, instructors and retired professionals of all different ages, body types and ethnicities.

The program is sort of anti-yoga, with a focus on fluid movement instead of holding poses and the insistence that exercise should never hurt. There is a sort of “use it or lose it” mentality regarding all of the joints and muscles, with props and accommodations for mobility issues so those parts can still be gently helped. The exercises have a ballet and dance feel and also are reminiscent of just regular movements of all types that involve stretching, rocking, swaying, twisting and so on. They are precise though, so that your posture supports proper position and all muscles and joints are worked. This is where the book is less helpful for me, because even though all of the many poses and exercises are very well illustrated by the 11 models, it’s basically a hundred pages of photos of this pose going into this one and so on. It would work much better for me if all the steps of each fit on one page at least, and there were some one page cheat sheets of lists of what to do once you got the hang of them. I came away convinced I’d like to try to incorporate this into my daily routine but wondering if I should just find a YouTube series. I still highly recommend the book and am glad to have the new knowledge and tools it’s given me though.

I read a digital copy of this book via NetGalley.