Aging Younger: How Emilie changed her posture and her life with Kairos
- Hannah Gonzalez
- 7 days ago
- 6 min read
Updated: 6 days ago
Emilie Roher is a retired teacher and a longtime client of the Kairos Wellness Experience (KWE). She takes biweekly spin classes, regularly lifts bags of birdseed into her car (the 40-pound bags, not the 20 or the 10!), and has significantly improved her once painful and noticeable spine curvature.
She is also 67 years young.
After a career in Special Education that spanned multiple decades, Emilie decided to make her fitness goals a reality when she retired in 2019. “At that point, I was quite burned out,” she recalls.
“One of the things I always wanted to do when I retired was to get into better shape, because I did minimal exercise.”
That she did. Emilie began her post-retirement wellness journey by taking spin classes with Carol, before starting private training sessions with AL. In addition to their sessions, she also participates in AL’s popular group class by the name of Aging Younger.
“[Carol] is just very encouraging, so easy to talk to and be with,” she says of the co-founder. “She’s incredible. Well, so is AL. I just could sit here and talk about them for several minutes.”
AL’s sessions with her led him to an important mission, one best described in the words of Emilie herself:
“In about 2022 or 2023, the Crusade began. The Posture Crusade.”
Aging Taller
“I knew that my shoulders were rounded, because my mother had talked to me about that when I was a little girl,” Emilie says thoughtfully. “She gave me this back brace to wear, to pull my shoulders back when I was sitting in school.”
Life goes on and so do our conditions. It wasn’t until after retirement that Emilie became aware of the full scope of the issue.
“AL sat with me,” she remembers of their initial meeting, “and the first thing he saw was my posture. Which I thought was fascinating. I had absolutely no idea that I had a hump in my back that was visible to other people.”
In truth, Emilie was suffering from a curvature of the spine called early-stage kyphosis, a forward rounding of the upper back often caused by repetitive postural habits and weakened spinal support.
To help Emilie counteract this, AL focused on restoring Emilie’s diaphragmatic nasal breathing, which provides internal structural support for the spine. By combining this breathwork with targeted exercises to activate and fortify her inner core, Emilie strengthened her transversus abdominis and multifidus, along with the deep stabilizer muscles necessary to physically lift her posture. This holistic approach allowed her to reshape her spinal alignment, transforming daily strain to functional strength and ease.
According to Emilie, “the change was incredible.”
“Before I knew it, I was noticing in the mirror how different my back and my shoulders were,” she says of her progress.
In addition to these targeted workouts, Emilie and AL also focus on the upper body and lower body in their sessions.
“He is incredible about constantly researching new things to help me, not just with my core, but with my posture.”
“Throughout my work with AL,” she continues, “it’s like… things [involving my core] that I could hardly do, all of a sudden, I was able to do. It was just incredible.”
Aging Stronger
Emilie’s overall pain has decreased, and her newfound core and upper body strength have helped her in many practical areas. “After driving a long distance,” she gives as an example, “my back didn’t hurt as much.”
Furthermore, in her daily life, Emilie has seen improvements that many Kairos clients think they may never experience in their post-retirement eras.
“AL has given me tools to use when I’m doing certain things, like when I’m picking up bags of mulch,” she offers. “I know exactly how to squat and how to brace my core so I can do that without feeling a strain in my back.”
A favorite of hers is the battle of the birdseed, from which she now emerges triumphant.
“I can now buy 40-pound bags of birdseed,” she states with a little bit of awe. “When I started doing that, the lady at the store taught me how to get a cart and carefully slide the bag onto the end of the cart.”
“I would get it out of the store that way and take it to my car, and just slide it from my cart into the back of my car,” she remembers. “But after working with AL, I can now pick up the 40-pound bag! I’ve actually had people say to me, ‘Do you need help with that?’ And once, I was walking to my car, carrying the bag, and a guy asked if I needed help.”
“I said, ‘No, thank you.’”
Aging Smarter
Something that makes Kairos’ Aging Younger classes so unique is the focus not only on physical fitness, but cognitive sharpness. By combining physical workout circuits with mental challenges, such as numerical and mathematical tasks, Aging Younger stimulates important intellectual activity for participants.
“[Recently,] for example, we were doing a farmer’s carry as part of a circuit,” Emilie explains. “So I had a 20-pound weight in each hand, and we were also lifting both weights at the same time as we walked forwards and backwards.”
And if that wasn’t enough mental gymnastics:
“We were also counting backwards from 100, by threes. For people our age, that’s definitely a cognitive challenge. It’s good for us to have to do that even though it’s sometimes… you know, it could be frustrating.”
Despite the inevitable frustrations that come with any fitness journey, Kairos participants get the benefit of having a truly wonderful leader in AL.
“I want you to know,” Emilie says sincerely, “that he is an excellent teacher. I see in him some of the qualities that I learned are part of being a good teacher. He gives specific praise. He breaks tasks into smaller parts. He is very good at re-teaching when something isn’t working, and he researches like crazy.”
What does AL have to say about Emilie?
“I keep forgetting that she’s 67!”
Aging Younger
“She’s so much stronger than when I met her,” AL continues. “She’s doing things that she just couldn’t do before, and some of these exercises can’t be completed by clients 10 years younger.”
With this sentiment, it’s safe to say that Emilie agrees: “Yes, I am feeling better.”
Though Aging Younger is largely practical and accessible, Emilie also participates in high-intensity training with AL and her frequent spin classes with Carol, a feat of athleticism as the sometimes-oldest participant.
“I’ve come to realize from working with [Carol and AL] that sometimes, I do have to adjust my goals,” she explains. “In spin class, I believe I’m the oldest person there. So my watts and my RPMs are not what Carol’s are, or some of the other people in the class. It’s one of those things where I have to [understand], I’m not competing with anybody but myself.”
Participating in Aging Younger has truly changed Emilie, and it’s noticeable in her demeanor.
“When you see somebody and they look weaker and older, it’s evident,” AL continues. “When I see her, she looks younger and stronger than when I met her.”
Thanks to Emilie and the great experience we are having with so many of our senior clients, we launched the Virtual Aging Younger Workshop for clients who are outside our region.
To Emilie, Aging Younger means “being as physically fit as I can be as I grow older,” so she can take road trips to visit her son in Boston. So she can breathe through back pain and lift heavy bags, “go out to dinner and be comfortable.”
To Kairos, it’s about guiding our participants through whatever season of life you’ve found yourself in — not just through physical fitness, but through all five dimensions of wellness. It’s about understanding that wellness can be at our fingertips, on our very screens, and truly believing that it’s never too late.
And to AL?
“It’s about Emilie and her holistic wellness. She was a teacher for forty years, who couldn’t lift a bag of birdseed, losing strength along with her battle with kyphosis.”
It’s about Emilie.
