Batista Gremaud, the author of Feminine Body Design, Empowering Fitness For A Pain Free Life, loves to help busy women over forty achieve greater integration of a fit body, mind, and spirit. Batista uses the Body Design Formula, which combines dancing, quantum physics, and metaphysical science.

In our episode, we discuss:

•     Discovering the true Mind-Body connection,
•     What’s wrong with the way that most of us are doing strength training,
•     The benefits of exercise in resolving stress,
•     Balancing masculine and feminine energy,
•     Why working out doesn’t have to be “hard”!

Interested in attending an upcoming masterclass? Sign up here!

Learn more about the Body Design Formula on their website.

Watch the episode here:

The Power Of Designing A Fit Body

Batista Gremaud is a former professional dancer, best-selling author, and international body designer. Her quest to resolve pain and heal her body led her to finally discover the mind-body-spirit balance that many practitioners offer but few fully deliver. We talk about her healing process that has her feeling younger and stronger than ever before, and the program delivers the same results to their clients.

I’m happy to have you back with us for a terrific conversation that I share with Batista Gremaud. She’s formerly a professional dancer, now an international body designer, bestselling author and co-creator of the Feminine Body Design Online Strength Training Mentoring System. She found the way to resolve her own chronic pain that she was experiencing after accidents and injuries in her career as a dancer. She is passionate about bringing this message and these methods to the world at large. Enjoy our conversation and gather a little inspiration for aging in reverse so that we can enjoy more vitality, less pain, more energy, and active lifestyles as we grow old together. I know you’re going to love our chat.

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I’m pleased to be joined by the accomplished Batista Gremaud. Batista is an international body designer, number one best-selling author of Feminine Body Design: Empowering Fitness for Pain-Free Life. She is the co-creator of the Feminine Body Design Online Strength Training Mentoring System, co-host of the Esoteric Principles of Bodybuilding, and producer of the Dr. Fitness USA Show. A former international professional performer in ballet and Spanish dance, her longtime passion for dance, quantum physics and metaphysical science aligns in the body design formula to help busy women over 40 to achieve greater integration of body, mind and spirit. Batista, I’m so happy you were able to carve out some time. Thank you for joining us.

Thank you. I’m super excited to be here and share a little bit of my life experience with your readers. I’m honored.

It’s my pleasure. Could you share with us a little bit about your own journey? I know from my own experience and friends of mine who performed as dancers, it’s an incredibly demanding profession.

I started dancing when I was three years old. That’s all I ever wanted to do. I started with ballet. My mother was a ballet dancer. My father was a mime. That’s all I knew growing up. My first stage appearance was as a toddler. It’s hard on the body. From the outside, it looks so glamorous but behind the scenes, day in, day out, it’s a lot of work. It’s like bootcamp. Especially in the ballet world, it’s the no pain, no gain. The show must go on and you don’t stop just because you have pain somewhere. I had to make a career transition in my mid-twenties from ballet to flamenco because I did break my foot early on when I was twenty years old.

I couldn’t go on pointe shoes anymore so I had to change to flamenco dancing. I loved flamenco dancing. I fell in love with flamenco dancing when I was a teenager. It was a natural transition, but it’s a hard life. I had a car accident at the same time when I broke my foot. The injuries never healed properly. Even though I had tried to do just about everything to heal, all the modalities, the chiropractor, acupuncture, massages, all the unconventional modalities like hands-on healing, Reiki, whatever. I had tried everything to heal my injuries, but I was not getting better. Age starts setting in a little bit and the hormones change. By the time I reached my mid-40s, I was seriously injured. That was my life. It was a double life. It was about the glamour of being a dancer, being on stage, and then behind the scenes, having a lot of pain. It’s not that glamorous. That was my life.

You worked through the pain for quite a while, longer almost for two decades, further beyond your initial injuries and accident.

Yes, 30 years.

All of these other modalities and people who would work on you, what flipped the switch or the light bulb that showed you the difference and the healing that you could experience through exercise and movement through the right type of exercise?

Thank you for asking the question. I was very much into spirituality and metaphysics. When I wasn’t at the doctor or dancing, that’s what I was doing. One day I had a moment of clarity. It’s an awakening like you wake up from a dream. I looked around the room. I was in a meditation class. The topic of the discussion was body, mind, spirit integration. I looked around the room and at myself from a different perspective. I said, “Body, mind, spirit sounds great, but where is the body in this equation?” My body was in pain. It was on the way out. I said, “Something is missing.” With all these things that I’m doing, I’m not getting better. I looked around the room and I saw a lot of suffering. I saw that I wasn’t the only one. I saw some people very out of shape, overweight, underweight. It was not at the level at all. I prayed. I said, “I need to find the answer to the body part of that trio.” I organized a whole meditation intention. I invited all my friends. We lit candles and prayed. We did mock-up boards. We did everything that I had ever learned about the topic and for everybody with a collective consciousness that we would find an answer to the body. The very next day, I met Dr. Fitness USA.

The universe said, “This student is ready. The teacher shall appear.”

Sometimes you pray for something and you expect something to come in a form. This wasn’t it for me. I didn’t expect that. I was still a full-time dancer and performer. I was at a restaurant waiting for the owner. I was going to put a show in that restaurant. I was waiting, sitting at the table there, and then this man walks in for lunch. I’ve looked at him, I said, “He’s handsome.” We made eye contact then he walks by my table and he said, “Who are you?” I said, “I’m Batista. Who are you?” He said, “I’m an international body designer.” I’ve never heard that term. I didn’t know what it was but it sounded good. I had come from that mindset of creating those intention for the body, mind, spirit. I said, “That’s what I need.” It was a sign.

We had a conversation. An hour later after my meeting with a restaurant owner, I went to his office and the conversation was bizarre. I had been in the fitness, dance, movement industry for 45 years when you think about it. I knew a lot but everything that he was telling me was like Chinese. I quite did not understand the concept of lifting heavy weights but never doing anything uncomfortable. These two didn’t fit in the same sentence. I didn’t get it. He was saying, “As a woman, you have to stop giving. You have to learn to receive.” It’s bizarre, but I had prayed. I was desperate. Even though I did not understand the concepts that he was presenting me with, I decided that when you pray for something and it doesn’t come in the shape and form that you expect, then you better take the leap.

I hired him. I jumped in. I went into the gym. I started weightlifting. Within less than two weeks, my backache was gone. It never returned. It’s been eleven years. My other injuries started to heal. I had a frozen shoulder. I could barely move my arm. My knees, my Achilles, everything was healed in a short time, very rapidly, and so I married him. That was the beginning of this new journey, this transformational time for me where I started connecting the dots for me personally on that topic of body, mind, spirit integration, but also a whole new journey within myself and my relationship with myself and my body, and then teaching it to other people.

Many people are in pain and have no answers. I’ve done a lot of research on the topic because I did not understand. I was thinking, “Why if I work with a personal trainer over here, I’m still in pain? Now I go to the gym and I do similar exercises, but now I’m feeling free.” I became a personal trainer. I’ve done a lot of research. I wrote a couple of books. This one is dear to my heart. It’s the Feminine Body Design: Empowering Fitness for Pain-Free Life. This dispels the myths that I had about fitness and that I find many women also have. That’s what happened.

An inspired partnership was born.

It’s a life-transforming partnership. I not only got my body back and my strength, but I got a husband too.

The universe lined it all up.

Also, a new career. I was happy to be making that career transition, but who makes a career transition at 50? It’s not that easy and it wasn’t easy. I don’t say that it was easy. I’m a person who loves learning. I’m always looking to learn and to grow as a person. It’s been an amazing journey.

To think it started with someone who gave you permission to break out of that no pain, no gain paradigm that many of us are trained, be it sports or dance or getting ahead in life. We’re taught no pain, no gain. We’re taught to power through. We stop picking up signals and listening to what our body is trying to tell us.

When you are an athlete, you have to show up for the job. There is a fine line between showing up for the job and also making sure to take the time to rest, heal and nurture. I find that in my life, I didn’t have that balance. It was all about doing, giving and performing. There was not much time for me. Even though I was going to doctors, doing the massages and doing all the things, it was still in the doing mode.

It can be hard to create that space so that you can connect with what works for you, especially when everything else is so commonly accepted as the way to fix things.

This is one of the things that the program teaches. Because it is weightlifting, we do lift a considerable amount of weight. Not for every body parts, but certain body parts which require more weight. We always make sure that the body is grounded and safe, feeling secure, and that the movements are done in a biomechanically proper form. It feels good. When you do the weight, you go past your self-imposed limitations because you do things that you never thought would be possible. It gives you that internal connection, that brain-muscle connection that allows you to get centered and grounded within your own body. It’s a very different feeling than anything I have experienced in any other exercise modality. I leg press 650 pounds. That’s what we’re talking about. I’m not saying that everybody has to do this. I love it and I do it smiling. We have ergonomic support, a pad that we put behind the back so that the spine gets realigned, so everything goes into place. You just don’t do 650 pounds. It creates such an incredible amount of endorphins in the brain and the sense of inner power. It’s hard to explain.

It must be incredible to move beyond the previous restrictions that you had after injury and pain and then blow past your wildest imaginings to leg press 650 pounds after struggling to continue your dance career for decades. It’s a complete transformation. It’s so empowering when we get to exceed our own expectations. With the right support to help us safely and that grounding is such an important aspect of it too. I’m sure it wasn’t foremost in your ballet training or other dance.

You don’t talk about this. You don’t think about it. It’s always about doing more, reaching new heights. If your legs go this high today, tomorrow you want it over here. You want to do three turns today, tomorrow you want to do four. You’re always pushing. In dancing, it’s part of the job, but it’s not a natural way of moving. Biomechanically, it’s just not that. You’re always turning out and pushing the body. The life expectancy of a dancer is 40 years old. At 40, most dancers retire because of injuries, sometimes even earlier. That should tell you something about the profession, but it’s not how you’re going to be pain-free. It’s not the way to go.

As you’re working with your clients, do you find you have to help them unlearn things from their previous exercise experience? What are some common habits that we have picked up that don’t serve us?

Our best clients are those who don’t have much of a background, especially not in weightlifting because when they have a background, they have their habits. Habits are sometimes hard to break because we do things in a way that may look similar to what other people are doing. Yet, there are some differences that would make all the difference. For example, where the feet are placed. If you go to a gym, you have the leg press. A lot of people do it. Most people are going to put their feet in the middle of the board. It’s an instinctive way to do it. When you do this, you put pressure on the knees.

When we do it, we put the feet at the bottom of the board so the hips are grounded, and then you push through. Little differences like that. People have habits of doing things. To unlearn the habits, it takes a lot of concentration because you always go back to the habits. One of the things that are the most difficult to overcome is posture. Let’s say 90% of people now suffer from bad posture. One of the main, most prominent postural misalignment conditions is a forward head posture where the head is moving forward. That’s because of our lifestyle with computer and phones. This is something that is common. Younger and younger people are getting it now.

It used to be that you get older, you get that posture, but now even the young kids have it. What happens is now they go to workout and they are going to workout in the position they’re in. If they’re like this, they go and workout and they’re going to do everything like this. What they’re doing is they’re compounding the problem, adding muscle on a body part that is already in the wrong position. That’s the opposite of good health. This is difficult to overcome. When we work with people, all the exercise and everything we do is geared towards opening the chest, working on posture, developing muscles in the back that holds the shoulder back so that you don’t have to think about it. Even though we gear every exercise to do that, people would still have a tendency to fall back into what’s comfortable for them. That’s when a good mentoring program comes into play. If you’re doing it on your own, it’s hard to catch it or to realize that you’re doing it. It’s like a blind spot. That’s the value of working with a mentor that can help you to get past those problems.

That outside perspective to help call you out every time you fall back into those unhealthy patterns or habits. I say the same thing and I’ve seen it in a lot of the clients, especially when I was doing bodywork. We’ve been issued this box, this computer in front of us, our mobile device, everything. We have to break out of that box. I love how clearly you described it. It’s about strengthening the muscles on the back because they’ve all become stretched and unused, that’s where trigger points come from, and then everything else opposite those gets shortened. You have to physically work on opening those muscles back up at the same time. It takes that comprehensive program. We talked briefly before about the shift that you’ve had to make. You started working online before the pandemic and now you’re doing more remote work. You’re still able to do this close mentoring even for people who aren’t in your immediate area.

That was my vision when I met Stephen. I had this amazing recovery from all my injuries. It was one-on-one. It was in the gym. It was customized. The investment was quite high. I had the vision to reach more people than just one-on-one. That’s what I did for eight years. It was a lot of work because Stephen is intuitive. The knowledge was all in his head, and he never imagined that it could be done online. He’s like the artist, the sculpture. It was a lot of work, but through my research and I became a personal trainer and then I started teaching the program and then comparing notes to what he would do and what I would do. Through a long process, I was able to put the program into formulas that are online now.

We’ve gone online several years ago. We did some beta testing. We tried it to see if it would work. We didn’t know because how can you do it. After all, if you want to learn to swim, you need a swimming pool. It’s a formula. It’s a specific sequence of exercise that’s done in a specific way. There is a proprietary weight ratio system. It’s exactly how many sets and reps you’re doing, and how you manipulate that. It’s a system. The power and the results come from doing the system. Because of that, it works. We also have a very one-on-one connection with people. We do Zoom calls. We have a whole gallery of specialized videos that we’ve produced over the years that show exactly how to do the movement. The people have access to our app when they work with us. They get the videos and the programs through their app so that they have access to it through their phone if they go to a gym. They can follow this through the app. We also do Zoom calls when we are face-to-face with the people.

If we see that there was a problem or they’re not doing an exercise or they’re not increasing their strength in a certain way, then we know there is a problem. Maybe they’re not doing the exercise properly. We can work one-on-one with them through Zoom. Since the pandemic, we started also doing programs that people can do at home. We have courses that people do at home and also are done in the group. People want community and they aren’t motivated to work out alone so we did this. We have classes that are done with workout bands so that we can still quantify the progress and the strength and still work on those things that we talked about, the structural alignment of the spine and all the good stuff that’s going to give you your body back.

Whether it’s pain because of disuse because you work at a desk for hours, which equals months, which equals years of our lives sitting in this posture, or if you have a demanding career as a dancer or activity in sports, wherever people are coming from. The power of it is the ability that you have to connect with your clients and provide those corrections and help them resolve those habits that we all pick up. Ongoing, you tend to share masterclasses to help people learn about your work so they can try it out and see if a program could be a good fit for them.

That’s part of the things that we did since the pandemic. We’re putting the classes together that people can come at a low cost. With the turn of the new year, we find that a lot of people are looking forward to saying goodbye to 2020 and hello to 2021. Health and wellness and feeling good and getting back into your body in a stronger, more powerful way. Easing people’s consciousness in 2021 would be a great year for that. Come and join us on our next upcoming masterclass. This class is powerful. It’s a program that we’re going to teach you that is going to give you a routine that you can do at home with or without equipment because the gym is closed. We had always worked out from the gym. We did not have even a dumbbell or anything at home. All of a sudden, we are headed home with nothing and we still have to do something.

We found ways to use water bottles, cans, bricks from the yard, broomsticks, whatever we could find to start moving. That’s what we’re going to teach you in our masterclass. It’s the program that we did for ourselves and our clients to keep them moving strong and not having the inertia setting in front of a computer. We are teaching you that in the masterclass. I would love to invite everybody to come and attend the masterclass, get a glimpse into our world of how you can get stronger, feeling better, more vibrant. It doesn’t have to be hard when people think of fitness, “I’m going to be sweating. I’m going to have to jump up and down. I’m going to have to do it every day.” People have this idea sometimes about fitness that it’s going to be hard and painful. I got news for you. It doesn’t have to be that way at all.

People can come to your website, learn more about what you offer, and see if there’s a masterclass coming up that they can register for so they can check-in and see if that’s a good fit. Personally, in the work that I do, pain is an epidemic. With our inability to treat it effectively with our “standard healthcare model,” people end up relying on prescription medication because no one’s addressing the root issue. That’s why I was so excited to share this program that empowers people to recognize they have the tools to heal themselves. We just need to know how to use this instrument that is our body to feel younger now than we have in years. How empowering is that? Age is merely a number. It all boils down to how you feel in your body and how your energy maintains. I’ve seen powerful information coming in terms of how exercise can support people in resolving stress. Is that something that you see in your clients as well?

There’s nothing better than exercise, especially when you can increase your physical strength and you can work out in such a powerful way. We already know that if you take a good walk or a good hike or go walk on the beach or do whatever, you’re going to produce endorphins, that’s the feel-good hormone. Imagine this, if you can increase your strength by 20% to 50% in a way where your body is grounded, feeling safe and empowered, that produces massive amounts of endorphins to your brain. Because we work on postural alignment, what happens is you start clearing the neuromuscular pathways to the brain, which allows for the neurotransmitters, the neurochemicals to flow to the brain. It’s an instant feel good. What it does is also strengthens your nervous system.

A lot of times, people think about the nervous system like a thing. The nervous system is responsible for the healing of your body, for your movements, the way you think, the way you feel, everything. You can strengthen the nervous system physically. Usually, when we think about that, we think about meditation or hugging a tree, but when you can increase your strength physically in a way I’m describing, what also happens is you’re strengthening your nervous system. I like to compare the nervous system to the electrical panel in your house. When it’s outdated and you plug in too many appliances, you’re going to blow a fuse. That’s stress. If you want to fix the problem, then you need to update your electrical panel. Right then you can have all your lights on and everything. It’s the same with the body. When you strengthen your nervous system, it’s like updating your electrical panel. To me, that’s ultimate stress relief.

When suddenly you’re so much more resilient, you can meet higher challenges. You bounce back faster. Your mood is higher. Your relationships are easier. When you handle stress more easily, it doesn’t roll downhill to your personal relationships, which are so often bearing the brunt of our stressful lifestyles.

You get stronger emotionally. You’ll be able to make wiser decisions to say no to things you know are not that good for you, to delegate, to create boundaries. Sometimes we’re so caught up in everything. It’s like living unconsciously almost, being in the head. When you can make that brain-muscle connection and find that center inside your body, then it’s a life-transforming thing that happens. It would change not only your body and your physique, but you will also have a more sculpted and more beautiful body, but this is just the icing on the cake. The benefits are that life transformation that happens where it affects everything in your life, your relationships, your work, your productivity, your relationships with your kids, with your friends. You’ll make more money because you’ll be more productive and waste less time. Everything changes.

It’s all part of that balance. A huge factor that seems to be so fundamental in what you’re both teaching is helping people tune back in and reconnect with what feels right in our body. We’ve gotten into these patterns. We’re disassociated. We turned the mute button on rather than address the root of issues. Once we start working back through those layers, the messages that suddenly you start receiving again, that’s so beautiful. Your boundaries are healthier. You’re not saying yes to things that don’t serve you because you recognize what serves you and what doesn’t.

That’s what Stephen meant when he said, “Learn to say no. As a woman, you are giving too much. You need to learn to receive.” It is so true because the female energy is the receiving, the being, the feeling. The male energy is the giving, the competing. As women, especially in business, we have responsibilities. We have so many things to do. That’s male energy. We go to workout and we have to do more. We have to compete. It compounds all that male energy. For us women, we need to step back and reclaim our feminine power, which is receiving and being. Sometimes we have to let go and learn to be and not do.

Create a little more space. Humans being instead of humans doing. You’ve shared so much with us through our conversation. Is there anything else you want to share before we wrap up our conversation?

If your mind can conceive it, then your heart can believe it, then Dr. Fitness International can help you to achieve it. Do you know what they say? We started the interview like that. When the student is ready, the teacher appears oftentimes. I find that when I address the pain directly, it’s hitting them in a blind spot because maybe they’re not in pain 24/7. When I talk to people, and I talk to a lot of people, so many people are in pain. Let’s say, forget the pain. What about if you could be more empowered? What about if you could feel better in your own body? What about if you could feel sexier, more vibrant, younger, let’s say ten years younger by the end of 2021? What about that? You have a choice to do it alone or you have a choice to get some help. If you don’t have a mentor that can take you by the hand and lead you to the results that you desire and deserve in 2021, then I want to invite you to go to our website and to schedule a consultation because we might have answers for you.

Here’s to creating our own future and empowering ourselves. Thank you for the work that you both do and for making this available to people.

Thank you for having me.

It has been a pleasure. Thank you, Batista. Take care.

Thank you.

Important Links:

• Batista Gremaud
• Feminine Body Design: Empowering Fitness for Pain-Free Life
• Dr. Fitness USA
• Masterclass
• Dr. Fitness International

About Batista Gremaud

Batista Gremaud is the CEO and President of Dr. Fitness International, International Body Designer, Empowerment Speaker, providing individual and corporate wellness programs worldwide.

Batista’s expertise in prescription strength training includes the structural realignment of the spine and injury prevention.

Batista is the producer and host of “The Dr. Fitness USA Show”, and the co-host of the 13-part series “The Esoteric Principles of BodyBuilding: Missing Links to Fitness Consciousness.”