Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Parkinson’s: An Athlete’s Journey is for athletes navigating Parkinson’s, the coaches and clinicians who train them, and anyone who wants real-world strategies for performance and longevity. Hosted by Eric Von Frohlich and Todd Vogt, the show focuses on tactical takeaways: how to train, recover, manage symptoms, and stay consistent when the rules keep changing. Expect honest conversations, tested routines, and guest experts who go deeper on what works.
Eric Von Frohlich (00:29)
your part on You're Not Fragile, even with PD, your Instagram post is absolutely remarkable. It's breathtaking in my humble opinion. Really, you hit that one right on the head. And I was wondering, what was your inspiration for where that came from?
Gaia Forlani (00:50)
it was like really a moment of just like I cannot stand anymore another person to come to me and you know share stories like my physiotherapist treats me as if I'm a child or when I go to physical therapy I'm going to exercise light, passive and they send me those stories of
people seen literally as fragile, as incapable, as degenerating was like a turning point. And I a light for me to say that, no, like, why do we do this? Like instead of helping people in slowing the condition down, in telling them the truth about what is actually physical exercise and so exercise medicine. So there's a big difference between
random activity, fitness and then the therapeutic effect of physical exercise and so what are the criteria for this. And it was very personal at some point because every time I met the person with PD I was in front of real warriors, like amazing people that were inspirational, that were
very strong and capable and pushing and willing to rise. And so was like, there is a big discrepancy in the current clinical system and current Parkinson care of how they even look at people with PD, how they perceive them and who these people actually are and what they can be. So it was like really a sort of like manifesto and my desire to shout out, Hey, I see you.
I want to acknowledge that You are not fragile at all, but now it's your time to start believing this. Because what I see is that over time, when people go to the clinic and every time it just, ⁓ do you need more meds? How are you doing? Well, we can increase otherwise see you in six months. We can increase later on. Like that's all almost. And they were like literally just, you know, treated like they chose me.
This isn't care, you are not fragile, you can do way more, but you need to start like changing your, like literally the mindset, the script inside your mind to think, what is PD? Who are you becoming? Thanks to PD. So not at all fragile, not at all vulnerable, not at all just a patient, quite the opposite. Thanks to PD, you do not have even a choice not to be other thing rather than...
strong and more powerful and more healthier and more fitter and more flexible and more you know because that's the only way you can actually beat it.
Eric Von Frohlich (03:43)
Yeah, it's kind of a gift for those that love to work out and those that love high intensity exercise. I keep saying that there's, you know, the law of compensation is you can't have something taken away from you without something equally given to you. And so it's a matter of looking through the lens and finding the thing that's so wonderful that it's exposed me to miraculous people, people that are incredible fighters and incredibly strong and incredibly determined.
And those are people that I might have met in my normal life, but I've met many, many, many more of them in a short period of time, thanks to Parkinson's. And so I've chosen the mindset of seeing it as a blessing and just uncovering each day that knowledge and that wisdom to move forward and not feel like a victim.
Gaia Forlani (04:22)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. And that's, you what I really see also in my program with currently also like hundreds of participants that we actually have coached. What really makes a difference or in the program after a month or two after they go through all the mental coaching, the performance mindset, the emotional trainings, this script again, that like it's literally a change in the mind. And many people also to me, said, you know,
I think it is a blessing because they have never had learned all the things they don't know. Like their aging might have been just a blind walking into other chronic condition, other diseases. Now they are like paradoxically more aware. Now, I of course want always to respect very much because sometimes for many people it's way more challenging. Yet still there is such a inner power that one can develop.
to really see Parkinson as an opportunity. That said, it is difficult. It's not easy. And every single person who has PD has been given a big challenge in this life to learn something or to go through like a purpose, a mission that is like way more than they say normal or people that do not have PD. But that idea of seeing it just as an opportunity and as a blessing.
It's really a big thing.
Eric Von Frohlich (06:03)
In your own words, can you tell me how you go from ballerina to a neuroscientist and make that transformation and then specifically why Parkinson's?
Gaia Forlani (06:13)
Of course, this is a question that I get a lot and I like always to tell my story. So since I was three, I knew for myself that I would become a ballerina. And that indeed, like my life started like this. But I'm a person that I'm always questioning a lot and I like to always think...
why I'm capable to do this, like why I was able to move my body in such a high level with this big performance, you know, just think of ballet, it's like the ultimate and a of like big performance. So at that point I was like, I want to know what is inside here, so in the brain that controls my body in this way, to then give it to other. And
How life goes, like I had also an injury and like COVID hit. I started questioning if I'm just okay to be just a ballerina. And at that time I already had my first master which was in applied neuroscience in a field of philosophical sciences. And the study that I or the curriculum that I specialize in was in the phenomenology of movement.
agency, perception, how movement and the body shapes our cognition, shapes what it means to be a human. And so I started learning a lot about the brain and I became a performance coach, I became a trainer. And when I had to do my first internship for the first master, and at that time I was almost fully
clear that I might stop completely my career as a ballerina, I actually went from Italy to the Netherlands. I'm actually half Croatian and half Italian. I left home when I was 15 to start ballet in Italy, and then I moved from Italy to go to the Netherlands. And as I was finishing my internship there in an exchange study, Erasmus, this is an European program for internships and conjoined research.
I literally fell in love with the brain even more, saying, OK, I want to go even more hardcore on the scientific side. So I stayed in the Netherlands and I took my second master in neuroscience. And the curriculum was a specialization in sensorimotor clinical and movement neuroscience. And as a normal university journey goes, ⁓ one then had to decide several
courses, the internships, several lab rotations, small residency. So at that point, literally every opportunity that somehow was presented to me was always towards the clinical side and specifically Parkinson's. And I was involved in several researches from ARTA and then freezing of gait and so gait impairment, queueing compensation strategies.
Eric Von Frohlich (09:13)
Mm-hmm.
Gaia Forlani (09:22)
And there was a point where I literally found myself capable of understanding, feeling, and being capable to help people with PT. At the time, at the campus in the university in the Netherlands, I was working also as a performance coach in the Academical Sports Centre. So many people knew me there. So like, that's also how we established a relationship between the clinics, between the gym. And I was just like,
I can do this. So I never really had the choice somehow. I really, to some, literally like from one day to the other, I would say like, I just realized I have this mission. I, you know, always say, if you were to ask me just a few years ago that I would be doing this, that I would be the co-founder of the Parkinson's Performance Center. And it is currently one of the major
Eric Von Frohlich (09:54)
Well.
Gaia Forlani (10:20)
programs that are like leading Parkinson management and changing minds for people, I would be like, are you kidding? Really? But one thing was true that I always knew that I would be inspired because I like inspiring people. So that idea of pushing and grow myself and learn and do more to then give to other. That's something that is just like, who I am.
Eric Von Frohlich (10:47)
It's amazing. It's a beautiful story. And ballet, for those who don't know, mixes a perfect blend of artistry and athleticism in an art form that's just amazing to watch.
Gaia Forlani (11:01)
yeah, it's really this like ballet, it's such a special technique because I need to have the complete control of almost every single muscle fiber in my body and then rhythm and coordination and power and control and elegance and strength, everything that we had to learn to use our body differently.
But this means that we had to use our brain differently. There is no way that whoever is a big performer, a good coach, you cannot avoid talking about the brain if you want to talk about movement. It's just like the two faces of the same coin. so ballet and then all the coaching, all the trainings, but specifically this discipline gave me so much so that I can understand
the deepest sensory motor troubles, the losing strength and power, the little details and compensation if that's the symptom, how can you improve on the other side? Some compensative mechanism on the biomechanical level, not even yet on the neurological, just purely looking at the mastery that the physical body is, and so what do you have to do on your body in order to improve the brain?
And that's something that many people miss. like, if you just think of like clinical care currently, like many are neurologists, clinicians and others, experts in movement, but in a very abstract way, because they have learned about the brain networks and let's say from handbooks, but none of them or few of them maybe were athletes.
Eric Von Frohlich (12:28)
Alright.
Gaia Forlani (12:55)
And so if you don't have the knowledge, there's always going to be a gap between how much and to what extent you can actually see and encounter a person with PD to understand. Literally like scan, okay, what's happening in your movement, whether it's an impairment in your body, let's act on that, that might have an impact on the brain.
Eric Von Frohlich (13:14)
Right, so you're not just reacting to symptoms and trying to build programs off of that. You're approaching the whole person as athlete and taking the approach that they're competing for an event. In this case, it's living with Parkinson's.
Gaia Forlani (13:28)
Correct. And it's, you know, we have also this rule actually in my program. I don't talk about disease. So we just call Parkinson's, stop or Parkinson condition. And no person is a patient. So everybody's either an athlete or a Parkinson participants in my program. So like that mental aspect and how I approach the individual, the being.
Language, and the beliefs, they shape how we filter the reality, how we will think about ourselves.
But then sleep and recovery. It's like, there's another internal joke they say, Gaia, you want us to become professional sleepers? Well, yes, because it's, you know, it really is so critical because sleep, it's the foundation of
Eric Von Frohlich (14:15)
Well, we do it enough we should be.
Gaia Forlani (14:25)
your neurological regulation for your neurological well-being. Too few people still in even Parkinson's field talks about the glymphatic system, which is a circuitry in our brain where two types of fluids, so the cerebral spinal fluid and interstitial spinal fluids, literally flush out toxins, some waste product, even aggregated proteins. It is a neurological intervention to help you slow down PD.
And so when people do not train for sleep, they just take it for granted. They miss a big opportunity. We have at least four leverages that we like asked upon in order to improve sleep and fix it, but then recovery in general, even after an important workout, because many people, know, of course there is fear of PD progressing. What's going to happen? The doubts, uncertainties. And so because of that fear,
Eric Von Frohlich (15:21)
you
Gaia Forlani (15:23)
And because everywhere around people just hear exercise more, move, do as much as you can, exercise is good, then they start doing too much, exhausting themselves, wrong things. So even injury and without proper recovery, not even understanding that Recovery is as important as the physical exercise part. And that is crucial in like everybody who is an athlete, like
Eric Von Frohlich (15:24)
you
Right.
Gaia Forlani (15:52)
If you are an athlete, the same amount of effort that you put in the training, you will put also in the intentional recovery. Helping people in understanding what is truly a healthy nutrition. High fiber, good hydration, of course, like with all inflammatory food, lower the glycemic index and similar, because the gut brain axis is a real thing.
In some cases, PD seems to even start in the gut primarily and then via the vagus nerve, it spread and affect the brain. So it's like really, really, say, on a spectrum, very holistic, very cross model, but where one part or one system is correlated with the other. Sometimes I believe we still are, let's say, confused and there's just the idea
Parkinson, brain disease. Like, no, Parkinson is not just a brain condition. It's a total body systemic failure if you do not know how to address it properly, where all these different pillars are the absolute backbone for everything else that you want to do, especially then if you want to improve and slow down PD.
Eric Von Frohlich (17:11)
Right, it's amazing that the parasympathetic nervous system kicks in the moment the workout stops. And the quicker you can get into a recovery phase, the more benefit you get from the workout that you did. And so it's just a matter of people having that understanding that they have as much input on the recovery as they do on the workout. And I often find to your point that people over train because they hear that exercise is good.
and then they just do everything they can and they exhaust and burn themselves out. And then that obviously leads to overuse injuries and then that leads to mental fatigue and depression and apathy and a whole host of other emotional based symptoms that we end up dealing with.
Gaia Forlani (17:56)
Yeah.
we have actually like also cases that are reported. Like now it came to my mind, a clinical letter in the Movement Disorder Clinical Practice Journal, where literally there was, it was explained about these two cases, a man and a woman, that the neurologist just said, move as much as you can, be active, because this is good for PD.
And these people that were not, let's say, educated, so they were not trainers, they didn't have a background, say, in physical training, they literally started exhausting themselves with exhausting walks on a treadmill, on a hike. But then they didn't have muscle, they didn't have good joint strength to support all that work. So they ended up having both injuries, complications on the systemic level and...
worsening of the symptoms. So it's like really important to also understand when one is crossing the delicate line of is too much exercise. Because if you don't do it correctly, yes, it can be too much and it can be harmful.
Eric Von Frohlich (19:07)
yet.
Gaia Forlani (19:12)
movement is a serious thing and that not all movement counts in the same way. I had sometimes people that come to me and you know, I walk 10,000 steps a day. I do yoga, I do stretching, I do Pilates and I say, great, let's talk about exercise medicine and what will actually slow down your PD. Because all those things, unfortunately, do not meet the therapeutic criteria
of exercise medicine. So people sometimes, you know, do all these things and they put time and energy and effort and they're really willing, but unfortunately they do not know that all that is useless or it's like 1 % of all the things that they could really do. So it's really my desire that we start being serious and I still see, unfortunately, that there is a big gap in
Eric Von Frohlich (19:44)
Right.
Gaia Forlani (20:10)
clinical practice because in the medical degree, neurologists are no thought. What is strength and conditioning? What is power? What is velocity-based training? What is biometric? What is agility? What is functional mobility and so forth? And that's the big gap.
Eric Von Frohlich (20:22)
Yes.
Yeah, you I've heard you say that movement is medicine and like most medicine, you need to have the right dose at the right time and the right prescription. And so it's I think that kind of brings it home to exactly what you're talking about. But we have exercise as a pillar. We've covered sleep as a pillar. I imagine there's emotional pillars, nutritional pillars. So let's let's continue on this path and hear about the
Gaia Forlani (20:48)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Eric Von Frohlich (20:54)
that you cover.
Gaia Forlani (20:55)
Yeah,
obviously the big one next to mental and emotional that you put together, sleep and recovery that are also together, athletic and metabolic. The last one is importantly cognitive because up to 80 % of people with PD, we know, will experience some sort of cognitive decline. But it's important to know that we nowadays know that we can prevent dementia, we can prevent it. So
What are you going to do? And also here though, it's not just about doing puzzle work, crosswords, Sudokus, memory games, card and so forth. If they want, be my guest. It's fun. Can be a social moment. But if you're really serious in thinking what are the things that will, the science nowadays says will actually move the needle. the talk again about physical exercise.
Because we know that, for example, strength can increase. And when we talk about hypertrophy or maximal strength, so heavy lifting, increases the neurogenesis in the hippocampus, which is critical for learning and memory, as well as in the mostly prefrontal cortex, which is the lobe that's here in front. Not other areas, we don't know about that a lot, but for sure the cortical areas in hippocampus, have evidences. But the metabolic connection.
I think that 0.0001 % of the people, unfortunately, are acquainted that the higher your glycemic index, higher your blood sugar, higher your insulin fluctuations, higher your triglyceride level, put people at higher risk of developing cognitive-definite dementia. This is known in neurodegenerative conditions.
We know this even in Alzheimer's, which is not nowadays called diabetes number three. So if you don't look then at your nutrition and your metabolism, you're also doing a mistake because then you might have cognitive impairment. But it comes down then to doing also some specific cognitive training.
Eric Von Frohlich (22:54)
All right.
It's amazing the Russian sports machine used to look at the best time for people to learn a new activity or a new lesson was right after strenuous exercise and it's because it builds the neurotransmitters and makes more neuroplasticity and you seem to retain information a lot better as soon as you hit some high intensity exercise and
Gaia Forlani (23:31)
Correct.
Similar research says also that if you're just active, you go for a good hike or a good power walk and say you put your earphones and you listen to a podcast, it seems that you can then memorize better all the information. That's true.
Eric Von Frohlich (23:54)
amazing. It's the early onset of is often conflated with premature aging. And it's something that I always ask myself, is this just a normal phase of life because I'm getting older or is this actually being influenced by my Parkinson's? And we know influences is subjective to how we process it. So I have to be careful on blaming everything on Parkinson's or just dismissing it.
considering it not a factor, how do you differentiate that?
Gaia Forlani (24:25)
Correct.
Yeah, that's a big point. So there are a few things that one can, you know, always try to ask. Is it aging, is it PD or is it the two things together? So we try to be always very proactive and like really nail down everything in terms of if this is aging, what you're going to do. If this is Parkinson, what you're going to do. If they even interact together, double down even more. So one practical example, it's
on a physical side, muscle loss, technically called sarcopenia. And this is natural. This happens in everybody. Around 30, 35 years of age, everybody starts losing muscle mass. The problem is that this impacts how much strength you will lose. And at a double rate, we lose power. So double rate compared to strength. And now this is critical when it comes to
Eric Von Frohlich (24:59)
Right.
Gaia Forlani (25:22)
the amount of muscle mass and muscle are not there just for movement. They are metabolic hormonal organs. In the skeletal muscle, we release important molecules, myokins, BDNF, growth factors that then shuttle to the brain and have this fertilizing effect. But, the fact is that if you think big problematic that I see coming just from aging,
What is going to be this input or this problem then on PD? Well, think of symptoms like slowness of movement, bradykinesia, or even rigidity and stiffness. The first thing is to look at what is your power rate and what is your strength rate. Because if you are very inefficient in your amount of, you know, neural connection and neural motor,
that like activation that you can actually produce in order to move. That's like immediately for me a sign that like, and we saw people have more bradykinesia, they have more rigidity, they more stiffness. So the moment we started working on more power training, velocity-based training, agility in plyometrics with specific hypertrophy and maximal strength, all the symptoms improved. So that's a way that we are always trying to, you know, combine it through the things together.
Then there are many things that of course we sometimes ⁓ do not see, like perhaps the full picture. So at some point we also need to say, please go do a blood work if it's something I say on a metabolic level or hormonal, because sometimes, especially in men as an example, tend to lose testosterone. And so there's a lot of extra fatigue.
recovery times are bad, energy is low, mood is fluctuating. But then you have to ask, okay, is this PD or is it your ageing? And many times it comes, it's ageing. So I actually know a few cases of people who by their doctors were suggested to like have a little bit of like, for example, testosterone and immediately energy back, strength back, power back. So at that point you see it's not PD anymore, but it had an impact on PD.
So it's like really, really complex and one needs to be very careful and constantly like reading, learning from all cases without making the mistake of then comparing everybody, of course, because it's not the same pot that we can just, ⁓ this happening once this is happening for you might be a completely different story. But it's important to have a sensitivity. And we always say we are very humble to say.
Can we help this? Do we have an idea where a mechanism could here play a big role? And we are collaborating though, whenever we talk neurologists or other practitioners, so many people have like functional practitioners. So like there's always a collaboration trying to understand from our side, we think might be this, this and this. From the other side, something else or conjoined opinion. And so it's very useful.
Because then for us, it's like really, you know, looking at the person in his or her complexity. Because one thing that I hate, it's still that when a person gets a diagnosis, people literally put the PD lenses on and everything gets filtered through PD. But if you don't look first
Eric Von Frohlich (28:56)
All right.
Gaia Forlani (29:02)
at the physiology, at the person, what is the human structure here, you are losing
big massive opportunity to actually have an improvement on PD.
Eric Von Frohlich (29:15)
Well said.
I completely agree. It's amazing having never met you that we had so much in common. was not a ballerina, but I've been an athlete most of my life. And the Master of Movement and the mind muscle connection is something that's very familiar. So it seems as if we've taken, you went into the neuroscience end and I went into the coaching end and we've come up with the same conclusions that
Gaia Forlani (29:26)
You
Eric Von Frohlich (29:43)
really seem to complement each other. Have you built a coaching program or training program for professionals?
Gaia Forlani (29:49)
Yes.
Yeah, for professional, we are actually building it now. It's not yet available. We had a lot of inquiries, so we are working on a sort certification program. So yeah, that will come. I cannot yet fully actually tell the precise date because we are pretty picky and precise. So we really want to take time to make it like.
Eric Von Frohlich (30:03)
great.
Gaia Forlani (30:16)
really there.
you really see how much this field is evolving way more than paradoxically the clinical part.
If you want to talk about the movement and muscle, you must know about the brain, full stop. I always am of an opinion that what we also need to do to bridge this big gap that still exists between.
the fundamental research in PD and then the actual practice and how to help people in everyday life. It's to create a task force of people that truly knows what is movement. So not just a random trainer that got a certification in a weekend, okay? Pay attention because that's not knowledge. So we need to look at people who finished.
Eric Von Frohlich (30:54)
Okay.
Gaia Forlani (31:01)
a university with a degree again, movement science, kinesiology,
exercise medicine, applied physiotherapy, and a similar type of profiles that then really understand the biomechanics, movement, all the modalities. What are those requirements that we look in a program to define? This is exercise medicine, with this we can actually get some therapeutic effect or this is just random activity.
Eric Von Frohlich (31:29)
Yeah, The need is so real. I'm so happy to hear that you're addressing it.
Now, your clinic, do you have a physical location in the Netherlands or is it just online?
Gaia Forlani (31:40)
No,
no, no, no, it's everything online. And I'm actually not anymore in the Netherlands because we're like, I personally also moved, but we are now like really global.
Eric Von Frohlich (31:50)
Well congratulations on that. That's an impressive undertaking.
Gaia Forlani (31:54)
Yeah,
I don't know if I was not expecting it. I probably not. I was just like very determined and with the co-founder, who is also my personal partner, the two of us, we were always very just determined to say, OK, we need to do something like everything start in a sparkle of an idea in my university room. Like literally.
And then from there, everything literally took the lead and became this big company, see how that we are today.
it's, it's really, really
Eric Von Frohlich (32:31)
We say in coaching that one person may teach but two people should learn.
And I think that it really applies to this. And any given day your symptoms change. And so it's like, I have a Jiu-Jitsu background for many, many years. And I went back to Jiu-Jitsu when I got Parkinson's because sitting on the floor was difficult because of my core stiffness. But having someone trying to keep me on the floor was a bigger challenge. And so it made life seem easier when I didn't have someone I was fighting.
Gaia Forlani (32:36)
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Eric Von Frohlich (33:02)
But the beauty of Jiu-Jitsu is that whatever you do, you have an opponent that's gonna counteract that. And so it reminds me of Parkinson's in a lot of ways. You're chasing a symptom or you're trying to work with a condition then something else pops up and it seems to always keep you on your toes and always keep you guessing on what you're not seeing as much as what you're actually working on. And so it's a...
Gaia Forlani (33:26)
Yeah, absolutely.
Eric Von Frohlich (33:28)
It's like the ultimate challenge or the ultimate opponent in a fight in that you're trying to stay a step ahead and just try to not necessarily anticipate but be ready to respond to a change of condition or a change of technique and a humbling process as you appropriately said to try to take this on and try to figure out how to solve it for people.
Gaia Forlani (33:32)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, absolutely. You know, there are two things that resonate with what you just said. So on one side, well, purely technically, like if you think of a technique and a method like Jiu well, it's not something that I would suggest for sure for everybody with PD to do. Like you need to have like some experience because it's so demanding on a neurological level, not only because you need to
control your body. It's like a choreography with the other person. And so all the strategies, predicting in advance, not only one move, even two to three moves to think, if I now do this, what's going to happen after how I will adapt, what the opponent might do. So it's like one of the best sensory motor and cognitive, like neuromotor even training. So like that would be really nice. But.
Eric Von Frohlich (34:45)
Yeah.
Gaia Forlani (34:49)
Another thing that really resonated with me, Eric, is you know, the idea of a fight and PD. So I have a sort of like double feeling on this, meaning that
I sometimes have people that also really, you know, get motivated and get like really set on fire if you tell okay, you are a warrior, you are a soldier, you can do it, this is a good fight, you will overcome it. So it's a way of like embracing this role, putting your armor on and you can do it. However, I'm very careful in doing this and I tend not to do it simply because I believe that
Too much of a fight and constantly seeing Parkinson as a war, a battle can be exhausting physically and mentally and spiritually. So at some point, if you want to do it, do it, but know that every best warrior needs a rest, needs recovery. It's not just push, push, push, push, push. No, very big mistake. So again, you can be a soldier and the best one, but in order to recharge your battery,
Eric Von Frohlich (35:51)
Yeah.
Gaia Forlani (36:02)
you will need to rest. And other people instead, like, it's difficult to get them as this fighter and soldier. So you need to get them more in this athletic mentality. So like, in my case, like I would say 99 % of people, they all said to like, I really like to think of myself as an athlete. And some other says, like, as an athlete, as a warrior. So that's something. And I would always suggest for people to really think.
Eric Von Frohlich (36:07)
Thank you.
Right.
Gaia Forlani (36:32)
of something that they aspire to, that they feel it's a role, a sort of identity that they will now embrace, put on this armor and then yes to it. Because
Eric Von Frohlich (36:45)
I
try to complement my jiu-jitsu with pickleball. So I have both ends of the spectrum. You know, and it's always that balance of trying to thread the needle between being all in and being all off and trying to find that when my workout finishes, then my recovery begins, And a lot of that recovery has to do with my family and my dog and my cat and just kind of
Gaia Forlani (36:50)
Good. Very good. Yeah.
Eric Von Frohlich (37:13)
the downtime where I'm not performing or not expecting to have to battle and just can be myself and just kind of shut it down and find that balance.
Did we cover a social component to your program?
Gaia Forlani (37:28)
So in the social component, well, I mentioned about this.
But extremely important because people need to learn what is truly PD, what is going on, where is research going? Is there something that's really going to move the needle?
People were like literally telling us, nobody ever took the time to explain me what is this? And if I go, even on like, you know, foundation website or other clinics and say like that's very abstract as a information description about this condition, nobody like really takes the time to go into detail, explain this impact, this doesn't have a connection with this, how the other system interacts.
also for spouses and families, caregivers.
because also they don't know what is PD. And it's a role that they, you know, like, yes, the person, one person get diagnosis, but then PD impacts all the family. So sometimes, you know, spouses get this role where they don't know, okay, should I help?
Eric Von Frohlich (38:22)
Right.
Yes.
Gaia Forlani (38:38)
Should I step in? Should I let the person do its things? Maybe it's my challenge. But the well-being, the emotional overload, the frustration, the doubts, uncertainties that also caregivers, spouses and family have, it's important.
because the environment shapes we are. And so to make sure that they know what is the PPP, all the activities, all the efforts, what is truly PD, what they're going through, you know,
because there are at some point few things that nobody can understand if you do not have PD. So it's important to really, you know, be very delicate and know how to juggle all this.
If you think of a more mental coaching, we often talk about the quantum field of thoughts and the difference with concepts and beliefs. so what do you truly believe? What are the beliefs that you hold about PD and what are the thoughts that are coming and that you are like transmitting daily? And so you need to learn to see where are sometimes information that you're just picking in, but then like stop if they're negative.
Eric Von Frohlich (39:24)
Mm-hmm.
you
Gaia Forlani (39:47)
You don't need to believe them. Get them out. You are your person. Define your own story. You can be such an amazing athlete with PD. And we have amazing people. I believe, you know, like, well, you first, second, like there's in America, there's a popular guy, ⁓ Jimmy Choi, the Ninja Warrior in England, UK, Jules King, who is like a cross-fit adaptive athlete, you know. So it's like really showing.
Eric Von Frohlich (40:09)
Yeah.
Gaia Forlani (40:17)
what PD can be if you know how.
Eric Von Frohlich (40:21)
Well, it all comes back to mindset. I think that's where we started. And if you can get your mindset straight and be able to make those pivots from the difficult days and restructure it get yourself in the right frame of mind, then everything can start stacking together for wins and looking for being grateful for what we're going through and for the opportunity we have to succeed despite the challenge of Parkinson's. And it's a...
Gaia Forlani (40:43)
Yeah.
Eric Von Frohlich (40:48)
It's a remarkable thing. I always start my day with my gratitude and my mindset and then I stack small wins. You know, I go into my movement practice and then I do my sunlight absorption and constantly is just stacking little things win and just get the momentum going in the right direction. And if I get off practice, I'll go back and do a breathing session and get my mindset.
reorganize for whatever the challenge is. And it's just, there's lots of ways to constantly reset and check in on whether or not you're in the right frame of mind to make the most of your day and make the most of this opportunity. But you've done a remarkable job at reframing what Parkinson's is and how to succeed and thrive with it despite the challenges. And so I want to thank you for that. And hopefully I can see you at the World Conference. I'm going to have an AFib
Gaia Forlani (41:14)
Nice.
Yeah.
Yeah. ⁓
Eric Von Frohlich (41:42)
that I'm doing a couple days before, so I'm going to see if I can get clearance to walk around. But it would be, yes, it would be remarkable. But thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much for what you've done in motivating people and building a system that's so comprehensive that it's people are going with Parkinson's going forward.
Gaia Forlani (41:47)
go. Well, finger crossed. It's gonna be nice.