Longboater knows just how to help others get on the path to wellness

When Mirabai Holland says she’s flexible, it means two different things. 

For one, it’s being flexible physically. She lives and works exercise and has been moving, dancing and swimming for some 60 years — with two hip replacements in her 70s to show for it. Holland is also flexible mentally. She meditates and makes sure to focus on her breathing, her self-talk and her attitude through life’s hiccups.

In a sense, the physical side of flexibility is her passion and purpose; the mental side is her mindset and mentality. “If I’m good with anything, it’s that I’m flexible,” Holland says. “I roll with the punches.” 

Holland is additionally good at many other things and topics related to health and wellness. Her 55-year career includes some entrepreneurial twists, innovations born of necessity, and a keen ability to adapt — quickly — to changing consumer tastes. (One of her businesses started out selling VHS exercise tapes; that entity now offers virtual fitness classes.) 

Holland is also a certified health coach, exercise physiologist and wellness consultant with clients in Sarasota and nationally, all behind a just-do-it north star. “Taking charge of your health doesn’t have to feel like getting your teeth drilled,” she writes on her website. Holland, who, with her husband, F. Sebastian Marino, runs a health education and video production company, NuVue LLC, developed a health and wellness program for Manatee County employees in 2013 that remains in play today; teaches movement and exercise courses at the Bayfront Park Recreation Center on Longboat Key; and runs a hybrid concierge wellness program for patients with hip and knee replacements at the office of Dr. Edward Stolarski in Sarasota. All told, her wellness programs are implemented in hospitals, fitness facilities, resorts and corporations worldwide.

And there’s more: Holland is a poet, writer and artist. The art includes painting and digital art, while her articles and writing have been published in multiple outlets, including the Longboat Observer and the Sarasota Observer. She has also appeared on “Good Morning America,” “The Today Show” and dozens of other TV outlets.

Holland turned 75 in January — with no signs of slowing down. She and Marino live on Longboat Key and have a home in Colorado. She’s been coming to the area since the 1970s, when her family, from Chicago, bought a place here. The couple have been Florida residents since 2010. “We have the water and the mountains,” she says. “We have the best of both worlds.”

Key Life spoke with Holland about her life and career in early December. Edited excerpts: 

Holland grew up in Chicago. Her grandfather, MZ Holland, had a prominent jewelry store business in the Windy City. Her father, Wesley, later ran the company. “I went to a very progressive high school, the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, and my dad said, ‘Why don’t you just go to the University of Chicago?’ But I wanted to go as far away from Chicago as possible for college.” 

She went to the University of Denver, drawn to Colorado from a trip she took there for a summer camp when she was 13. “It was a horseback riding camp, but I did a lot more swimming in Colorado than horseback riding.” She and her husband remain fond of the Centennial State and have a place in Crested Butte, south of Aspen.

Holland was not into fitness or health as a young child. “I hated exercise as a kid. I was a chubby kid. You would find me in the nurse’s office more often than you would find me in the gym.” Her parents signed her up for ballet, but she balked, saying “it was too rigid.” When she was 12 or 13, she had a gym teacher who was also a modern dancer. That teacher put on some “upbeat jazz” and told the class to make up some movements. Holland was hooked. “I was like, ‘Boom this is what I want to do.’ Modern dance allowed me to do my own thing. I’d found my calling.” 

After Denver, Holland attended the Boston Conservatory at Berklee. Staying in Boston, she and some friends opened a food co-op in Central Square in Cambridge. The spot had some extra space, where Holland opened a dance studio. “I didn’t really know what I was going to teach, but I immediately had business.” She called the studio New Combinations for the Non-Dancer.

Photo by Mark Wemple

Holland had a life-changing accident in Egypt in her 30s. She was hiking with a boyfriend and fell off a cliff, dropping 30 feet. She was unconscious for a spell. She tore a meniscus in her knee, broke her pelvis and had broken ribs. She said physical therapy wasn’t working and she didn’t like the rigidness of it, so she did rehab on her own, rediscovering swimming. “I never thought I would move again, but in nine months, I was back,” she says. “It was a miracle.” The experience also led her to get a degree in nutrition and exercise and physiology from Columbia University. “I wanted to know and learn as much as I could about the brain and about the body.”

The 1980s fitness boom led Holland to chase a new path. She launched a company, Mirabai Holland International, based on the idea, popular in Japan, that physically active and engaged people were happier and healthier — and more productive employees. Holland went into big companies — in-person coldcalls — and got business one by one, teaching fitness classes to employees. A stop at the offices of Forbes magazine led to a spot pitching the business on “The Today Show.” “I got so many classes I had to hire out other teachers.” 

Holland and Marino met in the 1980s. He had a TV production company that was producing the Reebok World Aerobics Championship for ESPN. She was a judge for the competition. They saw each other infrequently at first. Then, they began to work on projects together and saw each other more often. They were married in 1999, and, adds Holland, “have lived happily together” since 1992.

Holland is motivated today by using the power of small changes to help people. “One of the things people ask me all the time is I want to get started, but how do I start? I want to lose 40 pounds. I want to quit smoking. I want to get a new job. I say you have to pick something and start, and not all at once. Maybe it will be 5 pounds this month. Maybe it will be five minutes of walking. Maybe it will be mediating. You have to look inside yourself as to what makes you happy. You have to take control of your own life.”