We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Lenny Antonina Colarusso. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Lenny Antonina below.
Lenny Antonina, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?
Have you ever heard of anti fragility? Well, my whole life was “anti fragile”, in turn, I believe, this is what brought me the resilience in my life. Just being one child out of 10 sibilings, made me “fight” to be seen! I fought and overcame spinal menigitis, that led to almost death and a loss of hearing in my right ear as well as some risidual heart valve problems from the bacteria. I was abused and my innocense was taken away from a priest from the ages of nine to almost 12, after he came to counsol the family when my oldest brother commited suicide. Stricken with grief and secrecy for a good portion of my life led me to a severe eating disorder for six years that I almost died from. I had started to work out when I was 16, when the eating disorder started, but had been into fitness, since a very young age to keep up with my dad, who was the handball champion of the world, and a golden glove champion. In keeping up with him, I was able to get the attention I so badly desired and needed. At 19, I had a major car accident, I had a fractured skull, and a facial nerve crushed, this led me to be completely deaf in the other ear, and I couldn’t move my face for a year, with rehab for a year, it is about 85% normal. What followed was infertility, surgery, in what ended up to having five healthy babies, much to the infertility drs. surprise. I wouldn’t change one single thing, and THIS is where I get my resilience from, quitting in NEVER an option. We need to go through adversities to appreciate the good in life.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
Before CoVid and the lock down, my husband and I had just built my yoga/personal training/Reiki studio/nutritional counsoling area in my basement, built with some trees from our property. I live on 17 acres in the woods and good energy is so important in everything that I do, the trees from the property gave me that, and building it ourselves, and then CoVid happened and everything had to shift. I met Kevin Myles through doing a couple of health and wellness podcast. I am an RN/personal trainer/yoga teacher/Reiki Master and Nutritional Counsoler. I was asked to tell my story and talk about health and wellness on quite a few podcast at that time, because of lockdown, that was the way everyone communicated. With Kevin I wrote a BluePrint, The Five Pillars of Everlasting Health and Wellness. I didn’t have a clue how to put together something like this, because my whole business was one on one and very tactile. So, like everyone else, I had to do business differently. I have built up my platform on TikTok to talk about health and wellness, and fun things too. I now have a few personal training clients back in my gym, my specialty is working with woman who are complete beginners, I love when they get past just the asthetics and enjoy and feel empowered by their strength from lifting weights. I am in the process of writing my life story, auto biography, the next step is getting an editor. I have a children’s yoga book that I have written, called The Cat on The Mat, available in Barnes and Noble.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Learning to bring down my nervous system, I mean truly and 100% bringing it down, and practicing “the art of doing nothing”, changed my life COMPLETELY. I was laden with PTSD, anxiety, always being in fight or flight. The problem is, most people are walking around in fight or flight or a “low simmer” of it. Unfortunalty, it does and it WILL catch up in some way, physically, mentally, spiritually or all three. The way to improve, is to be aware of your breath, breathing in and out through your nose, making your exhale longer than your inhale. Practice a Restorative yoga pose, anytime during the day and especially before bed, and implementing the nasal breathing during the pose. Take out your ear buds and just walk in nature and listen to your feet on the ground, the birds, the trees swaying in the wind. As much as I love, “kiling it in the gym” this part of health, bringing down the nervous system, is just as important. Like anything in life we try to accomplish, it takes consistency and discipline. My motto, it’s simple but it’s not easy.
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
I would love to start another podcast, perhaps with someone, 60 and over, I came up with a name, Ageless Vitality, vitality not defined by age, but by how someone chooses to live their life. I feel better physically every year of my life, and would never want to go back! I would love to be on a stage and talk about my adversities and how they made me stronger and into the woman I am today. I would be open to collaborate with fitness brands for clothes and perhaps supplements, although I am VERY strict with what I put in my body, and will not just endorse any supplement or anything for that matter unless I use it myself. Authenticity is everything! Other than that, I am open to any other ideas that someone may have, I have so much to offer. Experience practicing health and wellness for 44 years.
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