Hello.

I'm Beryl Dakers.

Welcome to Palmetto Scene.

It's a new year and maybe time for a new you.

While many of us, myself included, have pledged to improve our health and fitness routines, somehow exercising and eating healthfully can prove to be shall we say quite challenging.

Our first story, takes a look at a group of ladies who found a way to turn their passion for health and fitness into careers that are both physically and financially rewarding.

♪ I pretty much have always been into fitness.

I played sports in middle school and high school.

Originally, I would say that I started training with weights shortly after I got married.

My husband was into weight training and he introduced me.

I really just was working with him to get in a little bit better shape after having three children and kind of being off and on at the gym like most people are.

And he really encouraged me to consider competing.

♪ inaudible dialogue ♪ I started dancing back when I was in high school and college and you know dance for many years.

I did contemporary dance as well as modern ballet.

And then my interests turned over to the fitness industry.

I was an aerobic instructor for many years and then I became a personal trainer.

And I realized that I really enjoy helping people reach their goals you know as far as their health was concerned and also as far as the way they looked, or the way they wanted to look.

I do work with some senior citizens here at 803 fitness and also I do some outside programs where I work with senior citizens.

And actually those are some of my favorite clients because no matter what when they come in they have a bunch of ailments but they still come, you know, and they don't complain and they do the work out and you know and so it's a great group of people to work with but most of them understand the importance of exercising.

Because if you sit around, you're gonna start to feel stiff, things that bother you are gonna get worse.

And you know you're getting weaker.

So you want to stay strong, you know just get stronger and just keep that body moving and active.

Nutrition is important because it's the fuel.

That is probably one of the more difficult changes, changing how you eat, how you think about food.

I try to emphasize or at least get a grip on what a person's relationship with food is first because sometimes that might be part of the cause for them having you know a difficulty with maybe losing weight that they you know have been carrying around for the last several years.

One thing I do believe and I've been coached on and trained on is the concept of bio individuality.

And all that means is there's no one way of eating.

Even there's no one way of exercise for one person.

So a lot of my clients will say 'Hey!

You know what, I'm gonna try the Keto diet because I have all these friends that do Keto and it worked for them.'

And then when they try it they may get frustrated.

And they may not get results.

And you know they come see me.

And I'm like well maybe Keto is not the best for your lifestyle.

So let's dig in.

Let's figure out.

And I do a number of assessments.

I do a lot of food blogs I do grocery store tours.

I look at things from the Ayurvedic aspect which is just the Indian traditional health Chinese medicine.

We're going to gather a lot of information about you and your lifestyle so we can figure out the best eating strategy for you.

I feel like a lot of doctors are moving towards partnering with health coaches that are out there because frankly there's just not a lot of time to be able to spend with the patients that are out there.

So as a health coach, you know I really dig in and I listen because there's a lot of different things that could be going on with the person's lifestyle, that what I'll do is I'll pinpoint the biggest hurdle and then we'll start working there.

The Bod Pod is a very accurate and safe assessment tool to measure the amount of body fat and amount of muscle that's on the person's body.

There's a lot of other methods of testing.

There's the skin fold calipers.

There's bio-impedance, some other ways of testing that can be kind of quick and dirty you know measurements, but the Bod pod is going to be one of the most accurate ways to get the amount of body fat.

So what I want to see I want my clients to start off with a body fat test, we'll see where there percentage of fat is and what we do know is for men, men we don't want them to be over thirty percent body fat that can be risky.

And women, we don't want them to be over forty percent body fat.

So we get our baseline and then we go through the program figuring out the best eating strategy for them, figuring out the best exercise program, figuring out stress management techniques, the whole nine.

And so the food yeah the food is everything.

Here's an idea that's fun, challenging and totally rad.

Have you ever considered doing your daily workout while being suspended in the air?

Yep, in the air.

Tamela Hastie is a fitness instructor who coaches South Carolinians in an activity that is taking the palmetto state by storm.

It's called aerial fitness our Jackie Johnson reports.

♪ upbeat music ♪ On any given morning, you can find Midlands fitness instructor Tamela Hastie at the Stronghold Gym in Columbia, busy preparing her work out area with floor mats, silk fabric, rings an aerial hoop called a lyra and trapeze swing, all secured to the ceiling, creating the opportunity to do an exercise routine with one's feet in the air.

It's called aerial fitness and Tamela is perfecting the art for groups of all ages.

♪ A movement educator, neuro-muscular specialist and lifestyle coach, she has spent years of perfecting three dimensional movement, conditioning, joint rotation, and mobility with aerial fitness.

She says this has resulted in a whole body approach to health.

Aerial fitness is actually taking your fitness to another level.

We're going up.

We're defying gravity.

We're learning how to climb.

Use our leg muscles, arm muscles, core, spatial awareness, focus.

Confidence gets built, flexibility.

Usually when I have a beginner I will start with a aerial hammock or sling, which is a nylon tricot.

It's not really silk but it looks like silk.

It's soft.

It's comforting.

And it's at ground level.

So it's approachable for everyone.

They learn how to balance.

They learn how to grip by working with the fabrics.

Board certified by NECCA, the New England Circus Arts School, Tamela holds over twenty years of teaching and certifications in yoga and Pilates.

Her youngest client is eleven year old, Eva Mustard, who's already showing promise climbing silks, rings, doing work outs with a lyra hoop and the swinging trapeze.

So there's a nice clase.

Reach up high and separate.

That's it.

Pause.

Do your sail.

Send your hand out.

Let's flip around here.

I love being up in the air and being able to flip around.

And I feel like I just have freedom in the silk.

I can do whatever I want as long as I'm safe.

Eva's mom, Lisa Mustard, says her daughter is passionate about aerial fitness.

She just gets so excited and passionate about aerial training.

It's incredible.

She's on a gymnastics team.

So I think the combination of you know getting into gymnastics and and learning you know how to use her body and on the floor and on the on the beam, which I think is, probably your best.

She just kinda took it to the next level.

How can I take the skill set and apply it to something that really lights me up.

One foot and wrap it around and then you're gonna pause.

Okay?

So watch what I do.

So climb one time.

And then I reach up and I separate these.. Tamela also works with Mark Fowble and John Jordan.

Both have become proficient in aerial exercise under her tutelage.

Both are excited about the medical rehabilitation and general athletic exercise confidence that Tamela has given them with aerial fitness coaching.

Let this elbow come forward.

Go up and hold yourself, with your shoulders down your back, out at your ears.

You can lift your knees at this point if you want or just hang.

Tamela would be an expert if somebody needs specific strength, like if somebody hurts their back, she could figure out where it is and strengthen that area.

I know just from working out you could hit muscles that you don't even know you have.

After a beginner level, I would teach them basic climbing, being able to hold themselves up, strengthening the core.

We always do a warm up on the floor, which will kind of gauge how clued into their body they are.

You don't want to do toe touches, do roll ups.

What I like about it is strengthening our core it is not- It doesn't feel like it is as hard work as lifting weights on a bench or any kind of arm weights.

You're working out but you're working muscles that you typically don't work and without realizing it.

see this excitement Gonna slide down.

Pushing yourself.

Let's go through the harness.

Let's go through the harness.

Seeing Eva's excitement during her aerial work out Tamela we couldn't resist asking what she wants to be when she grows up.

We got this response.

An aerial silk constructor.

Tamela really inspires me.

♪ Joe Ann Calvy of Eastover has already had a heart attack at age forty eight.

Growing up, Joanne battled weight problems because she didn't know how to make healthy choices.

That's one reason why she and her husband had been so supportive of their daughter Savannah's after school nutrition class.

The class is offered through a partnership between Prisma Health and DHEC, the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control.

In order to reach more children at the same time, educators use Telehealth to teach the class remotely.

I didn't grow up here in Eastover but I did grow up in rural area too.

I grew up in Kingstree.

I didn't know how to eat properly.

I've always had weight problems my entire life and I'm forty eight and I've had a heart attack.

So I do try to watch what I eat I don't exercise as much as I can.

But I guess now in the most important thing for me is watching what I put in my body cause I don't want Savannah to go through you know what I've been through.

We know that as an overall society that we sit too much and we don't eat like we should.

And then again that's the cycle that's got to be reversed.

Because this may be the first generation of children who are actually buried by their parents before their parents pass away because of the chronic disease.

But we know that if we educate our young people on the importance of healthy eating and exercise and they can take that up with him as an adult and begin to when they become parents train their children.

Then that cycle can reverse.

I think for some reason when it's a small community a a rural community, I think that they don't get the education or the knowledge like someone with someone would get like in the city.

I don't think that the resources are available to them.

Because of the lack of resources in rural areas, Prisma Health partnered with the Department of Health and Environmental Control to provide a sixteen week after school program.

This program provides nutrition education to elementary school students.

It's offered via Telehealth which allows for multiple schools to virtually participate in the program at the same time.

This help the provider to be able to reach more schools without having to travel.

Topics of the program include the importance of healthy eating and exercise.

Well, I heard about it the first of the year and I heard about it through Savannah.

She heard about it at the school and she really wanted to participate in it.

The Telehealth program, we dial in with our buddies from Palmetto Health virtually and we have lessons, very engaging lessons.

We get material that they drop off to the school and the kids are able to communicate and integrate with other schools in a cluster virtually.

At first, I didn't know much about it but when I saw her coming home with USDA pamphlets about health and ideas about snacks for the kids to fix when they get home, I was like wow what we've been missing out on.

And so from the list that do USDA gave her I was able to pick out healthy snacks fruits and vegetables and things like that would be quick for her to put her hands on that would be healthy.

And so I created a special drawer in the refrigerator for her and then that drawer when she come from school she knows that's an okay drawer and she'll go in there and and pick her something out there or fix her little salad or something after school.

So we have over the years been trying to improve on our health.

But when she started this program I noticed a difference in her.

My son has he's learned from her.

He's eating eating healthier.

It's like it more kind of motivated us.

It motivated my son and it motivated my husband more.

But my son has lost a lot of weight and he's exercising in the gym.

My husband has lost a lot of weight over the last few months.

It's beneficial to us because Savannah and my wife do mainly all the shopping.

So if Vannah is there with her they correlate together to bring home the right food.

And that goes through the whole house.

It's a it's a good thing for everyone cause Savannah has a lot of influence over all of us.

And if she see me if she see me eating something unhealthy sometimes even in the public she'll say mama that's not healthy.

It's great cause when you have somebody holding you accountable you actually achieve your goals because if you don't have no one to have you accountable you will kind of slip and kind of feel like you can get away with it.

And once you start slipping you know you might continue to go down that path.

So being held accountable.

I love that.

So you think if we were offering this content to one individual school that would require a person to travel from one side to the other and then this is a rural community somewhere between thirty to forty five minutes away from our office.

So through Telehealth we're able to impact sixty to seventy children at three different sites at one time soon to be another site coming on in the Spring.

And we're able to have one person in our studio provide that educational content and reach many students all at one time.

So it's definitely a value add for us.

And it's also a value add for our partners that work with us on this program such as DHEC who who's able to come in and provide content.

We'd like to see the same sort of impact that we've made in the Lower Richland community in all of our rural communities.

We could really make an impact not only in the Midlands but the Upstate, the Low country, all of South Carolina, even different places in the world through Telehealth because all you have to have is the technology to be able to connect and the individual providing education can then speak to an array of individuals and provides education to them through Telehealth.

(Kids counting as a group) I just love it.

It just motivates me.

And I'll tell you ever since she started the program I've been eating better.

Cause I mean if she's taking a program at school and they're teaching her how the how to eat and then she's bringing things home for us to learn how to eat I just I just don't see how I can go against that.

It just makes me want to do right.

Finally, tonight we'll reprise a look at a new trend in the fitness world.

The industry is big business these days and constantly changing in order to make exercise fun.

One yoga studio here in the Midlands is switching things up by trading ohm for ahhs.

Bending from the hips with a flat back Try to bring our body down just a little bit more (baaaa) ♪ upbeat music ♪ Goat yoga is a real thing and it is a great opportunity for people who don't normally come to do yoga to try something new.

It's also a great way to create community because you normally come with a friend or family member and you leave with lots of fun memories.

(giggles) So I've never done goat yoga before and I'm excited and I'm here and little goats are running around they're making all kind of crazy noises.

So yeah.

It's gonna be fun.

So goat yoga is actually called caprine vinyasa.

And what that means is that we are marrying yoga with animals.

And so it gives us a chance to really be present.

And just experience both worlds.

♪ Although this is a yoga class it's going to be kind of a different yoga class.

It's not going to be super quiet.

We're not going to be super concentrated on our poses.

We're going to create the intention of happiness through these baby goats.

♪ In normal yoga classes it's very very quiet and then universally they all say the ohm chant together.

But in our goat yoga classes what typically happens is everyone at the same time says ahhhh.

After you hear the baby goats making their sound baaaaaaa So what you can expect is a little bit of euphoria.

Goats don't need time to warm up to you they immediately you know want to play.

♪ (Camera shuttering sounds) What we do is we wait for our local farmers to let us know that a goat is pregnant.

And then we all jump for joy and we schedule a class based around the natural process.

(golf cart engine sound) So the moms have babies in the Spring and the Fall.

So with that being said you know we always have baby goats on the farm (goat baa sounds) Raising our goats is a business for us.

People love them and they use them as house pets.

We do handle the goats every day.

Once they go in transition to their new home they're going to be very friendly and then they're going to be attached to the owner at that point.

So they'll follow you around just like a dog will follow you around.

♪ Columbia reached out to me and they asked me if I was interested in putting my goats in goat yoga.

I did look it up and it's really popular like in bigger cities and things like that so I think it's becoming more popular today.

In order for that goats to participate it just depends on what they're eating and if they look you know healthy enough to be gone from Mama for four hours I'll take them.

There's pros and cons to doing baby goat yoga indoors and outdoors but in Columbia, South Carolina it's very hot and so we brought the baby goats indoors.

One of the challenges is that baby goats are animals and so they poop and pee ♪ upbeat music ♪ And so that makes it a little challenging but we always have extra staff that runs around behind them and scoops it right up.

♪ Yoga is a natural stress reliever.

Doctors are prescribing yoga all the time to decrease cortisol, increase flexibility but now with baby goats it also adds a joy factor and lots of giggles.

♪ A little bit of goat on me.

I know.

(camera shutter) This might sound a little over-the-top of yoga feels like such a natural life force kind of movement exercise.

So it made so much sense to have them, little baby goats with us.

Just sort of naturally moving around and taking our mind off the pain and kind of keeping us company.

My face hurts from smiling too much and my abs are a little bit sore too.

(laughs) Hey!

I think all fads have their place and they're born for some purpose in our culture were farther and farther apart from each other.

And this kind of thing brings joy and connection.

I think it's going to stick.

I love that.

For more stories about our state and more details on those stories you've just seen, please visit our website at palmettoscene.org and don't forget to follow S.C.E.T.V.

on social media, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram with hashtag palmetto scene.

As we leave you tonight with Palmetto Scene's palmetto postcard, it's from our online digital series, 'Our Town'.

I'm Beryl Dakers for Palmetto Scene and ETV.

Thanks for watching.

♪ ♪ What makes Lake City so interesting is, the people.

Lake City has been very fortunate that we have a community that is a caring community, it's a loving community, it's a proud community.

I think what makes Lake City so unique is when you come to Lake City what you expect is not what you get.

You get more.

And so, I think that's what blows a lot of our visitors away.

They're expecting this small little quaint town and then when they come, they see all this culture, and they see all this art, and just wonderful personalities, and hospitality.

And I think it's just one of those pleasant surprises that you wouldn't expect.

All what you get from the small town of Lake City, South Carolina.

The people really care about each other and about what goes on and about the town being successful.

And there's just something special about that.

There's really so much to offer here that people don't even begin to even realize with it being such a small town.

In 2018, USA Today voted us the best small town cultural scene in America.

To be quite frank, there's something going on all the time.

We would welcome you to come visit.

This is our Town.

This is our Town.

This is our Town.

This is our Town.

Lake City, South Carolina.

♪ ♪ closing music ♪ ♪