Journey to Well
We are not created to do this healing journey or life alone. In fact, it was Bessle Van Der Kolk who expertly shared “healing happens in the presence of an empathic witness”. That is the heart of this podcast & my business : to witness. You can expect a plethora of conversations on nervous system regulation, breathwork, human design & astrology, cycle alignment, energy & spirituality work and so much more. We are all on a journey back home to ourselves, rediscovering our innate power within & I am thrilled to take this journey to well with you. be well xx
Journey to Well
Unlocking Your Inner Superhuman | Dan Metcalfe | 7 Pillars of Natural Health
What if the superhuman abilities you need aren't something you have to acquire, but rather something you were born with and simply need to rediscover? That's the transformative message Dan Metcalfe brings to this episode as he shares his extraordinary journey from West End ballet dancer to wellness expert.
After suffering a catastrophic spine injury that left him paralyzed, with doctors predicting lifelong disability, Dan defied medical expectations. Years later, when a traumatic brain injury forced him to relearn basic functions, he again demonstrated the remarkable resilience that forms the foundation of his "Born Superhuman" philosophy. These weren't just setbacks—they were awakening moments that revealed our innate capacity for healing and growth.
Dan breaks down his seven pillars of natural health (oxygen, hydration, sleep, nutrition, exercise, mindset, and challenges), offering practical wisdom that's transformed over 70,000 lives. You'll discover why 75% of Americans live chronically dehydrated, how changing one word in your vocabulary can revolutionize your relationship with food, and why the pursuit of comfort might actually accelerate aging. His insights on sleep optimization, circadian rhythms, and the healing power of sunlight challenge conventional wisdom while providing actionable strategies.
The most powerful moments come when Dan explains how reconnecting with childhood joys can revitalize your spirit—like his mother taking her first ballet class at 84, or his girlfriend finding her voice after being told as a child she couldn't sing. These stories illuminate how limiting beliefs often prevent us from embracing our full potential.
Take one small step today toward reclaiming your superhuman birthright. Whether it's breathing more consciously, reframing how you approach food, or rediscovering a forgotten passion, this conversation offers a blueprint for tapping into the extraordinary capabilities you already possess.
Connect with Dan at https://bornsuperhuman.com/ or on IG @ danmetcalfe_official
Let's connect on social media! You can find me @ _journeytowell
Be sure to reach out and say hello 🤍
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Craving guidance, expansion or growth? Let's connect.
https://journeytowell.net
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be well, my friend
xx Hannah
Hello. Welcome back to the podcast Journey to Well. My name is Hannah, and today I am joined by Dan Medcalf. I am so excited. I feel like I say that all the time, but Dan and I had a conversation a few weeks ago, and um it just really got me on fire about overall health and vitality and wellness and all of the things that I normally talk about, but a completely different perspective and education. So truly, Dan, today we are here to be educated and inspired just by you being you. So thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I would love to open it up and allow you to introduce yourself, who is Dan, what a little bit about your story before we get talking about being superhuman and all of these wellness things.
SPEAKER_01:Thanks, Hannah. What a beautiful intro. And thank you for the time and to your audience. Time's the most valuable thing we have in life because when time is gone, everything's gone. So the fact sharing this time with me means the most to me. I won't waste a second of it, and it's really an honor. So thank you.
unknown:Thank you.
SPEAKER_01:So who is Dan Metcalf? Well, I shouldn't be here theoretically talking to you if my life hadn't gone the way that I thought it was going to go. I went from being an athlete back in England to uh switching over to dance. I became a ballet dancer, jazz tap at the starting at the age of 18. And by the time I was 20 years old, I was playing the lead in Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber shows. For those people that haven't heard of Andrew Lloyd Weber, he wrote the shows Cat's Phantom of the Opera, Jesus Christ Superstar, Joseph and Tetlacolor Dreamcoat, Starlight Express. And so I was touring the world, I was on the West End in London, and life was fantastic. Until I had an accident on stage in Starlight Express in Las Vegas at the Las Vegas Hilton, where I fractured my spine, I was paralyzed, and the doctor said that I would be disabled for life. So that was really the beginning of my next journey of understanding the value of health, the importance of the environment that we create, and the so much importance of the environment we create inside ourselves first, because what we create inside will determine what actually goes in and affects us and what we need to keep out so it doesn't pull our life down.
SPEAKER_00:I love that you said the environment that we create, because a lot of us kind of I know me included, I'm not discluding myself, uh live in this, you know, like, oh, life is so chaotic and life is happening to me. And that was one of the things I love about Tony Robbins. He said, Life is not happening to you, it's happening for you. And what is the life that you're creating? And so I love that you said life is the life that we create. Um and I know a little bit about the incredi I mean, it's not even just that theater accident. There was another accident that happened, and there's so many things I feel like the adversity, right, that has come your way that you have bounced back from and not just bounced back from, but thrived from. And and we can all hear your story, and you know, I'm sure you to I know that you talk about it all the time. My question is how did this mindset come about in your life? How did you come from your theater accident and then you had another bike accident where you where you fractured the the back of your head, correct? The back of your skull.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it was actually, I was okay. So after I recover from paralysis, and people were like, tell me that story. That's a whole nother story. We're all born superhuman. And Tony Robbins things happen for us is great. I believe everything that happens to us is a gift if we wrap it correctly. And then that becomes for us, right? Because we see it as happening to us, but if we wrap it correctly, it's a gift. And so again, I wouldn't be here today if I hadn't gone through the people would you know perceive it as a tragedy. I'm so sorry. I said, no, I am so fortunate to have gone through what I went through because I recognize the lessons it was teaching me. Now, I will say right now, if someone listening to this is not interested in investing in themselves and gifting themselves, it's probably not the podcast to listen to with me because I really want to push you to be the best you and understand that self-love is not selfish, it's essential. And we don't have a lack of time, we have a lack of discipline of time. So if time is the most important thing that we have in life, the most valuable thing we have, what we do with our time shows what's most important to us. So as we get into this podcast, I'm so excited to share what I've learned, and I've trained over 70,000 people into better health and mindset. Please invest in yourself. Listen to this with an open mind and just take one thing. Because I promise, if you listen through this, there'll be one thing that you can take on that will change and start the process of a healthier, happier, and more successful life with the time we've got. Yeah, I think it that's a great question, Hannah. I think it came from resilience of wanting to be my best and understanding every level has its own devil. So as we begin to progress, there's gonna be something that's gonna stop us continuing forward, and we often see those as roadblocks. And from the age of nine, I wanted to be a professional soccer player, football player back in England. And I had really, really, really bad asthma. Like I'd wake up on Sunday morning, and my mum would be like, Come on, Danny, we're going to church. And I'd be lying on the floor after two steps trying to breathe, and I'd hear the front door slam, you're in trouble. And I'd be lying on the floor as a nine-year-old just trying to breathe, and they didn't know what was going on at that moment. And self-survival came in. And how do I not just survive? How do I take that and figure things out for myself? And so I never sat back and put more importance on other people's impressions or information than I did my own journey. So I say to a lot of people, I don't believe in hope. Right? The hope is not a word in my dictionary except for someone else. So, Hannah, I hope you have a great day. Everyone listening, I hope you have the rest of your life that you dream of. But for me, it's about belief. If I hope, it's a procrastinator. So I'm sitting there waiting for somebody else to come in and say, Oh, you I found the solution. Oh, yeah, this is the best thing. Oh, we can't really help you, but we hope you get better. If I'm waiting for hope, I am literally waiting. But if I believe it's an actionable word, because when we believe in something, we'll take a step to it, and that starts opening up the answers to the lessons that are challenging us. So at the age of nine, with this asthma, my grandfather was a GP and he brought down this inhaler. And I was like, okay, great. I took the inhaler and I felt better. But something in me made me want to question it rather than just accept it. So I walked to the library. People as young as you won't really know what libraries are, Hannah. But a brick and mortar building with all these books in it. And I sat as a nine-year-old and read about the respiratory system. And I read that the body is made to heal. We are better than we believe because we're impregnated with this thought that the doctor has to heal you, or the drug has to heal you, or something that's not natural is going to heal you. Now, before I continue, I do want to preface that by saying I'm not anti-drugs, I'm not anti-doctors. I believe sometimes we need a kickstart, but I am anti-replacement or dependency. And that replacement, if our body's meant to make it, let the body do it. Just give it a kickstart. So I read that if I took this inhaler, my body would become lazy in being able to fight off the asthma attacks itself. And so I went and threw, I didn't tell anyone, I threw away the inhaler. I would walk to the park near my home, take off my jacket, run as far as I could, and then I would collapse on the ground, fighting for breath. I'm like, and I'd be lying and I'd make sure I fell so I could see my jacket. And eventually I'd just focus, get back to the jacket, get back to the jacket. Well, I would eventually recover, I'd get back and I'd run back to that jacket and collapse again. But over weeks and months, I ran it out of me. I could run the whole field. I went on to become a runner for my school and then went on to professional sports without ever having to use an inhaler. Now, I'm not telling anybody to do that. What I'm saying is it discovered in me the ability to heal and the resilience, because resilience is not what's happening to us. Resilience doesn't come from that. Resilience comes from what we've experienced to then use when we come up with a similar or a challenge that that lesson will help. Going back to the brain, I was coming through my guard gated community, and the guard brought the metal gate down on my head. I was going pretty fast. I was immediately knocked unconscious with a hit on the frontal lobe. I flew through the air, already frozen. I only know this because I got the video, and it's not one I watch a lot, but when I do, it's like, wow, that's me. I then hit the ground so hard I broke my coccyx, the lower back, hit the back of my head so hard that it broke the helmet open. I was unconscious for about three minutes. Part of my brain died, and I had to learn to talk again, learn to function, learn to move, overcome PTSD. I put on so much weight, I put on about 30 pounds of weight from depression eating, from not being able to do what I was doing, and it became a life-changing moment of who am I and what am I willing to accept? And that's where everything changed for me in Born Superhuman came about because I realized we are made to heal, born to heal. The information that we feed to our brain will determine how it works, and that if we're willing to invest in ourselves and put ourselves first, at times the results are superhuman.
SPEAKER_00:So tell me about Born Superhuman. It's a book, it's obviously this whole mindset and and and theory that you've developed. Um, but tell me about tell me more of this.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's um it really came from my experiences in life that were also fed by other mentors. I speak in the biohacking world, I keynote speak around the country, and listening to other people continued to help me understand who we all are at the base foundation. So within the pillars, the seven pillars of natural health, which is we're born superhuman, there's the pillars that are guaranteed to improve your life. And again, having trained so many thousands of people from world-class record holders, Olympians to people a hundred years old, I was able to narrow down exactly the important things that we do every day. It's not something you have to replace, it's how can I do what I'm doing every day better, or how can I reintroduce what I should be doing that I've replaced out of either laziness or lack of education, or I just feel so overwhelmed and swamped. And I'm sure everyone listening can feel that. But what am I giving up is going to affect me in the long run?
SPEAKER_00:Hmm. So these seven pillars are oxygen, hydration, sleep, nutrition, exercise, mindset, challenges. Challenges is interesting to me, but I'd like to start at the beginning. Um, a lot of them make sense. Oxygen, though. There's a couple that I'm like, hmm, let's let's divulge more information here. Oxygen, what do you mean by that?
SPEAKER_01:Okay, so we know oxygen also has a byproduct for carbon dioxide, right? So they have to be able to work in tandem. Our body needs both to be able to function. If we were 100% oxygen, we would die. But I know you're huge on breath work. The reason I put oxygen first is not because it's the one that is um going to change us the quickest, because we're breathing now. But if we went without it, it would be the quickest thing that takes us down. So if you look at all the different pillars that are in there, we can go 40 days without eating, which is why nutrition is down at number four. We could go, you know, a year without any exercise at all and still exist. But with oxygen, the problem that we have is we breathe in our upper respiratory system, and that affects our nervous system. So stress, which creates oxidative impact within the body, can be relieved and put us in a better state to handle issues, to handle the stresses that come in. If we learn how to breathe, and you'll know this better than me, if we breathe correctly, our whole environment changes. Now, it's not the first one that I teach, but in me, for me, it's the most important for our own existence and being able to control the way we feel so simply. You can just change your breath work, and in two minutes, your whole system can change.
SPEAKER_00:You you are opening my uh my breath work nerdiness and and something that I'm thinking about that listeners might know, might not, I assume you know. But one of the coolest ways to explain this upper respiratory breathing versus pulling that breath really far down into the belly and fully expanding the diaphragm. Is if you go back to well, even not go back hunting, right? Hunter-gatherers, but we all people hunt today too. Um, when we are hunting, our breath becomes so shallow because we are so hyper-fixated on what we're hunting. And back in hunter-gatherer times, it was literally a matter of life or death, right? If we don't get this, we're in a famine, we don't get this deer, we don't get this boar, we might not feed the tribe for the next month and people might starve. So there's there's so much stress there. And stress is a good thing, as I'm sure you can talk way more eloquently about, but our breath pattern would change so shallow to so shallow that we just take these little breaths in, little breaths out. And when we now fast forward, when we get stress as a human race, we take these really shallow breaths. And so that is something that we talk about in breath work is how it's not how fast can I breathe, it's how deep can I pull my breath. It's how much of a deep breath can I take and how much can I exhale, which is interesting because we also don't exhale enough of our air. And when we're talking about the oxygen and the carbon dioxide uh flow, we're not getting enough of that when we're not fully exhaling because we have all of this old breath left over in our lungs, and we're taking in another breath, and it's maybe 50% of our capacity because we only breathe out 50%. So um, okay, super interesting. I had to, I had to just do that little education piece. Let's just briefly go through the seven pillars. Um, just I would love to touch on all of them. So the next one, hydration. I think we all hear that we need to drink more water. What I found interesting on your website was it was it's not just talking about drinking more water, it's the bioavailability and how your body is absorbing the water. So that's what I would love to touch on if you could.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I'll open this with a statistic. 75% of adult Americans are living in a chronic state of dehydration. So if you're sitting in a car of four people, one of you is hydrated. That's it. Now, the beauty of the body is that it adapts to conditions. We've all been there. So when you're dehydrated, the body adapts to the fact that you're dehydrated to feel normal. But when I was a head coach on the Olympic program, we knew that a 3% dehydration could be up to a 20% underperformance. That's just 3%. That's not chronic. The reason being is our brain needs water to function. And when the brain, which is our power force in life, it's our center, when it feels dehydrated, it starts pulling moisture and liquid away from other areas to keep itself alive. Because if the brain goes, you can lose a muscle, you can, you know, lose your leg and you'll still go, but if you lose your brain, you're gone. So it's incredible how much hydration is critical. And it's not just like you perfectly said, drinking. For me, it's how we drink and what we drink. And I did a lot of studies with an incredible uh mentor on this that I really wanted to understand it better. If I'm gonna teach it, I want to know it like the experts do. So we'll here drink eight glasses of water a day, drink 12 glasses of water a day. And what we do is we realize we haven't, so we gulp it down. Well, we've all been there. You feel bloated, you feel heavy, you have to go to the bathroom, you're not absorbing the water, but you drank your 12 glasses a day. Well, the problem is you're not hydrating, you can actually drown cells or certainly swamp cells of water where they can't function. So I have a program that is how do I drink? And it's so easy. You can drink 14 cups of water a day without any issues and find it so comfortable because you do it over a period of time rather than this is the amount you've got to drink. I teach when you need to drink. And it's not when you feel thirsty, because by the time you feel thirsty, you're probably 70 to 80 percent of your hydration level, at least. And so we never want to get to the point where you're 30-40%, because people then say I'm losing my my memory, or I feel dizzy, or I'm so tired, and we look at other reasons. But the truth is probably nine times out of 10, you're dehydrated, and it's not coffee that you're drinking that has water because that can be a diuretic, it's not the sugar drinks, it's not the obviously the sodas, it's not the caffeine drinks, because all these bypass the blood-brain barrier, go into your brain, and create inflammation that then has another issue itself. So drinking water, bioavailability, which I'm a huge fan of the right hydrogen water. There's a lot of fakers out there, so do your research before you invest in hydrogen water. But for me, it is the best form of absorbing at a cellular level, and then be careful of dead water and uh dirty water, those two things can cause your filtration system in your body to have to overwork as well or not provide the ability for oxygenation.
SPEAKER_00:How do you feel about the electrolyte powders that obviously don't have the sugar in them, uh, or even just salt in your water?
SPEAKER_01:I think it's critical, but I also think you need to understand what you need and when you need it. Because people could over-electrolyte, putting so much in their water, and you're getting too much sodium, the potassium you don't need that much. All the different pieces they go, magnesium is obviously good as well. So you have to look at your day. If I'm out in really hot weather, I know I have to hydrate more with the electrolytes because I'm sweating them out. But if I'm just sitting in my office and it's not hot, the air conditioning's on, I'm not gonna throw that electrolytes in. If I'm working out really hard, absolutely I'll take some before I start the workout and during and post because I know I'm sweating out the electrolytes we need. Um, and then there's some days where it could just be, you know, a granule of salt that goes under your tongue, and then you let it so it's really good. But again, I think there's this for me, there's always this balance of commercial sales and reality of what you need. And so I would say evaluate what your conditions are and adjust accordingly.
SPEAKER_00:That's great. Yeah, that's great. I you mentioned hydrogen water, and I know we're spending a lot of time on hydro hydration, so we'll move on. But I know that that's a big buzzword. I definitely have met people that have the little machines that add that for the hydrogen water. Um, I've never personally done my own research on it. So I am curious if you could speak on the the educational piece behind what is actually happening and why is that helping our body and helping us absorb the hydration better?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, great question. And I'll keep this very simple. H2O is two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen. That's how we create water. And if I ask everybody listening a real quick question, what creates the most oxygen in the world? Do you know what that is?
SPEAKER_00:No, trees.
SPEAKER_01:That's what we've always been taught. It's actually the ocean. The ocean creates more oxygen than trees do because it's two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen. Every time it's moving, oxygen is part of the process being released, which is why when we go to the ocean, we always feel tired or we feel relaxed, I should say, more than tired, but it gives us that dream state because we're actually getting more oxygen than we would normally if we were in land. So when we start looking at that and the power of water, we'll then bring it back. Um, hydrogen is the smallest molecule in the in the world in the galaxy. And it's also so easy to penetrate into our cells. So when you have two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen, we can drink, we're getting hydrogen into our body already. But hydrogen water increases the amount of hydrogen that's actually in the water. pH, when we talk about pH, stands for potential hydrogen. When we say you have a pH 9, you have a pH 7.5. Well, this is the problem with a lot of the hydrogen bottles that are out there. And I tested so many, I met with so many people because I wanted to find out with the 1800 studies they've done, who's actually taking the scientific data and copying what was used to get the results in their product. Because a lot of people are using the data, but they're not using the same process to build the hydrogen bottles, and you can actually get toxic water. So when hydrogen goes over a pH 10, you now can have a water that's actually toxic in your body, but so you have to have counterproductive um mechanisms to actually make sure the hydrogen's up, but it's healthy water for you. Um, and so I it's all I drink is hydrogen water. I have an incredible system in my house that I did all the research for. I don't get dehydrated anymore. I'll go out on my bike rides and train. I don't get the dry mouth. You can have a little bit of that compared to the amount of water you need. And what you're really doing is you're allowing the water to be broken down by the hydrogen that when it enters into your gut, it carries it into the cells themselves rather than being resistant because it's a liquid. Now it can carry itself through the cellular process into your mitochondria, into your cellular function, and so you'll actually perform better, be awake better, have more energy. And it's incredible for anti-inflammatory because you're feeding the cells to be able to fight the inflammation, the uh disease, and and the results themselves. I urge people go and read about the true impact of hydrogen. I should say, the true impact of true hydrogen water.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I feel like we could spend a whole podcast just on that. That is so interesting, and you're definitely inspiring me to go do way more research on hydrogen water. Um, thank you. Thank you for that. So let's move on to sleep. Everyone always says I need more sleep. Um I am assuming it's more than just getting more sleep. So I would love to hear a little bit about that education on the quality of sleep that we get and how that plays a role in our uh ability to function at its highest potential.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's everyone would know. I mean, I haven't had a good night's. I actually last night was okay, but I had like three nights where I didn't get good sleep and I felt horrible the next morning, but it's because I had so much work of education to get ready, prepare for a talk that I kept waking up excited about it. But I could feel the difference. So it's not always that I have to have the perfect night's sleep every night. But if we're consistently undersleeping, then that's going to affect our health. It will affect our weight because the cortisol is created when we're not sleeping because of the stress that then gets built up. So people will be doing diets, they'll be doing exercise, they're not sleeping well, they still can't lose weight. It's a massive part of our physical health. Sleep also is the time the brain resets itself. It takes out the memories of the day, detoxifies yourself, helps heal the body, and prepares you for the next day. So think about carrying a 50-pound weight all day. And then instead of letting it down and putting it in its place, you decide to hold on to 30 pounds of it, and then the next day you add another 50 pounds to it. Now you're carrying that 80 pounds. At the end of the day, you put down another 30 pounds. Now you add a 50 pounds, now you've got a hundred pounds. So this when I say that, I'm talking about the body's healing itself in preparation. But I spent some time with Dr. Maya Krieger, who um was the sleep guru who discovered sleep apnea. And he's probably the OG, everybody that goes to sleep, you know, school and studies has to read his books. And he said, we're not all built the same. So when someone says you have to go to sleep for eight hours, nine hours, some people need six hours. Some people, if they're super active athletes, need ten hours. It all depends on the work, the stress, and the um exercise or the demand the next day. So there's times we can go out and party, we're doing great, the next day we're off, we either sleep in or we get up and we just relaxed. We don't need as much sleep. And there's night owls and there's morning people. We can't make a night owl into a morning person if their natural biorhythms and chemistry sets them up. So we have to celebrate who we each are, but make sure we're getting the sleep we need. The last thing that I'll add here, because I know we've got a lot to go into. Sleeping for regular people that you know get up early in the morning and go to bed at night, between 10 o'clock at night and 12 o'clock is critical. That's when we'll get our most REM, our deep sleep before we then go into the other states as we begin to go through the sleep and wake up, our light sleep. And most of us will wake up through the night a number of times and not even know we woke up. It's a momentary wake up and then we're asleep again. So studies have shown that sleeping between 10 o'clock and 12 o'clock at night will give you more recovery and rest than sleeping from 12 o'clock to five o'clock the next morning. Because of the deep state we go into. So I urge everybody, if you can adjust your sleeping habits, get rid of the blue light. Everyone knows about the screens. Either put up these blackout curtains and put yourself the room slightly less temperature, you know, cooler than um the rest of the house. If you like sound, put on some relaxing sound, but get to sleep. And I'm also about going to bed and reading for her. See if you can be asleep between ten and ten fifteen each night and you will have so much more recovery.
SPEAKER_00:Mom. Love that. I I go to bed like between nine and ten every night. And it really does. It really does make a difference. And I love that you brought up that the night owl and the morning person, because I think that we do spend a lot of um A lot of grief of over like, oh, I have to go to bed earlier. I have to I have to wake up earlier, and and maybe that's just your natural biorhythm and really leaning into that. I've it's changed my life to not have to set an alarm anymore. And I know that that's not the case for a lot of people if you have to get up for work. But what I have found is that I naturally wake up at six between six and seven every single day. So I still have plenty of time to get ready for work. But when you're getting that good sleep, your body doesn't, at least my body, yeah, we'll just be my body doesn't need to sleep. I can't possibly sleep until 9 a.m. anymore. I wish sometimes, but that's just not the case.
SPEAKER_01:I want to add in here as well, Hannah, because I think this is so important. We have our circadian rhythm. That is when we wake up and when we go to sleep. And it is governed from our ancestors to when the sun comes up and when the sun goes down, before electricity. We're made to function at a cellular level from that energy of the sun. So many of us that don't get enough out in the sun, the vitamin D, all the different things that we need, which is sun-related, will affect our sleep. So if you can wake up in the morning and get out in the sun or sit, if a lot of people like to have a morning coffee or a tea, I'm a big water fan. I'll go walking as often as I can at sunrise. It helps set our sleep patterns. And then at the same time, if you could walk later at night or just get out as the sun's going down, the light that's emitted from the sun going down is very similar to a candle. And when we put candles on, it makes us relax. And so if you're having a hard time going to sleep, you don't always have to look at your environment. Look at what you can do to naturally stimulate your body to want to wake up and want to go to sleep. And for those people that have uh do night shifts, and this is really hard on the body, even if you're a night owl, when you go home, have blackout curtains. Have something that makes the put on a mask that shuts all the light out. Because you need that to allow your cells, your brain, your sleep to have that opportunity to recover. But then get up and get out in the sun. Because most people that work nighttime sleep through the day, they're not getting sun. So if you can't get in the sun, please look at um red light therapy. Look at um the um certain protocols that you can use. There's a company, a couple of companies that I love with red light therapy, and I'm not going to share them here, but if people are interested, they can go to near my website. But um it's incredible the vitamin D that you can be creative from red light. And I'm a huge fan, as I know you are as well, of red light, um, therapy and the impact it can have. So if you're really suffering from sleep, please look at the solutions, don't look at the problem. The solutions are there, and your cells need sunlight early morning for your circadian rhythm, nighttime, or when the sun's going down for circadian rhythm, between 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock for your vitamin D for 10-15 minutes, or find a replacement. And a lot of people with vitamin D tablets, they probably need vitamin K with it as well, K1, because it's a transportation through the body of the vitamin D. So it's not hard, it's just knowing.
SPEAKER_00:I know, I know, and that's why I'm so appreciative of you coming on on this podcast and really sharing your expertise because I mean, even that, I my mom shared something about that, that it has to be the vitamin D K. And you can get these drops on Amazon, and sometimes she will supplement uh in the winter because we do just the this the vitamin D that we get from the sun is just less, and or we have trouble going outside when we're we're in New Hampshire, is where she and I are, and it's not always the warmest weather.
SPEAKER_01:Can I add on to that as well? And I know I'm delaying moving on.
SPEAKER_00:No, you're good.
SPEAKER_01:I've got so many friends that, you know, African American and they got the darker skin. When they live in non-sunlight environments, they suffer more than white people do. They need to supplement more, which is why we have higher cancer rates. We have different health issues. It's because they their skin was born to be in hot countries and absorbed. So they need more sunlight to penetrate to help this vitamin D process in their body. And we know sunlight is critical for health. Back in the 1800s, they used to put beds on top of hospitals and put people up on the roofs to help them get sunlight because it was the number one healer. And then we got fed that sunlight's dangerous for us, it's skin cancer, all these different things that come in. And we won't get into all that. That's you know, people's own um wishes. But if you look at the places where people live so long, they're in sunlight naturally. And so please find sunlight. It's critical for your health, and it's an incredible healer.
SPEAKER_00:This past winter, I mean, we're heading into winter, but last winter, I went outside and walked every single day. And you're talking about the sunlight for the circadian rhythm and and waking up in the morning and and walking and the evening and walking. Same thing. You're getting almost, you know, double whammy when you go out and go for a walk, and you're also getting that vitamin D, even in the winter. And again, going back to your mindset, that's what I told myself. I'm like, I can do this. It's not, it's not too cold. And it was four degrees out some mornings when I went out. And you just bundle up. I had my little hand warmers, and it is about mindset and what I think a lot of what life comes down to is the why behind the thing. And when you know the why behind your walk, I'm getting, I'm helping my circadian rhythm, I'm getting my vitamin D, I'm moving my body, I'm getting out in nature, I'm grounding. When you know the why and you connect to your own why, and those might not be your whys, it might be other reasons to get outside, then you're more likely to go out and do it. So don't find sunglasses.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, find your way. Don't wear sunglasses early morning, late in the evening. It blocks the sun's rays going into your actually getting penetrating into your brain, into your system and helping. So um obviously don't look directly at the sun, but once you start getting to nine o'clock in the morning, nine thirty, and the sun raises up and changes the UVA, UVB rays, put your sunglasses on. You need to, but early morning night, let the rays get in. It's critical.
SPEAKER_00:I know that you talk about Andrew Huberman and you shared that in one of your videos. Uh, he has a great podcast. If you're interested in learning more about the science behind uh going out in early morning walks and all of the benefits, I'll try to find it and link it down below. But I know that he has a really great podcast, as well as millions of people do. But that's just an additional. Yeah, love him. Um, so I'm I love that you put Sleepy for Nutrition here in your seven pillars, but let's touch on nutrition and and such a wide variety that we could go to.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, so I'm gonna keep this very short because there's a lot of dietitians out there, there's a lot of nutritionists, people have their own ideas of what's needed, but we're all unique, and what works for one doesn't necessarily work for another. We need to feed our body, not copy somebody else's diet. So there's some diets that work great for some people, but the Mediterranean diet will actually put weight onto other people. So you need to know who you are and what you resonate, and the best way for that is to get a proper DNA test that would tell you what foods are good for you and what foods aren't. I found out rice isn't good for me. I found out that um nuts are really bad for me. So, you know, fish is really important for me, and I never ate fish. You know, organ meat is much better for me, but red meat is not good. So, you know, you discover things, but this changed my life, Hannah. This is maybe the tip that people can take away that will be the one thing that they'll look at. After my brain injury, I put on a ton of weight. I went, I was racing bikes at around 173, 173 pounds. After my brain injury, I went up to 224 pounds. Depression, and I was in a horrible state. But what happened was we then have depression eating. We then have this, you know, ideology that I like that food. It tastes good to me. With that, it becomes a dopamine release from the um sense at the back of your tongue that goes, I like this, and then it goes into the brain, and the braid goes, Oh, I like this, so we have more. I could sit and eat a whole box of cookies, no problem. Give me two boxes, because I got addicted to it. I went down to about 180 pounds, and I was at a 21.2% body fat. It's not horrible, but for an athlete, it's I'm out of sh majorly out of shape. But I had a hard time losing weight until I heard this one tip, and it's what I'm gonna share. When we're hungry, what do we do?
SPEAKER_00:Open the fridge.
SPEAKER_01:And there's one word, it begins with E.
SPEAKER_00:An E.
SPEAKER_01:Eat, right? E, we're hungry. It's eat. So anybody knows, oh, I'm hungry, I'll just grab that. Why do gas stations make more money off of candies and food that they sell than they do off of the gas? Because people pull over, oh, I'm kind of hungry, I'll just go in there, I'll grab something and we eat it. It satisfies our thinking that we're eating, but then we find because of the sugar, because of the other additives that are in there, we want more or we need more. So I heard this and it changed my life. I went from you know, over a 21% body fat down to an 8.2% body fat with no change, zero change in a diet or specificity, it changed the way I thought. When you're hungry, don't think of eating. When you're hungry, replace the word eat with the word nourish. It was incredible. Because now, when I put that word into my vocabulary, not only did I look at cookies and candy and chips and chocolate that I was eating way too much of before I got into the whole born superhuman program, but I looked at it and went, that's not nourishing. And I began to crave nourishment. Well, when you crave nourishment, you don't need as much food because it's good food that fills you up and satisfied you. So suddenly, instead of chocolate, I'm looking at fruit. And it wasn't a conscious decision of, okay, I've got to stop eating that and I've got to start eating this. I started enjoying the food, my taste buds changed. I could eat more and not put on the weight and my body, my visceral fat, and for those that don't know, visceral fat is the fat that surrounds your organs. So we have the fat on the outside of us, subcutaneous fat that we can see, but the more dangerous is the visceral fat that's around our heart, around our liver, around our kidneys, all this stuff. I went from a nine number, which wasn't bad, but it's not great. Just by chance, I went to a three. It's one of the healthiest you could be. And that was without making any conscious decision to follow a diet. I literally changed the word eat to nourish.
SPEAKER_00:Wow. Thank you. That's such a beautiful reminder. And it's such a great reminder. It's such a great tip because when we have this, I can't eat that. I'm trying to lose weight. I can't eat ice cream anymore. I can't eat the potato chips anymore. When we tell ourselves that we can't do anything anymore, that's all we're thinking about, and that's all we want is to do that. And so when we think of, I want to nourish my body, uh, love that. I love that. Thank you for sharing.
SPEAKER_01:And I'd love to get your feedback. I'd love to get your feedback. Or anybody that's out there, leave, you know, leave comments on your podcast. I'll go in and read them. But I'd love to hear how people just for a week change the thought, eat to nourish. How does that resonate with you? I'd love to hear your account, Hannah, of how that works because it's fascinating, because it's mindset change. It's nothing else.
SPEAKER_00:It's so interesting. You probably don't know this because I don't share it all the time. My mother has an undergraduate degree in nutrition. So I feel very blessed to have grown up knowing how to read a nutrition label and knowing that if it says low fat or no fat, that doesn't necessarily mean good and fat is not bad, and and learning the differences in sugar. And she educated us, you know, this this is sugar, that's sugar, that's sugar. If it says no sugar, look at the ingredients in the nutrition label, not just the calories, the sodium, the fat, the sugar, the protein. Um, and one of her biggest words is nourish your body. And that's what she has always said. So it's a huge piece of my life. And I and I and I I eat candy, of course. Occasionally I'll eat, I'm actually a chocolate person. Of course I'll eat chocolate. Of course I eat ice cream. I'm not this person that only eats like, you know, the healthiest food all the time. But that is, that is my mindset for sure of like, how can I nourish my body and and how can I, if I am hungry, I'm not much of a I think that you turn into not much of a snacker because the snacks really are that like our traditional snacks that we think of are like chips and and I don't know, peanut butter crackers and candy. And I just I tend to say I'm not much of a snacker because it's what can what whole meal can I create for myself and eat to nourish my body versus again going in the pantry and and eating some crackers or something like that. It's it's yeah, I've I feel very blessed. I feel very blessed to have that education uh firsthand. And that was not something that I even really had to do to educate myself. This was really how how I was raised. But these are mindset shifts and lifestyle changes that I mean you you made it so simple. Instead of eat, let me nourish. And how can I nourish my body? Start there. It doesn't have to be this diet or pulling this thing out or adding this thing in. Thank you. But yes, please let us know how the nourishing goes. Um, I want to skip exercise for a minute because I'm gonna loop it back in at the end, but let's let's end let's finish with mindset and challenges.
SPEAKER_01:Mindset is the first thing that I teach. It's it's everything, it really exposes who we are, and the magic we seek is in the work we avoid. We know we should be doing it, but we don't do it. And we avoid it, we look for comfort over looking for success. And it's often because we're drained, we're not excited, we're not passionate about what we're doing, we've given up so much of our life for our family, for our husband, for our partner, for our children when we're talking to the female side and they just want to get a breath, a breathe, please. I just I just need some rest. And we're not investing back into our own health because we know that mindset is critical to all success. As a coach of professional athletes, I knew that 80 to 90 percent of performance is mental. Whoa, we're all in the game of life. So why don't we ever spend the time training the mental side to be able to handle the obstacles, to learn the lessons, to then be able to exceed society's expectations. I can actually take this back into how born superhuman even starts. When we were babies, the doctor didn't look at us and say, Okay, are you ready? I'm gonna cut the umbilical cord now. No one asked us. We were babies, and for the first time since conception, when that umbilical cord is cut, we're on our own completely. We can no longer rely on our mother to feed us, to gift us the ability to survive. Now we have teams around us, doctors, nurses, family, friends, everything, but that first breath, and you can take this back into breath work, the first breath a baby takes is a big breath because it's never breathed, it's trying to figure out what do I need to do. And that first breath is painful because it has never been engaged before, the system's never felt it, and then you'll notice the baby then will they'll take smaller breaths. So the system's already figuring out how do I eliminate pain. And then we have to figure out here's my brain cells. What am I hearing? What am I eventually seeing? What am I smelling? All these things start kicking in as we age. Look at the brilliance of that baby. We're all born superhuman. I don't say we're born perfect because perfect is an opinion, but we're born to take on this human form and ability, which is superhuman. But then we get to a certain point where society builds walls around us. They tell us who we're gonna be, how we're gonna be, what we're gonna want. And not everybody is exactly the same mindset of what's gonna work for them. So we have to break down the walls that are stopping us from being seen for who we truly are. And when I talk, I get more reaction out of females than I do out of males. When I say, go back to think when you're a little girl, think about the things you love to do, think about the playing and the dreams that you had, whether it was Prince Charming, or whether it was becoming a nurse, or whether it was you know having loads of kids and all the babies, and you push your little, I don't know what you call them over here, uh stroller around with your baby. Yeah, and you go to dance class and all these different things. You were alive, you were living, you had this passion that slowly gets worn out of us off of expectations because we signed a contract without even knowing that we would do and believe and trust what society tells us, thinking they had our best interest in heart. Well, if you start going back and thinking like that little girl that's still inside you, and finding one little thing to do that made you smile, it could just be putting music on, a song that you used to love, even if it's seen there's a song that uh I still sing, and my girlfriend always laughs at me because um you know here I was playing the lead in the Android Weber shows, and it's about a little mouse that lives in a windmill in Amsterdam, it's brilliant. It's like I saw a mouse where there on the stair. And I sing, it makes me feel alive because as a kid I used to imagine this little mouse. And when we can go back into who we were that's still alive but been shut down, and we get our mindset to then build into the things that make us happy and we commit to it, it's amazing the changes that happen to us from the inside out, and that will improve our health, but it will also open new opportunities and ways of thinking that you can still live the life that you dreamt of because we don't stop playing because we age, we age because we stop playing. Nobody should tell you that you cannot do what you love to do. No one should ever say you're silly for doing it because it's not their life, it's yours. And I urge everybody do something today that makes you smile from when you're a young kid and laugh and notice the difference that happens right away.
SPEAKER_00:It does happen right away. I remember when I I um I fractured my foot, and so I was held up on the couch, and it was also a very tough year of my life, and we switched schools, and I didn't have a lot of friends, didn't love the school, and my mom, again, wonderful woman, she said, I'm gonna put you in singing lessons because when you were a kid, or she asked me how would you like to do singing lessons because when you were a kid, you would sing all the time when you were happy. We would be driving in the back of the car and I would just be, I would just be singing. Apparently, I would just sing, You make me happy to my mom. Um, and she's like, You would sing all the time when you were happy. How would you feel if you took singing lessons again? And her favorite part of the story is I lit up. And I said, Absolutely, yeah. But every time I sing, it makes me happy. And I used to do that all the time when I was a child, and so that would be my thing. Um, that would be my thing that whenever I'm feeling sad or down, and it doesn't even matter the song, I just put on some music and I just sing, and that makes me happy. That lights me up.
SPEAKER_01:My mom grew up during the war, uh, second world war back in London, and her dream had always been to be a ballet dancer, but she wasn't allowed to be. She was kind of like the Cinderella, the caretaker of the family. My sister went on to become a ballet dancer. I was a you know, male ballet dancer, um, and she never got to do that. She had a stroke at 79. I created this product that we'll, I'm sure we'll talk about with exercise. And I sent it to her after the stroke, five days after using it, she went back to line dancing that she had to give up. That was her only pleasure and passion in life for herself. But this is what's amazing. At 84, she came to visit me. I'd spent some time working on a number of different modalities with her. At 84, she took her very first ballet class ever. And I'm not talking about someone holding her around, she did the bar work, she did the center, I got the videos of it. It is absolutely incredible seeing this lady who dreamt of being a ballet dancer at 84, being a ballet dancer for a moment. She rode a bike for the first time ever at 84 that same week because we changed the mindset and she thought she'd never do it. And I'll and I'd love to just touch this story. My girlfriend, she has she was diagnosed with MS. It would take her 10 minutes to walk 10 feet. We changed the mindset, we changed the lifestyle to stress-free or minimize as much as you can. Because I'm I like you said earlier, I do believe some stress is good, but good stress. Eating healthy, sleeping, exercising, all these different things. She took her first ballet class at uh 47 46. She took started doing it, she'd always wanted to do it. But like you said about dancing, she got told as a girl she couldn't sing, she wasn't a good singer, her family always made fun of her, and she never sang. But I said you got a good voice for Christmas. I bought her singing lessons. Now she's singing on stage, she's singing in French, she's got a lovely, lovely voice, and it's her number one passion. But she avoided it because people told her as a little girl she wasn't good. Keep your mouth shut, just mouth it. Don't let anyone see you singing in the choir or hear you. And now it's her number one thing. So, again, do something that you love and find out that what the or the information you've been fed has nothing to do with you, it's just their opinion.
SPEAKER_00:What good stories. Oh my goodness, and congratulations to both of them. Um, let's move to challenges. What does challenges mean? That's the one that I had not researched.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's critical. Think about again when we were younger, or anytime we've progressed in life. Anytime we progressed in life. It's all been because there was a challenge in front of us. Something that meant enough that we went through it because we wanted the end result bad enough to continue through the journey. Right? So I look at it and say, a goal is only worthy of the effort it takes to achieve it. Let me say that again. A goal is only worthy of the effort it takes to achieve it. And before every great breakthrough is a greater breakdown, because that's where most people quit. And the elite, those that tap into themselves, can only find who they truly are with challenges. But when we were when you're a little girl, Hannah, and you're growing up, and there were things that were out there, just learning to walk was a challenge, but we overcame it, and then we laughed more, we enjoyed it, we had more freedom. We then went to school, we had our exams. You took your exams, you were stressed about it, it was challenging, and then you achieve, then you can go on to college if you did. I never went to college, but then you go on to your job. Hopefully, you get a job that you love, or a mother that's never given birth before suddenly has to learn to be a mother, even though they've never been there, and everyone's giving them advice, they still want to be it themselves, but look at what ages we were thriving, and then I look at it, aging is the excessive pursuit of sedentary comfort. Aging is the pursuit of excessive pursuit of sedentary comfort. In other words, we don't want challenges anymore. We just want to relax, we want to sit on a nice sofa and watch TV. I'm tired. I don't want to, I don't want a challenge anymore because it's tiring. And yet our greatest happiness and successes haven't necessarily been achieving the goal, it's been the journey to that that we could learn from and feel that sense of accomplishment. So for me, the seven pillars of health, going through them all, ends with challenges, which is the last thing I teach. Because when everything else is in place, you're ready to take on much greater challenges because you're set up for success. But if you don't challenge, if you don't add stress, anyone that goes to the gym will know I lift weights because it stresses the muscle. When it stresses the muscle, the muscle gets stronger. We've got to have positive stress to keep our cells at a young age, to keep our body functioning far beyond the ridiculous age of 78 they say that we should live to. We should be living to 122. That's the way our cells are made up. But again, it's not always what are we going to do? It's what do we eliminate from our lives that opens up the things for us to do. So everyone honestly says the same thing. Why challenges? Why is that part of the pillars of health? But when you look at health, when we were the healthiest, that was a major ingredient.
SPEAKER_00:It goes back to the resilience thing that you were saying, that we need the challenges, we need the resistance to build the resilience. So that I love that. Thank you. Uh, we are running out of time. I don't always have a hard stop, so I'm so sorry, but I am gonna use this. I would love to have you back and talk about this Total Balance Company and a little bit more about that story with your mom and how you really worked on the mindset. And I and I know that there's so much there and there's so much wisdom. So maybe we'll do another podcast and dive into the exercise pillar and then the total balance company. I will link, of course, all of your websites down below. Um, before my last question, I would like you to let people know where they can continue to learn from you and where they can learn more of you. Um, and I know, and and feel free to take a couple minutes to talk about the the Total Balance Company since since I'm kind of dropping it and leaving. So feel free to take a couple minutes, and then I will, of course, link all of those down below where we can learn more.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you so much. It's been a great conversation, so I really appreciate you giving me the time as well to share. The um you can follow me at born superhuman.com. That's one word, bornsuperhuman.com, which is my website with the seven pillars of natural health. I have free giveaways on there for looking at your own health and how you can do it. It shouldn't cost us loads of money to get healthy, it should be free. And so um, you can also follow me the same on Instagram, bornsuperhuman.com, and then Dan Metcalf underscore official is where I share a lot of the things that I do as well. But Total Balance Company is a, and I'll keep this very short. If you know anybody that has balance issues, that has Parkinson's, that has MS, that has atuxia, stroke survivors, or athletes, ladies that want to have abs, thighs, and buns that are super firm, especially after giving birth, because we can train in 10 minutes, you know, while your baby's sleeping. I have an incredible program that I started again, trained over 70,000 people on this, from Olympic athletes to people over 100, because I focus on the brain-to-body connection. And if I can come back on, I'd love to. This is what with Andrew Huberman and and the you know research that I've done, it's life changing. People with good balance will live eight years longer proven than those that don't. And we know the longevity. Of life is not just about existing, it's about living. So I urge you go to totalbalancecompany.com. Again, totalbalancecompany.com and see the lives and people that we've changed, people that have been in wheelchairs, backwalking unaided. I work with incredible groups, massive groups with Parkinson's MS, because for me it's all about brain-to-body connection. Because if someone's losing their balance, we don't take them to a gym to help them learn to walk if we look at the system. Babies didn't go to the gym to learn to walk. It's all the proprioception. It's all the brain-to-body feeling, the sensory messaging going back, and then we get stronger. Why do we suddenly send people to the gym to strengthen their brain? It doesn't. And so if you have anybody that's interested in learning and understanding my books, I have Born Superhuman, the seven pillars of natural health on Amazon. But I have a book called Get Your Balance Back. It would take you through the whole process of brain to body, and it's life-changing. Falls are the number one cause leading to death for people over the age of 60. Take action, preventative, get fit, live the life because movement is everything.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, I would love to have you back on because I mean this is a whole podcast in itself, but I was checking out that website and and the videos that you've posted in the education, and it's fascinating. Our brain body connection. And I mean, we I know this, but it's just a completely different perspective. And we know this, but it's uh yeah, it's just different perspectives. So fascinating conversation topic um and and research and data that is that is shown from this this topic. So would love to have you back. Um, I will link all of that below. Last question is it is a more philosophical deep one. If you could come to the end of your life and have people remember one feeling, if you could have this one feeling that you share with everyone and help these this one feeling for people to feel, um, what would that feeling be?
SPEAKER_01:I love that question because it's so easy to answer. I want people to realize how amazing they are. If my mission in life has been achieved, it's because people can look at themselves and go, I was born superhuman, I can live superhuman, I am superhuman, I believe in myself, I love myself. And it's just yeah, it'll be that feeling that they can be and do anything they put their mind to and feel special about themselves.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you so much, Dan. This is such a fun conversation. I I truly value your time and appreciate your time.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you and love to everybody.