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
Rewiring Balance: Brain-First Mobility For Every Age | Dan Metcalfe | Total Balance Company
Eight more quality years of life from better balance sounds bold, but the data backs it up—and the stories bring it home. I sit down with Dan Metcalfe from Total Balance Company to unpack why mobility isn’t just about stronger quads or a tighter core. It starts in the brain. When fear slows reactions and frays the brain-to-body wiring, even simple movements feel risky. When safety signals are present, the cerebellum fires cleanly, confidence returns, and your whole system speeds up.
We dig into the myth of “muscle memory” and the truth of neuron memory, exploring how electrical impulses and proprioception govern every step, turn, and reach. Dan shares how a 79-year-old went from a careful shuffle to running six miles per hour in three weeks, and why handles on a gentle balance board mimic the way babies learn to walk—safe support that frees the brain to explore. Static tests recruit a handful of brain regions; dynamic balance lights up more than 18, turning errors into neuroplasticity and carryover gains you can feel in class, on stage, or at work.
This conversation spans athletes managing re-injury fear, young parents pressed for time, and seniors who want to thrive rather than tiptoe through their days. We talk foot training as the “control center,” why toes matter for quick direction changes, and how blind and deaf students improve coordination through a unified brain-body system. Dan’s stories—stroke recovery back to line dancing, an 80-something’s first ballet class, a return to pain-free walking—make the science practical and hopeful. If you want mobility that lasts, start with your brain. Prime it with 10 minutes of dynamic balance, build trust before load, and watch confidence spread to the rest of your life.
Connect with Dan and Total Balance Company at https://totalbalancecompany.com/
If this resonates, tap follow, share it with someone you love, and leave a quick review so more people can discover brain-first training that restores freedom to move.
Let's connect on social media! You can find me @ _journeytowell
Be sure to reach out and say hello 🤍
Book your Intro to Human Design Chart Reading here!
Ready to dive deep? Explore our signature 1:1 coaching experiences ALIGN or EMBODY here!
Craving guidance, expansion or growth? Let's connect.
https://journeytowell.net
Book your 1:1 virtual Soma+IQ™ Breathwork session or Human Design chart reading, learn more about my coaching packages & find Seacoast NH in person events - all on my website ⬆️
be well, my friend
xx Hannah
Hello, welcome back to the podcast. So I had Dan on a bit ago, Dan Medcalf, and I had such a fun and meaningful conversation with you, Dan, and we didn't even hit half of what we wanted to talk about. So we decided just to record a whole nother episode on Total Balance Company. And I am super excited to talk to you about health and balance and how we can continue to keep our neurons firing in our brain. And it's something that I know you have a really great grasp on, not only from a knowledge standpoint and a research standpoint, from but also from personal experience. So I am very excited to have you on the podcast. And thank you so much for joining us again.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, it's my pleasure. It was. We had a great chat the first time. And I'm I don't want to say more excited, but I'm as excited because what we're going to address today is life-changing. And when you talk about journey to well, this is real. This is not, you know, for some people, this is for everybody. So I will say if you have balance issues, and we're talking about mobility balance, if you know somebody that has, or you want to prevent what's labeled as, well, it just happens because we age, this podcast is for you because not only are we going to change your thought process, we would change the messaging into your brain that's actionable. And let's get started. I'm excited about this one.
SPEAKER_01:You stole my first question, which was, who is this podcast for? Because when I think, and even when I'm kind of looking at your website of Total Balance Company, and I think balance, we immediately my brain immediately goes to elderly and having balance issues, or uh even maybe doing like some really tough balance things when we're kids. Like, I well, maybe not when we're kids, when we're an adult, like closing your eyes and balancing on one foot or trying to like make yourself fall off balance. So, who specifically is this podcast episode for and why is it worth having this conversation?
SPEAKER_00:Let me tell you how important balance is so people understand, and then we'll say who it's for. They did a study of 1,300 women in Europe that they followed for 20 years. And these women were 60 years or older. Balance was the test, and they wanted to see how important is balance for mobility so that you can move and lose the fear. How important is it for life? This is what they discovered. Tracking these people, this is data. This is not someone coming up with some ideology to try and sell a product. It's nothing. This is not what we're here for. This is an education to say age is never the reason. Those women, over 1,300 women that they tracked, the ones that had good balance, the top 30% that had good balance, lived eight years longer. This isn't eight years in a hospital bed on a drip taking drugs. This is eight quality years. Now I don't know anything else in the world that we could look at on its own and say, just by having this, you will live eight quality years longer. That's memories. That's around your family, that's new experiences, that's making memories ahead of your age. And so this podcast is for everybody that is aging, everybody that has a partner, a family member, a grandparent that's aging, because we will decline in our balance unless we address it. Now, I'll also add to that the same system is used with Olympic world record holders. It's used with children with the genesis of the corpus callosum. It's used with athletes that are trying to increase their balance and mobility. It's used with people that don't have balance issues, but don't want to lose their balance because that's how critical movement is to life. But this is where it gets even more beautiful. I train an incredible group of Parkinson's, hundreds of Parkinson's fighters, MS, stroke survivors, TBIs, and anybody that's suffering from a neurological disease that is affecting their balance. So when we turn around and say, Well, Dan, you've got to be more specific, it can't do that for everybody. When you understand the system that I'm going to reveal now, it goes against what we've been taught, yet the results with myself training over 70,000 people, this is groundbreaking. We've got doctors jumping on it, we have physical therapists incorporating it. We have people that are saying this is a must-have if you want to retain your balance and reverse the effects of aging when it comes to movement.
SPEAKER_01:One thing that kept coming up to me today as I was preparing for this podcast was one thing that I have noticed entering into my third decade of life is I'm less interested in quick fixes and more interested in long-term foundational changes and things that I can implement into my life. And one thing that you said that really sparked that reminder was having those good years, having those healthy years, not just living longer, but actually having a solid quality of life, which that is something that I think about, I think now that I'm in my 30s, is like I want to not just survive to 80, 90 years old, whatever it is. I want to really thrive and what can I do to address that. And it seems like this conversation is going to address that. So I'm very curious to hear how balance can affect our quality of life. And I love that it's very applicable to so many age ranges. Um, especially, of course, you know, my audience is a little bit, tends to be a little bit younger. Um, so and athletes and how we can apply this to athletes as well as, I mean, we all have parents, we all have aunts, uncles, we all have people that are in our lives that are older. And that's really important to me as well, is to make sure that my parents are having healthy lives and my aunts and my uncles and my sister are having really quality years in their life on this beautiful earth. So, um, where would you like to start? I don't even know where to start, Dan. Where would you like to start?
SPEAKER_00:I love your honesty, and and you talk about being in your third decade of life, and it makes uh it sounds like it's an old thing. You look so young. And I'm like, I remember that long ago. So let's go to here. I'm gonna give everybody listening today an education to be able to explain it themselves. I'm not here to tell you what to think. I'm gonna let you understand this is scientific, it's factual, it's researched, it's proven, and the results have been phenomenal. We are changing the way that people now perceive aging and balance of mobility. So let me go back a little bit to how this even came about. There was a gentleman by the name of Bob Eubanks. Bob Eubanks was the, I think he was on the newlywed game for 50 years, TV celebrity, Rose Parade, hosted that, I think, for 38 years. The guy was brilliant. He was 79 years old, a business partner with me, and started falling. Well, I owned a sports performance training center in here in Los Angeles. It was all about movement for athletic performance. So when I saw him falling and not having that control of the body, I said, let me train you. So I did what any great trainer is going to do. We're going to strengthen your legs, strengthen your hip flexors, strengthen your core, you're going to balance better, you're going to walk better, you're going to have that confidence again. Within two minutes of training him, I knew I was 100% wrong. And this was where Bob opened my life up to help people by going back to the facts and not a supposition. When I tried to get Bob to move through these athlete ladders that I use with, you know, Olympians and professional athletes, he couldn't go through it. He couldn't lift his feet off the ground. And I said, okay, let's go put your hands on the wall. You put your hands on the wall, we'll lift the legs, let's work the hip flexors. As soon as his hands were on the wall, his legs could fire like pistons up and down. But as soon as he let go of the wall, he couldn't move his body properly. So I had to look at it and say, the problem is not the body, what's going on? So I started looking at the brain-to-body connection. Because when Bob felt confident, he was free to move. As soon as he didn't feel confident, it shut down. So I started going back and saying, How do babies learn to walk? How do we have it, the brain-body connection, and how does it truly work? And that's where in three weeks, at the age of 79, Bob Eubanks went from the senior shuffle, hunched over, fearful to wake up each day not knowing what was ahead, to running six miles an hour on a treadmill, in only three weeks running up and down stairs, back playing golf, back walking with his wife and dog round the um, you know, in the morning round the block, and doing everything. But the greatest change was he woke up excited for his years ahead. He suddenly lost the fear. So feel free to stop me at any point and question, because once I start going on on this, it's exciting. This is this is education.
SPEAKER_02:I can feel it.
SPEAKER_00:So I created this balanced training system which was brain to body. And I'm gonna say something right now because I want to get this out the way early. Have you ever heard of muscle memory? Yeah. And I was a head coach on the Olympic program. I've trained so many professional athletes and youth to pro and college. So, of course, I preached muscle memory.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:Until we went through this and realized there is no such thing as muscle memory. Now people go, oh, I did the same thing. When I first heard there's no such thing because I'm researching and researching with neuroscientists. Of course, there's muscle memory. That's how we get stronger in the gym, that's how we get better at moving. If you took a muscle out of someone's body and laid it on a slab, it's not gonna move, right? It's no longer functioning. But if you took electrodes and fed electricity in from one end to the other, the muscle, even though it's out the body, will still jump. We've seen it, we know it. So it got me thinking: if that happens, how can it be that we have muscle memory, yet the muscle can't move on its own, which means it can't have its own memory. So, with more research, I started looking. A muscle moves because of an electrical impulse that's fed to it. So our frontal cortex goes, hmm, I want to move. We then send the message to different areas in the brain, but the cerebellum that then says I want to move, it fires the neurons to the motor cortex that sends the message to the muscle, and the muscle moves. So, how does it move? It moves because it has an electrical impulse from the neurons. So we don't have muscle memory, we have neuron memory. Muscle repetition would give us strength, the ability to do the same thing again and again, stamina and endurance. But anytime someone begins to lose their balance or mobility, it's because there's a disconnect from the brain to the body to send that neuron memory to the muscle and activate. And that will lessen just because we're not moving. It's like I call it frayed wiring. So I created this system that reconnects the brain to the body, messaging out to the proprioception. That's how we feel what's happening. But so importantly, the sensory messaging going back from our feet or whatever body part we're touching the walls to our brain so quickly that the brain then figures out what's happening before we're even conscious of it. And this has happened our whole life until we begin to lose our balance or feel that we're losing our balance because of a neurological decline.
SPEAKER_01:And can you dive a little bit into the fear aspect of this whole conversation? Because you brought up a good point with Bob of you know, being afraid of falling. And I know that that certainly comes up with athletes as well, having a fear of re-injury. That is very real in my life. I've shared very openly about my back stuff, my lower back stuff, and having a lot of fear around re-entering the gym and then possibly re-injuring. So, does that have anything to do with neuron firing? Or obviously there's a mental component, but yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so I can go into you're asking all the right questions to keep me excited because this is what I spent a long time researching and then figuring out what I created includes all this stuff that people are telling. When we look at fear, fear is governed by brain reaction. So we we feel that fear, and we've heard about the freeze or fight or flight or fawn, right? There's all these different things that we go to. When we've had an injury or we've had an accident, and this was discovered back at Bristol University back in England about 10 years ago, there's a part of the cerebellum, which is our movement center, control center that attaches to other parts of the brain, that there's a piece of it called the pyramids. It's towards the center of the cerebellum. The pyramid is a memory on movement. So if I said to you, Hannah, walk to the edge of the curb, the sidewalk, as fast as you can, stop, look and see if there's cars coming, and then keep crossing. You'd do that with confidence. There's no danger, it's maybe a five-inch drop. I feel good. But if I said to you, Hannah, walk at the same speed to the edge of a 200-foot cliff drop, you wouldn't walk at the same speed, even though the point of stopping is exactly the same. It's the edge. The perception of danger causes the brain to say, slow down. And the brain won't react as quickly when there's fear involved, because it's either going to make you move slower, or when something happens, the brain goes, okay, we need to figure it out. We've got to go down, and by that time you've fallen. So when you have the pyramids that's will then send the messages to the pack, PAG, that goes in and says, This is danger. We will not function and move at the full speed because the brain is only created to keep us alive. That's its purpose. Keep us safe so we can stay alive. Our mindset changes how the brain's going to operate, not the brain itself, because the brain would love for you to sit down and do nothing all day because it knows that you're going to be safe. Now, the way to remove fear is to address it in a way that the brain now trusts the journey ahead. Let me say that again. We have to remove the fear so the brain will give the freedom to allow us to have the full movement or fear, fearlessness. Is that even a word? For the journey ahead. And so until we understand why we're being slowed down, and most of us aren't even cognitive of the fear that we have, like how it's affecting us, we have to change the brain's function and then the body will flow.
SPEAKER_01:This is so interesting to me. So then, of course, the next question is how do we begin to change that fear response into a fearlessness response? Yeah, that's the question.
SPEAKER_00:So it's actually much easier than we uh would believe, but we have to be willing to go through the steps. So let me explain it this way your back injury, and you've tried so many things to remove the pain and the fear of more pain or limitations. And I've seen the pictures and videos of you out on the retreat, you're moving great. But in the back of your mind, there's still that fear that goes on. We have to put ourselves in a safe space of trust for the brain to let go. So we've got to start taking small steps to test how far we can go and trust the body that it can handle the small steps. And when we begin to feel a very slight tweak, we stop because we're protecting. We don't have that, you know, no pain, no gain is when you're healthy, not when you're injured. No pain, no gain is not when you're living in fear. What we need to do is create the movements that challenges the body to strengthen without causing more injury. Because once we do it again and do it again and do it again, we will stop doing it because we don't trust what will happen. So, for example, your back injury. You say, Okay, I want to strengthen my lower back. What exercises would be good to start feeling? So it may just be something like laying face down on your bed and just lifting your shoulders off of the bed. And you feel the muscles, the spinal erectus going up the spine, and go, you know what, that feels okay. If I feel a twinge, we'll stop, we'll go backwards, we'll find it, may just be leaning forward against the chair and standing up until I can begin to feel the activation of the muscles without the engagement of either for people that may have you know bulging discs or something like that. What can I do that doesn't create and the brain goes, I'm okay at this point. Now we've done more and proven to ourselves that that much is okay. Then you wait a day, see if there's a secondary reaction off of the movement. Second day is good, I'll try it again. It's good. I don't need to take a third day off. I'm now gonna turn around and go, I'm gonna try a new movement. Oh, there's no pain when I'm doing that. Okay, let's do this repetitively for 20 times, 30 times. Then you begin to feel a little bit of a twinge. Okay, I did 30, it was too much. I'll take a day off, I'll come back and do 20. I know 20 is the safe number. Then I'll try 21. And what happens, the brain goes, hang on a minute, I can do this. And the area that's moving or being challenged, then turns around and goes, I'm getting stronger because I'm moving instead of avoiding. And I will say on my balance training system, I've had numerous people with scoliosis that couldn't work out, been to chiropractor, tried physical therapy, tried gym workouts with trainers, and have given up. But when we put them on the board and I teach how to lift off of your spine, not only were they becoming pain-free, their scoliosis began to straighten up. It began to go back to normal because when you're trying to balance, when you're trying to move, the brain isn't thinking, where's my spine? The brain's thinking, how do I find my balance? So it was naturally getting the spine to realign because we had to be realigned to balance. The brain was bypassing the spine, and yet it was adapting the spine because the pressure points in our feet were revealing the balance or the lack of balance, and how do I correct it? So it's fascinating. If I go into balance and explain it, because this one I can go into perfectly. That's actually a little arrogant to say I can go into it perfectly, perfectionist in opinion. But you know when you say something and then you turn around and go, hang on a minute, did I just say that? But that's the confidence.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, retract that.
SPEAKER_00:No, I'm gonna say it because I believe it'll be great. But I've trained so many people, I've seen the results. Someone that's fearful of falling isn't gonna want to step on a balance board. And the balance board I have is very gentle, but when you're scared of the ground, you're not gonna get on a balance board.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_00:So what I did, and this was from working with Bob and creating this system never to sell. This was only created to help Bob off of the education I was learning and the practice and training that we were doing. I put handles in the poles and poles in the board so that when you get on the board, you can hold on with your arms. Now, this is really important. Well, why wouldn't you hold a chair? The chair doesn't rock with you, the chair becomes your grounding. So when you hold on to the chair, that's what's grounding you that you can lean on. It's not your feet. But when you stand on a balance board that's completely safe, it's gonna support you. And people are always scared getting on it. Within two minutes, three minutes, they're like, Oh, they're playing on it. They go, I was scared of the ground, now I'm playing on a board because we put the handles in. Now the handles are the critical piece. If you didn't have those handles, the brain would go, hang on a minute, I'm in trouble. I want to get off of this board. It would try and get you free. You're gonna live in that fear moment and getting on, you live in the fear moment. But as soon as you hold the handles and feel the gentle rock, the brain goes, I'm safe. And once you're safe, the brain goes, Okay, now we can play. Now I'm not gonna slow down out of fear the movement, and you'll find people incredibly quickly start doing things that they wouldn't even do on the hard ground, let alone on a board. And I have over 300 exercises on the board to challenge going back to how does a baby learn to walk? If we've done it before, we can do it again as long as the brain is functioning because we have neuron memory. And then I challenge every part of your body from your core through your hips, through your quads, your hamstrings, your glutes, your knee joint to have the muscles able to support all the way down to the feet. And when you can touch on every part of the foot, the inside, the outside, the toes, the heels, the brain goes, I am so much better than I was led to believe. Because the brain doesn't know the difference between reality and fiction. I'll say that again. The brain doesn't know the difference between reality and fiction. And people, of course they do. Well, let me ask you this, Hannah. Have you ever had a dream that was so real you woke up in the morning in a different state?
SPEAKER_01:Yes, I don't like those.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, and have you ever had those where your body temperatures are up, or you're sweating, or you're feeling um a fear or an excitement? You think you're going on vacation and you have to look around and you have to tell yourself, hang on a minute, it was a dream.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Everyone listening has experienced that. How did our body react as if it was real, if the brain knew that it was just a dream? And we had to bring ourselves back to reality by saying it was a dream, we may still feel it, and then we think, and then we bring ourselves back down to a state of reality. Well, it's the same when you're working on a fear-based um restriction. Whether it's your back, whether and again, it's gotta be smart. It can't be, oh, it's not real. No, what you went through is real. The pyramids is telling you in your brain, this is real. The amygdala is telling you this is real until we get to the point where we can prove to the brain the fear was momentary and it doesn't govern our future. And that's where I turn around and say we've been misled over years and years of it's just because of aging. It's just well, you had an accident, that's just the way it is. Your back will always be bad and we can't fix it. Or if you move, it's gonna get worse. For those that didn't hear the first podcast, I was paralyzed. They told me that I would be disabled for life. If I listened, I would still be disabled today. But I knew there was more to me. I had a major brain injury where I was knocked unconscious, part of my brain died. I had to learn to talk and learn to function, which was a gift. It was incredible because it allowed me to go and study the brain for my own health, and that's where I was able to create this brain-to-body reconnection. Otherwise, I wouldn't be where I am today. I wouldn't be sitting here talking with you and sharing invaluable time with your listeners if I wasn't where I was today. Having gone through what I went through, which was a gift. So when we look at the brain power, it's incredible what we can achieve. So when you put your mind to it, you can do anything. We've heard that all the time. And then we're told, but this is going to happen to you. Well, if we really believe that, then putting our mind to it doesn't mean it means we're governed by time, not governed by mindset. My dad went to the doctor not too long ago and he said, Uh, doctor, my right leg's hurting. You know, what's going on? He goes, Well, Malcolm, you're just getting old. And he says, Doctor, my left leg's the same age. How come that one's not hurting? I love that answer.
SPEAKER_01:That's good.
SPEAKER_00:Because how come there's a 90-year-old running a marathon and there's a 65-year-old that can't stand up and walk confidently?
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So it's again, we go ahead and ask any questions for clarification because again, your audience in your age range do have uncles, aunts, grandparents, parents that are gonna go through this. But this is what's beautiful. Especially, we're really focusing right now on mothers that just gave birth or mothers that are about to give birth. We all know getting the body back is hard after birth. What women go through is incredible, right? What their body goes through. We found by balanced training and isolation, which we do on the board, we're able to get an incredible effect on abs, thighs, and buns that they can do in 10 minutes a day while their baby's sleeping. They don't have to leave the home. And the effects results uh off the charts because we're now engaging the brain to control the muscle rather than just going in and thoughtlessly working out. And so we can get more dynamic tension, more body sculpting, more strength and shaping by engaging the brain in specific exercises with resistance than just going out and moving freely.
SPEAKER_01:I have I have a few things. One thing that you were explaining there's the pole and the handles and the in the board and connecting that research that you've done with babies learning to walk. You've probably already made this connection and said this, but for the listeners, it makes me think of when we're teaching a baby to walk, we hold their hands. And I've spent a lot of times with a lot of times with babies, even though I don't have any kids yet. But um even just putting your hand out without them grabbing it, it gives them that confidence that they can do it. And in the beginning, you're holding their their little hand and backing up so they can walk forward. And that really reminded me of the board that you're talking about and having that stability signal to the brain that you are safe, that you have something to hold on to, and then you're able to do all of these exercises, whereas, you know, otherwise when we're trying To do things without having any stability, we can feel balance balance things. I mean, we can feel very off-kilt, or and I can even feel that way too, or you know, closing your eyes and trying to do these balance exercises. It's so much harder because you don't have that proprioception and you don't have that sense of safety of the signals to your brain. So I wanted to just kind of share that little insight. If you have kids or you've seen babies, that sounds just so similar to me, and I love that. And I love anything, I actually found a similar program that talked about reconnecting to how do babies strengthen their muscles, how do babies learn to move and going back to when we were children and and using that innate knowledge because babies just do it, right? They're not told, like, hold my hand and you'll be able to walk. They're just so they have all of this innate wisdom within their body already. And I love anything to do with that, that wisdom and that knowledge with babies. Um, I'll let you respond to that before I move on. If you have anything, you don't have to.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, absolutely. So if muscles were the reason that we can walk and you know have balance and mobility, we would take babies to the gym. What's happening when they're trying to stand up? Look, when they first roll over, they're engaging that proprioception of different body parts feeling the ground and the brain is connecting to the body. So when a baby's born, and and okay, let's go back into this even more. Sitting there, Hannah, and everyone listening as an adult has roughly 86 billion brain cells. When a baby is born, do you know how many brain cells a baby has when they're born?
SPEAKER_01:More, I would assume, but no idea.
SPEAKER_00:About 86 billion brain cells. So we don't have more than babies have. We think because their head is smaller, that they would have less. What they don't have is the synapse, the messaging of how those brain cells, those neurons are gonna basically wire. We talk about hardwiring the brain, how they're gonna think. So that's why babies will repeat, they'll see, they'll follow, they'll see someone walking, they're gonna try and stand up and walk. Because the brain is figuring out where do I need to go to increase my quality of life or my safety in life. Now you can say, well, hang on, a baby doesn't feel safe because if it falls over, wouldn't the brain the brain isn't developed yet. But it's copying, repeating, hearing, responding, tasting, smelling, all these are coming around. And when you talk about balance with your eyes closed, the eyes bring a spatial awareness that works with the vestibular system, which your eyes, your ears, all the other areas. But when you remove them, it doesn't mean you say you should be less balanced. It means that you're going to focus more on the sensory and the cerebellum. And so you're 100% right looking at how babies learn to walk and or how they learn to stand. It's trial and error, trial and error. But once we hardwire the brain to feel it, we don't have to go back and do it again until we begin to lose it. And losing it comes from not exercising, not moving. So if you think back to your life and everyone listening, we were probably most active physically between the ages of 11 and 20. Between zero and 10, we were learning, we're getting up, we're exploring, but we weren't constantly in motion. Then we go to school, middle school, high school, and college, and we're active. We're either walking to classes or we're part of sports or we're continuing the dance classes we had until we run out of the of the passion. Between 20 and 30 is the first time we begin to decline the amount of movement we've done. Because now we're behind desk a little bit more, we're studying a little bit more, we find a job that we're not staying as active in. And of course, there's always, I'm talking generally.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:We we maybe we're standing behind a counter serving, we may be a waitress or a waiter or something, but we're not engaging in multi-different directional movement.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And so what happens is the brain goes, I'm not now engaged in jumping side to side. And so I'm not going to have that response to balance compared to when I was flying everywhere. Then between 30 and 40, we begin to take a major drop normally between 20 and 30. But I believe we have a 10-year payoff. So if we've moved a lot between 11 and 20, we'll have a really good time between 21 and 30 because we've held on to that memory and we're still young and we're still active and we're still developing. The brain stops growth really around 26, 27, is when we begin get more set. So then, if we didn't move much between 20 and 30, we're going to struggle from 30 to 40, and you see it, the less active people, by the time they hit 35, they're not moving like they used to, but they're only 35. So if you then don't move between much 20 and 30, and 30 to 40, you're decline. By the time you get 40 and 50, you're on a downward slope. And you'll see we tend to be aging. We got two extremes. Those that are super fit. And I will say, back in the probably 80s, 90s, with the whole aerobics movement, people were actually fitter longer. Now we spend more time on screen, sitting down, driving, not exercising. And what we're doing is we're getting the brain to think linear. We tend to walk one path. We get up, we do the same thing every day. We walk forward, we sit down. We don't jump side to side, we're not twisting and turning and dancing as much as we were. So the brain is shrinking in its ability to feel and react quickly because we're not using it. In the old adage, if we don't use it, we lose it. And so because we're not as active, we will age faster, not in looks, not in skin and all the other stuff because we've got so much knowledge, because truthfully, it makes money. So we're going to keep developing it and we're going to push it, and people will be able to look more healthy, but they won't move more healthy. And we know movement is critical to brain function, muscle strengthening, osteoporosis, all the things that begin to help the aging process speed up, and yet at the base of it all is movement. I don't know if that answered your question because I love going off on these processes that flow, but it's understanding take care of yourself today. Invest in your future today, because most people won't, and there's three three basic um progressions. One, I'm doing great. I don't have a balance issue, I don't have a mobility issue, and you don't even think about it. You're walking down the street on a cell phone, looking in a shop window, going, I like that purse. While you're talking to someone, while an ambulance is going by with a siren, somebody's arguing with their spouse and a dog's chasing a cat. We never think of our balance.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And then suddenly we wake up one day and go, oh, I feel a little off balance. Oh, it will correct itself. We don't pay attention to the warning signs. That's really the first step. There's a warning sign. And we ignore it, but basically the brain's saying, I need to move more. Take action. The second step is now I've got a problem. I'm fearful, I don't know where to go. I'll go to a physical therapist, and there's great physical therapists out there, and you know, occupational therapy and all this stuff that I went through for my paralysis to come back. However, they'll train your body, they don't train your brain. And that's where the disconnect's happening. So you go there, you get bored, you don't feel like you're getting better. And so you kind of like just resign, I'm just getting older. And then the next step, which is the most critical, you've tried things, it's not working, or you haven't tried anything, and now you know you need to, but you've gone past the point of no return. I personally don't agree with that. If you can stand up, or if your muscles work, I've taken people that are 90-year-olds in in wheelchairs that haven't walked in five years and they're back walking unaided. People a hundred years old getting up out of chairs and moving again. But we now get to the point where we resign ourselves to the end, the decline. I can't get better. And that is a mindset falsehood that's been fed to us by society. And the testing that we have for brain body connection, the testing that we have for balance, full risk, in my opinion, is insufficient to what it should be. And I'll explain this to you and then any other questions, jump in. When we balance on one foot, that becomes static balance. We have dynamic balance and we have static balance. Dynamic balance is balanced while you're moving. Static balance is can I stand balanced without moving? When we do static balance, for example, stand on one leg, hold it for 10 seconds, okay, you're not a full risk. We're only using three parts of the brain. You have the cerebellum, well, first of all, it's the frontal lobe, prefrontal cortex, that's going, don't move. So it sends a message to the cerebellum going, don't move, which then sends a message to the corpus callosum, which is the area that combines the left and right hemisphere of our brain and says, don't move. So we're training ourselves not to move, and we're only engaging those three parts because if all three activate, we will stand there. But if you turn around and go, instead of standing on one leg, move as if you're a tree. Stand on one leg and move that leg like we used to as kids. We're a tree in the wind and we're waving our arms everywhere and going. Now over 18 parts of the brain begin to wake up and go, okay, I'm there's a danger. I'm a little bit off. It's not dangerous. I can sort this out because I don't have a fear of falling. So now you're doing it, and then if you're going off, you put your foot down, go, can I do it more? Can I last longer? We're playing and the brain's engaged in the play. But what we're really doing is we're engaging every part of our body to regain balance. And if anybody's been on a tightrope walk and you're on the trying to balance and you're moving your arms and you're doing and the rope's going underneath your feet, we're we're enjoying it, the brain is so engaged, and that creates neuroplasticity. This is what's fascinating. The brain can only improve or grow or have neurogenesis going on when it's challenged, but neuroplasticity itself is created from errors. The brain will not create neuroplasticity unless it's making errors. Very easy to explain. Because the brain is made to keep us alive and safe. When we make a mistake, the brain goes, I need okay, what do I need to learn? Well, there's something that's going on, I need to, and it begins to open up different areas of the brain. If it's I'm taking a test, I got it wrong, it will open up a part of your brain, maybe the hippocampus that has your memory in, or we're going to give new information, and other parts that are going to be activated if you're reading the occipital lobe and different areas. But when we're balance issues, when we train our balance, the brain is trying to figure out what is the solution. And every single part of the brain will now wake up in case it's the solution and proven. I've done the testing, we've done brain scans going on while people are on my balance training system. Within about 10 minutes of the start of the program, you see it begin to rise, the neuroplasticity begins to rise, the involvement of different parts of the brain grows. By the time you get to 10 minutes, your brain is fully alive in all areas. We'll then continue for about another 20 minutes, do a 30-minute workout, and after 30 minutes, you can get off that board, continue the everyday activities, and that same neuroplasticity will stay around at that level for at least 40 minutes after. So it's incredible. If you do balance training before you go into class to learn, if you go in and do some balance training before you take a test, if you do balance training before you do a presentation, your brain wakes up and will find the memories of the past because it's trying to figure out where's the solution. And absolutely unbelievable how because the brain is making errors, trying to figure out how to balance, we create the most neuroplasticity. And this comes from Andrew Huberman. I don't know if you've ever heard of Andrew Huberman, the neuroscientist. Go look at what he talks about, the brain making errors. I'm looking to go and meet him very soon and take the board up and so he can see it. Because he said that you know there's nothing out there that does the complete system that he's found yet. We have it. And we've done the testing to prove it. And I'm so excited. And this is maybe a thing before we transition out of here, Hannah. And I'm again I'm talking so much because I get so excited because it changes lives, it brings life back to people. Talk about journey to well. When you're in decline, increasing your movement, getting out in the sun, wanting to hydrate because you've got an adventure ahead, all these things that we talk about get fed by the ability to move and the desire now to trust that you can go and do it. But when someone's been on the board and they've worked out for maybe five minutes, ten minutes, and I tell them step back on the ground, they go, Oh my God, the ground feels so safe. I'm like, hang on a minute. Five minutes ago, you were fearful of that ground. They go, No, I so they suddenly have that proprioception, the spatial awareness, the confidence that if I can do that on the board, the ground, I'm back in control. And it's just the mind shift change where we change the brain's reality of falseness, of I can't do this to belief. And the brain goes, Oh, I'm good. And then we start the journey to the best years ahead.
SPEAKER_01:I love how everything is so connected because one of the things that I always share is going through the difficult moments kind of gives us that perspective of how beautiful the mundane moments were in our lives. And I always use this really silly, simple example of when I moved to the city and I didn't have a parking spot, and I had to loop around the block 20 times to find a parking spot, and I got so many parking tickets until I finally paid for a parking spot, spent$200 a month just to park. And now there's not a day goes by that I'm not backing into my driveway or backing into a parking spot at dinner where I am not thankful for that parking spot. And you're just giving me this beautiful, kind of holistic, full perspective on a body level of the same thing. When we do something that is challenging or we put our bodies through something that's challenging them, that what we kind of think about what we have to do all the time, walking on regular ground, that we either are afraid of or not, because we've talked about it's really beneficial to both. Um that then we have that newfound appreciation of just walking on the ground and having that. I love that. That warmed my heart when you said that, of having that feeling of stability, like that the ground feels so safe, safe because I can't imagine what that feels like. I can imagine in many other ways again with my back, but what that feels like of walking on the ground and feeling unsafe to walk on the ground. And you are gifting these people this beautiful, uh, this beautiful gift of feeling safe and feeling stable, which just makes me want to tear up. I am so curious. You said this probably 20 minutes ago, but I have to loop back to your feet. Like I need to know, I get the dynamic movement piece, but you said something about using all areas of your feet, and I understand that, right? So when we're doing these, I can logically understand when we're doing these things, we have to use all areas of our feet. Can you talk about that though?
SPEAKER_00:Yes, so again, I was very fortunate to go from you know professional soccer clubs back in England, having trained with the Royal Marine cadets for eight years, thinking I'm gonna go into the special forces, and I'm suddenly a dancer. It's a it's a fun story where you know the aerobics teacher that I was studying with because I had to get more supple because I'd never really stretched, and I want to go mountain climbing with the special forces and stuff. She said you should become a dancer. I'm like, a dancer? What do you mean a dancer? I'm a man's man. You know, in those days it was very effeminate to be a dancer. So she dared me and I thought I'll go and I'll have an experience, I'll go laugh, go to dance audition. When I go up to lose, I'll be in the Marines in two weeks' time. They offered me a full scholarship to start in two weeks' time. And I was like, this is incredible. So had to go back and tell my dad, I'm not going to go into the military. He came from a military background, and I'm going to become a dancer. And that was that was a pretty tough thing because I always knew if it didn't work out, I could go to the Marines a year later. I was super fit and strong. And the reality is, I think I got accepted because I was very masculine rather than the fact I was a great dancer. But I worked really hard. Next thing I know, I'm in ballet class, jazz, tap, modern, you know, national dances, all these different things before I found out I could, you know, sing and act, and then ended up going on to play the lead in Andrew Lloyd Webber shows. If I hadn't have gone through that, and this is why I say everything that happens to us is a gift if we wrap it correctly. I didn't know that I would need all that knowledge that I learned many years ago to now help people recover. Proprioception comes in three forms. It's either muscles, joints, or skin. And if I explain it to anybody that doesn't understand proprioception, if there's a hot cup and you reach out and you grab it, you will let go before you're consciously aware of the burn itself. The burn comes second. That's proprioception, the messaging from your skin to your brain going, danger, the red alarm goes off. We let go, and we're not even conscious we've let go. We drop it on the ground, then we're like, oh, I made a mess. I wish I could have put it back. No. Or you wake up in the morning, you've got a bad back, and you roll it, you go, Oh, so you haven't even hardly moved yet, but it's sending a message to the brain saying there's an issue here. Or we have it where we have the um muscles where you've worked out really hard the day before and you wake up and go, oh, I'm so sore. This is a form of proprioception, it's messaging of what's happening in the body back to the brain. And then the brain will adjust or it will send a message to us and go, Oh, I can't move, I can't stretch like that today because it's too painful or danger. The feet are obviously the center of our balance and mobility for movement itself. And so it's critical that within the pressure points on our feet, every pressure point is a proprioception receptor that then has to send the message back to our brain so quickly that we don't think about the body has already made the adjustment or the brain has already made the adjustment for balance. If we walk straight, and you'd all feel this, we only feel the middle of our foot. But as soon as we step on a rock and the and the foot goes slightly to the side, or there's a wobble in the sidewalk or the paving stone, suddenly the outside becomes aware, or we're aware. Oh, on the outside the foot, or we're beginning to trip, we now feel different parts of the feet reacting. Now, this is why I love foot training. You can't send a message from the brain to the feet without passing through every other part of your body. Now, we'll say you don't have to send it to your hands, but if I want to send it to my feet, it's going to go down through the motor cortex, down through our neck, down through our spine. It's messaging all the way through our hips, down our legs, knees, you know, obviously calves, ankles to the different parts of the feet, and the toes are the furthest extremity, which is why you'll find a lot of seniors will fall when they begin to turn direction because we no longer have that proprioception in the little toe, or they'll begin to lean and the messaging is slowed down because we're not using it. The board that I personally use, and look, it's not about my board. This wasn't created to sell. This was created to give people the best option and opportunity to get the best results as quick as they can. If you're moving and you're doing great, keep moving. You don't have to have anything extra, just don't stop what you're doing because as you slow down, that would disappear as well. But when you train your feet, the speed of messaging will keep you safe. Balance training, and this is a critical point, balance training is not how far can I go and then come back. If you want that, use a bosu ball because that's extreme. I've seen athletes twist their ankle on a bosu ball because it's hard to get on and get off the board, and it's limited to foot, you know, you're either two feet even or one foot center. On our board, we can have multiple, we've got so many different foot positions to replicate real life and the strength we need and the responsiveness. But if you can get to the point where you can train those feet to be strong, go up on your toes. Um, I actually have a red ball as well involved, uh a soft ball involved on the board, that's actually for foot mobility, foot suppleness, suppleness is critical, making sure that each toe is working independently and has strength as well. You'll you'll see they'll talk about people that you know lose their toes or lost some toes and they've lost their balance because they're used to engaging it. Well, now we have to train that foot to react on the main part of the foot if the toes are gone, and we can do that if we do the right training. And I go through this, just came to me. I got this testimonial came through that shocked me. Because I when I created this, it was just for Bob and people that are losing their balance. I didn't know how dynamic it would be for anyone with a brain and a goal. If I want to move bad, I can go. But I received this testimonial through, never ever paid for a testimonial because if it's not true, why say it? And if you have to pay, you don't know if it's true. This gentleman goes, Thank you so much, Dan, for creating this balanced training system. I'm a teacher, a physical ed teacher at a blind school. I'm it's mandatory for all our students to get on the boards at least once a day, and we've noticed everyone's moving better since getting on it.
unknown:Wow.
SPEAKER_00:Now, who would have thought that when you're blind, because people say, well, balance comes from your eyes? Well, if that was the case, how do blind people walk so well and in more control often than we are? And they go, Well, it comes from the vestibular system, it's all through the years. Well, if that was the case, how could deaf people walk so well? It's one big system, but when you lose a part, you can replace it because your body is a miracle, your body is incredible. And if you want to become a better athlete, if you want to become a better dancer, prima ballerina, if you want to go out and have more fun, if you want to adventure, if you want to take part in triathlons or anything you want to do, adventure races, take care of your brain-to-body connection as the foundation of all movement, and the world will become what everything you want it to be for your athletic and health and wellness.
SPEAKER_01:What a fun conversation, Dan. I love chatting with you and I love your education that you have provided us today. You know that I love learning the science behind things. It's not just do this thing or I read about this one time. Clearly, you're very, very passionate about this, and I can see why, and it makes me light up as well. Um, where can people stay connected with you? I will also use this. We should have said this in the beginning. If you haven't already listened to our other podcast with Dan, um scroll down a little bit on my podcast because that podcast was absolutely incredible as well and completely different. We didn't even talk about Total Balance Company at all, I don't think. Um, so go listen to that podcast. But otherwise, how can people stay connected with you?
SPEAKER_00:Thank you. Well, can I finish with one story?
SPEAKER_01:Please.
SPEAKER_00:My mom's a doctor. She was 79 years old and had had a stroke. I didn't know. I live in Los Angeles, she lives back in England. Mothers don't tell their kids when they're not doing well, it's just that protection you don't want you to worry. So I went back for my mother's 80th birthday, and I walk in. She takes me and my brother and sisters into a room and she says, You know, Dan, everyone, I had a stroke a year ago. I said, Mom, you're doing great. I hadn't seen her in four years, so I knew that she was moving a little slower. She had a little tightness in her face, but not bad. And I just put it down to aging. That was my irresponsibility. I said, Mom, I would never have known you're doing great. I can see. She goes, No, I said, Well, it's the hardest thing. What do you miss? Well, she grew up in World War II. She wanted to be a dancer. My sister became a professional ballet dancer. I was a dancer and went on to, you know, theater, musical theatre and stuff. But she always wanted to dance. She had two regrets in life. One, that she had never done a ballet class, and two, she had never ever ridden a bike. She was kind of like the Cinderella of the family looking after everybody. And um, she had a brother who had cerebral palsy, and you know, she dedicated her life, and that's why she's still a doctor. She's still, at her beautiful age, still working five, six days a week helping people as a doctor. So I said, What's the hardest thing? She goes, Down, I can no longer line dance. She goes, That's my only relief from the stress. She works with a lot of suicide potential victims, and she's taking on a lot of weight. I used to love line dancing. I said, When did you last go? She goes, It's been a year since I've gone. I tried to go back, but my body won't move quick enough to get out the way or to be in line with everyone. So either they're a risk knocking me over, and remember, she was 80 years old now, or she could injure them if they tripped over her. I came back to America, hadn't even released this as a product. This was never made to sell, like I said. This was purely made to help Bob Eubanks. And then Mark de Cuscos, if anybody knows Mark, he played the lead in John Wick 3. He's on uh the iron uh chef, he's the guy that goes a la cuisine, he's on Hawaii. He saw what happened and asked him to help his mother-in-law who had scoliosis and you know hadn't walked in a year and was back within two weeks walking four miles twice a week with her friends again. So anyway, I came back, made another board out of wood, sent it to my mother. Five days later, she went back to line dancing. Here was this lady who had given me life, and now she had lost her freedom in life to do what she loved. And in five days of using the system, she went back to line dancing. But this is where it gets better. At 84, five years after her stroke, she came out to visit me in California. She did her very first ballet class. And I'm not talking about a geriatric ballet class where you know you're helping her on the bar. She'd watched it her whole life. The turning point was Shirley McLean. I trained Shirley McLean for balance for a movie and stuff, which was beautiful. My mum is standing there in her leotard, in full ballet, you know, shoes and everything, doing all her bar work, going in the center, doing all her center work. And later that week, she rode a bike. For the first time in her life. How amazing when we turn around and say it's age, it's not. It's information, it's desire, it's willingness, it's having something that you live for to want to get up and make the best memories forward. So, with that, if people would like to stay in contact with me, which I'd love you to, and I try and respond to every message that comes in, you can go to TotalBalanceCompany.com and learn about the program. You can go to born superhuman.com, which was our first podcast, which is an incredible program. You can also get both on social media, Born Superhuman on Instagram and Total Balance Company on Instagram, and both of them on Facebook. And then Dan Metcalf underscore official on Instagram. And it's an honor. I so appreciate you in here, Hannah, letting me come on because it's a different type of podcast, it's a different conversation. But I didn't create this to sell. I created this to help people, and it's helped tens of thousands of people. And that's why I'm so passionate about it. Because if we can change one life to believe in themselves again, to see a better future, to live the dreams they thought they would never achieve, or do something again they never thought they'd do again. That is the essence of life. And it keeps people alive and believing that it's worth being here to share with their families, their loved ones, and their friends.
SPEAKER_01:And that's something that, especially with all of this back stuff, I can say has been life-changing for me to meet people like you, and that have that refusal to believe that we just stop moving when we get older, or we just stop moving when we get injured. And I refuse to believe that. Because there's truly nothing that you can't do. And I love born superhuman, of course, it's in your background, but I I love the that core belief of being superhuman and our bodies being miracles because it's true. And sometimes we just need to be reminded of that. So thank you, thank you, thank you for this conversation. It was an honor to have you on again.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you. We can do anything. Anyone listening, put your mind to it. Everything's possible, but the magic we seek is in the work we avoid. You know you should do it if you're willing to do it. You will achieve things that will make you so proud and will stay with you till your last breath.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you, Dan.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you.