Falling is the #1 cause of fatal injury for people over 65—but what if everything you’ve been told about balance and aging is wrong? It’s a terrifying reality for the aging community: you are told falling is “just part of getting older”. But according to Dan Metcalfe, Founder of Total Balance Mobility, decline is not inevitable. In this groundbreaking discussion, Metcalfe challenges conventional wisdom (like just strengthening legs and core) and introduces a revolutionary approach focused on the brain-body connection and neuron memory. Discover how he helped people like Bob Eubanks go from shuffling in fear to running six miles an hour on a treadmill in just three weeks. Stop fearing the next step and start falling into a new way of thinking about balance, movement, and a longer, better life.
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Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
Falling Into A New Way of Thinking With Dan Metcalfe
Falling, a very important topic. One of the major concerns physically for those of us over the age of 50 is falling. We have, as a returning guest, Dan Metcalfe, who is the Founder of a company called The Total Balance Company. He’s passionate about this subject, and I know personally people from the past who have fallen and ended up passing away as a result of falling.
Also, there are people who are otherwise healthy and fall and get an infection, and due to the infection, pass away. There are so many topics regarding falling that are important to all of us. I myself have fallen a few times in the past several years, and in 2025, my husband Charlie, took a fall, so we are so excited to have Dan back to talk about this relevant subject. Great to see you again, Dan. Welcome to the show.
Falls Are The Number One Cause Leading To Death
Thank you so much. Yeah, it’s great to be here, and it is such a dynamic topic because falls are the number one cause leading to death in the aging community, and it’s really been ignored because it’s just accepted. We’re told, “Well, it’s just going to happen, you’re just getting older. You’re going to fall, it’s part of it.” It doesn’t have to be, and I’m so excited to share this topic because like you said, not only am I so passionate about it, but I’ve trained over 70,000 people to recover their balance, improve their balance, and prevent fall risk.
That’s exciting, and I know, Dan, that you’ve had several celebrities that you’ve helped along the way that would be of interest to our audience. Tell us about those.
Yeah, so the very first one, and then I’ll leave an even bigger name for the next one, but a gentleman by the name of Bob Eubanks. Many people would know him from the Newlywed Game or the Rose Parade. The guy was a great guy, and he actually was the reason that I had to go in and discover fall risk or fall reason. I owned a sports performance gym in Los Angeles and trained a lot of professional athletes, but Bob at the age of 79 was falling a lot and living in fear.
We’ll go into this if people continue to read because there’s so much actionable advice I can give you to help remove the fear, but Bob denied he had a falling problem even though he knew it. He said, “No, it’s fine. I’ll be okay.” I remember he called me specifically on a Sunday night and said, “Dan, I’m denying the issue that I have. I wake up every day scared I may fall and we don’t know the damage that could happen.”
We know that 98% of hip fractures come from falls, and we know the recovery from hip fractures is a very low percentage to last just one year, and 10% of people who fall over the age of 65 don’t make it through the next year.” I said to Bob, “Let me help you. Let me help you recover. I’m going to do what any great trainer would do. We’re going to strengthen your legs, we’re going to strengthen your hip flexors,” because he had what I call the senior shuffle, where you’re just keeping your feet close to the ground the small steps. “We’ll strengthen your core, and we’ll strengthen your legs, hip flexors, and core. You’ll walk better.” What a great thing to say, and that’s what most people teach, but I realized I was 100% wrong. This was the creation of the new programs that are coming out based on how we move.
I have to ask you a question. Let’s backtrack a second. Did you actually implement this with Bob and then found out that it didn’t work and then you decided to create a new program? How did that evolve?
The Brain-To-Body Connection And Proprioception
Within two minutes, I knew I was 100% wrong. Two minutes, because I train world record holders, Olympic athletes, professional soccer players, basketball players, and I thought just because you strengthen your legs and your hip flexors and your core, you’re going to be better with movement. It can help, but it’s not the foundation. What happened with Bob was I had Bob try and go through these athlete ladders. They’re like ladders, but they’re cloth that lay on the ground, and then you do 1 step in and then 2 steps in, 1, 2 steps in the next, just for mobility.
Bob couldn’t lift his legs to go over the top of just these little rungs. It was so simple, but he couldn’t lift, so I said, “Okay, well, you can’t lift your legs. Let’s make sure we strengthen the hip flexors first. Put your hands on the wall and then lift the legs.” As soon as his hands were on the wall, he lifted those knees up and down like they were pistons in a racing engine. I’m like, “Hang on a minute, the problem isn’t the lift of the legs. Where’s the problem?”
I went back and started studying learning to walk, the neurological system, the connections that have to be made to move properly, so I went all the way back to babies. If the gym was what would help us move and walk better, why don’t we take babies to gyms to help them learn to walk? We don’t. What’s happening is it’s the brain connection to the body. When the brain connection to the body begins to grow, the baby learns, it’s crawling, it tries to stand up, it falls, it falls, and what’s happening is the brain is figuring out pressure points in the feet and weight transference or distribution.
We then have two things. One called proprioception, which is how we feel, and the second is sensory messaging going back to the brain so quickly that the brain can figure out the changes that are happening to make sure that we’re adjusting constantly. A baby will then learn to stand and everybody that’s got children or grandchildren will know, the baby’s wobbling, and then it saves it and we go, “Yeah,” then again, “Come to me, come on.” you open your arms, and the baby runs to you but it can’t stop.
You hold it in your arms, you lift it up, everyone’s giggling and laughing, but what’s happening is the brain is figuring out how to move and how to stop moving. Eventually, as we become better, the body naturally strengthens because now we’re moving, and then we learn to run, jump, crawl, climb, fall, all these different things, but the brain is fully engaged with our body. I’ll finish with this so we can go onto the next part.
When a baby learns to walk, the brain and body work together—figuring out movement, strengthening, and mastering running, jumping, and falling.
I have a quick question, not to interrupt, but is this gender specific, the brain-body connection with walking and lifting your legs and all that? What do you think?
It’s not gender specific. Now there are differences that come in relative to falls and fall risks and damage because we know women tend to suffer more from osteoporosis, so the effect of a fall is more likely to lead to a bone break. However, men tend to fall a little bit more than women do, and it could be because of a bulkier upper body that then causes weight transference to change.
When you could walk down the street on a cell phone, looking in a shop window, liking a purse or a bag or something while you’re having a conversation, while an ambulance is going by, and you never think of your balance. It’s because your brain is so connected to your body and your body messaging back to the brain is so specific that we get taken care of by our what I call the autonomic system. It’s automatically working until it doesn’t.
Bob Eubanks Went From Shuffling To Running In Three Weeks
This is what I discovered studying children and then went back to Bob and trained him, and this is the promise I make. If people are willing to do the work, in three weeks, Bob went from this senior shuffle, 79 year old who had had hip replacement surgery, had had back surgery, fusions in his lower back, he went from shuffling and scared in three weeks to running six miles an hour on the treadmill, running up and down stairs, back out playing golf, walking the dog.
The most beautiful thing of all this was Bob woke up every morning excited for the day ahead, not fearful. He went back on TV, went back on stage, and his life changed because suddenly, we opened the world to him by removing the fear and his brain took over again, he didn’t even think about his balance, and he incredible.
That is amazing. Who else have you helped, Dan, along the way?
Probably the smartest lady that I’ve ever worked with was a lady that maybe none of you have ever heard of. Her name is Shirley MacLaine. Oscar winner, incredible.
We’ve heard of her. Shirley MacLaine. Tell us about that.
She was going to shoot a movie with Peter Dinklage and was having balance issues, and her goal is to win an Oscar in her 90s, and she was 86 at the time, and so they asked me to come in and work with her. She was an incredible dancer. She had so much incredible abilities growing up through her life, but this is where it comes down to the simple words, “If you don’t use it, you lose it.” She was spending more time sitting down than getting up and moving, and then the fear came in.
The fear isn’t just the person, it’s the people around you. You’ll see it, if you’re worried about falling or if you’ve fallen once or twice, your family also fear you falling. They say to you, “Sit down more. It’s okay, I’ll get that for you. Let’s go through your house, let’s remove the rugs, let’s move the toys, let’s put a handle here.”
We’re not addressing the problem, we’re just removing any of the possibilities as you begin to decline. Shirley, a brilliant lady, super intelligent, willing to get up and practice because she wanted to get better, and she’s been a worker her whole life as far as activity. I say, “Let’s not remove the problems, let’s improve your body so the problems are not problems.” Once we do that and get you moving and reengaging the brain to the body, then it changes everything.
That is really fabulous. That is such an incredible concept that you’ve found through your own starts and errors and retracing what you did. I think it’s amazing.
Thank you.
This was upsetting. I saw that Liza Minnelli is 80 years old and she’s in a wheelchair because of her back. Did you notice that? That’s very disturbing.
I didn’t know she was 80 years old. She’s always going to stay young in our minds. She was incredible.
We’re all young in our minds.
We are. If you say to anybody, “How old do you feel compared to how old are you chronologically?” people always turn around and say, “I’m twenty years younger.” This is what I found, Gale, from doing all this studying and I’ll prerequisite this because those who have read before will know that I had a brain injury where part of my brain died back in 2018. I had to learn to talk again, learn to move, learn to function.
Prior to that, I had been paralyzed where they said I’d be disabled for life and I’m like, “No, you don’t tell me who I’m going to be, I’m going to tell you who I’m going to be.” I went and studied the brain. I had the training program and got the results before I fully understood the brain, but then I went and studied the brain and then fully understood balance. It’s so hard to see people aging.
When you want to inspire somebody, let’s just say, Gale, I’m going to show you a 90-year-old who’s out walking every day and climbing the mountains and living life, and you go, “That’s fantastic.” That person won’t inspire you because we don’t see ourselves older, we respect them, we think it’s incredible, but if I showed you a 40-year-old that does what you used to do, that will inspire you more because now you want to relive and do the things you used to do. You’ll get excited about somebody younger but you won’t get excited about somebody older. When we look at inspiration, that could be an older person, but when we look at motivation, we want to go to younger people.
I’ve learned many new things. That’s very interesting. I never would have thought because I always thought people, if you see somebody older who’s doing really well, you go, “ wow.” For example, I have a Pilates instructor who’s 23 years old. In 2025, I had some trouble. I was wearing the wrong shoes when I was walking in Chicago, came back to Florida and I had trouble walking more than a mile. She used to say to me, “If Gale can get out of bed and walk a mile to come to Pilates, I can do it.” She was looking up to me. I’m quite a bit older than she is, so that surprised me, what you just said.
I look at it and say you inspire her, but inspiration isn’t movement. You can have an inspirational speaker.
Inspiration isn’t action. A speaker can inspire you, but motivation is what makes you willing to do the work.
She did show up.
You inspire her to want to do it, but motivation is something that says I’m willing to do the work. I totally understand what you’re saying, but if I show you again a 45-year-old that’s doing what you want, you’ll say, “I want that again,” if I show you a 95-year-old doing it you’d say, “That’s great. That’s so inspiring,” you don’t see yourself as 95.
That mind-body connection, Dan?
It’s like, “I want to do what I did or I want to be younger, I’ll work for that. I don’t want to work to be older.” When we start shaping the way we think and giving programs that can reverse aging, and it can, we can reverse aging, then people are more willing to step up than “Okay, well I’m just going to decline anyway.” Decline is not inevitable when it comes to the action we can take. If I can go into this a little bit more.
Sure. Absolutely. I know you mentioned to me you had studied with somebody at Johns Hopkins. Do you want to tell our audience about that?
Yeah, so I’ve done a ton of studying, everyone from Dr. Patrick Porter with Braintap through to balance. I coach and train physical therapists, doctors, fall risk evaluators, and again, like I said, I’ve worked with over 70,000, but the science that we’ve gone through and this is with multiple different places from the Orange Grove Community out in Chattanooga, which is a clinic that specializes in in in cerebral palsy, Alzheimer’s. There are so many different things they do. We’ve gone out there and studied with some of the top scientists and doctors who work with the government as well.
We have a brain-to-body connection, so there’s the dynamics of as our brain and body begins to separate the wiring, so our body doesn’t respond as quickly. That comes from inactivity. It can come from Parkinson’s. I have over 1,000 clients who have Parkinson’s that we’re reversing the decline of neurological movement, fall risk. My girlfriend has MS. It’s been incredible for MS because, again, we all we’re doing is we’re focusing on the brain and the body connection to the brain.
What tends to happen is when we age and we move less or we become more linear in our movement, in other words we get up, we do the same thing every day, we’ll walk the same lines, we’ll walk to the car, we’ll sit there, we’ll do the fewest steps that we can because we’re trying to get comfortable rather than challenge ourselves. That’s the opposite of when we were kids.
When we were kids, we’re be out exploring, jumping, running, changing, trying cartwheels we’ve never done one before, our brain is so engaged with our body movement and it’s continuing to grow. We hit our mid 20s or 30s and we have sedentary jobs or we’re doing less movement, we’re not playing the games. There’s a saying that I love, “We don’t stop playing because we age, we age because we stop playing.”
How The Brain Stores Fall Memory And Slows Movement
What happens is then we become less capable because, again, you don’t use it, you lose it. By the time we hit 50, we’re slowing down. We’re not playing the sports, we’re not out doing the same walks, we’re not challenging because that becomes painful in our thought process but only because we’ve let ourselves decline. This is the brilliance of the brain. If we don’t use it, those neurological pathways begin to go and not be as active from our brain to body.
Now the cerebellum is part of our center of movement, it is the main part, it’s the part of the brain at the back of your brain and it looks like a small little brain anyway. That has about 80% of our neurons are controlled around there right at the top of our spine, the spinal column. As we begin to move less, so with that part of the brain not be as active and quick in its actions, and I’ll give a real quick example, and a thought goes in to the frontal lobe I want to move my right foot.
That then goes through to the cerebellum and says I want to move my right foot, that then sends the neurons to our motor cortex. I want to move my right foot, which then fires down through our neurons upper and lower neurons, motor neurons, and then we move our right foot. As we move it, we then step and a sensory messaging goes firing back to the brain of either I’m safe, I’m slightly off balance, there’s a stone underneath my foot and I’m going to wobble, and then the brain goes, “I need to adjust it.”
It goes in this constant circle of speed of what’s happening, but so fast, we’re not even conscious of it a lot of the time. Slowly, as that goes, our messaging comes back, then if we have a fall or we have a near fall and this just got discovered by Bristol University several years ago actually back in England, there’s a part of the cerebellum called the pyrimis. It lives inside the cerebellum, which stores memory.
When we’ve had a fall, it’s remembered in our movement center that’s now connected to a place called the periaqueductal gray. Don’t worry about all these names, just the periaqueductal gray then says “I’m in danger, slow down.” It slows the body movement, and I can explain this so simply. If you walk to the edge of a sidewalk and there’s a car coming and you stop on the sidewalk, you walk there fast, you stop, you look, and then you cross over when it’s safe. We walk to that edge of that sidewalk fast because we know we’re safe and in control.
If I said, “Walk to the edge of that 300-foot drop off the edge of a cliff,” before we even get close, we begin to slow down, we will not walk to the edge of a 300-foot drop the same as we will to a curb on a sidewalk, because we recognize the danger. That’s the part of the brain that says we need to slow. When you’ve had a fall, that same activation happens that then says, “Don’t move so fast.” What happens we then begin to move slower, and that becomes our norm, but we can release it if we do the right exercises the brain instead of slowing us can speed us up.
That’s what’s so critical in balance training. It is removing the fear of falling because what I discovered with Bob is the reason he shuffled isn’t because he couldn’t lift his legs. The reason he shuffled was that he was scared to be on one foot and lift the other in a normal gait in case he lost control on one foot. That’s where it comes in incredible circle back to what are we doing now for balance training? What do we do for balance risk?
The first thing people were saying, doctors and physical therapists will say I get into trouble here because I now am fighting back because there is better. It’s not that it’s wrong, there’s better. If you stand on one foot and you can hold it for ten seconds, they say you’re not a fall risk. You are. The reason being standing on one leg doesn’t work is you’re only incorporating three parts of the brain, you’re training the thought, “Don’t move,” which then goes to the cerebellum and says “Don’t move.”
It goes to the corpus callosum which is the part that joins the left and right side of the brain and says, “Don’t move.” You’re training yourself not to move. There are only three parts of the brain engaged. As soon as you start moving, there’s more than eighteen parts of the brain that are engaged. This is a tip I’m going to give everybody to do at home. I’ll give you loads of free tips.
Dynamic Balance Training And Fast Feet For Prevention
Whilst standing on one leg, pretend like you did as a little boy or a little girl that you’re a tree in the wind. Now you got your arms and your legs moving while you’re on one leg and you got to put the other leg down, you’re catching yourself, there’s more than eighteen parts of the brain that are now engaged in dynamic balance rather than standing not moving on one leg is static balance. It doesn’t transfer into real life activity and fall prevention.
I think it’s great to do, standing on one leg and not moving, do it, but it’s not going to improve your movement. Now once we get to that part, what else can we do that will help us retrain the brain and body connection so that we have less of a fall risk and reaction? Fast feet are critical. When you go to fall, often, the reason you fall is because you can’t move your feet fast enough and so you can’t catch your feet up. You think about when we’ve tripped and when we were younger, you trip and then you go “Oh.” You speed your feet up you run you catch, “I saved that one.”
Fast feet are critical. Often, we fall because our feet can’t move quickly enough to catch ourselves.
The brain automatically got the feet to move faster so moving your feet fast is critical in prevention. Hold onto the back of a chair and just run on the spot. Hold onto the back of a chair lightly and shuffle side to side as quick as you can. Hold onto a chair or onto a table, and then just turn right and left and take as many small steps as you can but move the feet so they face the right.
Move the feet so they turn, face left, then do combinations, run on the spot, then turn your feet right, then turn your feet left, then go backwards, then come forwards. The faster you can do it, the more you’re training the brain to react for your feet to adjust the speed. These are so simple things, yet most people don’t want to do it because it means they got to do the work, and the magic we see is in the work we avoid.
That’s a good one. That’s a good quote, too. I have another question. What if somebody has peripheral neuropathy in their feet, which I know happens to a lot of people as they grow older? Any recommendations for those people?
Yeah, absolutely. I work with a lot of people with peripheral neuropathy or any form of neuropathy, and what it is, it’s a lack of the neurons firing through the feet. There are blockages there. Often it can come from lack of movement but when you’ve got it it’s painful to move so you don’t move. We got to look at our sodium intake, you got to look at your hydration intake as you take a drink of water, I love that. You got to look at your diet because there’s swelling that’s going on. The most important thing is to keep the areas moving.
I have found this is a tip I didn’t even know I was going to give. I have found red light therapy can really help with swelling. My own mother just came over from England. I can’t say her age but she’s between 86 and 88, and she had really swollen feet. She couldn’t put her feet in her shoes properly. She wasn’t walking very well at all and she came over and I said, “Mom, give me three weeks to work with you.” within two days of using red light therapy, proper red-light therapy, just pads.
Are they pads of red therapy for under your feet?
You actually wrap them around your ankles. In two days, all the swelling was gone. We actually bought her shoes that were a half a size smaller because now her feet were floating in her shoes. That was just red-light therapy. My mom arrived in a wheelchair, within 2 weeks, she was back doing 12,500 steps outside a day. Unbelievable. By taking action smart, starting slowly but in 2 weeks, from 300 steps a day and in a wheelchair to 12,500 steps. Going home, opening up another part of her business, getting a new office, it was incredible because we changed her around. You just took another drink of water included, “What is your diet? What are your hydration levels? What are your sleep levels? What is the exercise program you’re on?” Let’s go back to your question. I jumped away onto my mom there.
I’d say do things like get soft pads as far as they’re like the blue pads that they’ll use in physical therapy offices. I have some as part of my program because they’re so important, but stand on those pads on the back of the chair and just wobble side to side. It forces the toes to begin to move. We want to increase the neurological messaging going through those neurons firing.
Make sure I tell you two things before this ends in case I forget, so dynamic. You can even do things like, and I’ll take you through a little another free tip in here, imagine yourself moving. Close your eyes and imagine the blood flow going through to your feet and back up. The way I do it when I teach is imagine you have a little train engine in your brain and you’re going to send that train along the tracks all the way through your body, down through your head, down through your neck, down through your shoulders, down through your chest, through your gut.
Now send it down one of your legs. Down my left leg all the way past the knee, down through the calf, all the way through the ankle to the end of the toes. Feel it, actually see that train going through, then bring the train back to the brain now send it down the other leg. It sounds so simple and so almost silly, but as we send the thought and we send that train down.
It sounds meditative.
Yeah, it very much is. To send the train back, wiggle your toes to start the engine and then the engine starts and send it back up. Now can we do it faster? What we’re actually doing, we are sending neurological messaging through our body to the toes and back up. It sounds meditative, and then you’ll say “Send the train back, wiggle your toes to start the engine,” the engine starts and send it back up.
Now can we do it faster and what we’re actually doing we are sending neurological messaging through our body to the toes and back up. If you take it seriously, you will get serious results. If you don’t invest in it and you don’t do it, “That’s silly,” what’s silly is not doing anything about it. What we’re doing and this brings me to one of the things that I wanted to share with you. We’ll leave the other one for the last because it’s so dynamic.
You’ve heard of muscle memory. I preached it for many years as a head coach on the Olympic program training, so many muscle memory. Practice makes perfect. Just do it, keep doing it. It doesn’t, practice doesn’t make perfect. Practice makes permanent. If you do something wrong, that becomes permanent. Just because you’re practicing doesn’t make it right. It doesn’t make it perfect.
I know that from golf.
Golf’s a great exposure of technique, for sure. The second thing is there is no such thing as muscle memory. People go, “Of course there is.” No, there’s muscle repetition. This will actually help your golfing here as well. When you understand that we don’t have muscle memory, then what do we have? If you took a slab of muscle and cut it out of your body and put it on a table, it won’t move. People say, “Of course it won’t. It’s dead. It’s taken out of your body. How can it move?” If it had muscle memory, maybe it would move. Make it move. Fine, I will.
You take two electrical impulses, you put it at the end of the muscle, that muscle will still jump from an electrical impulse even when it’s outside your body. If that’s the case, let’s think about this. Why does a muscle move? If somebody has muscle memory and you have a stroke or paralysis, why won’t that muscle still move because it has memory?
What we actually have is electrical impulses going from the brain, which is our neurons. A neuron will fire and say, “I want to bend my arm, I want my bicep to squeeze.” It’s the electrical messaging from our neurons that goes to the muscle, we’re going to do this and because they connect with the messaging, the muscle now moves. What we actually have is neuron memory because when we have a stroke, when we have paralysis, we’re stopping the neurons from going to that part of the body which means it can’t work.
If we got those neurons firing, the muscle will repeat what it’s done many times before in the best way it can. When you’re doing your golf swing, you’re not training the muscle to move a certain way, you’re training the neurons to get the muscle to move a certain way. If you do it right again and again, the neurons will remember how to do it and the brain will guide it properly to happen.
If we get our body moving, we’re actually getting the neurons firing, which is to do with neuropathy. If we can get the neurons firing, the muscles then can work again. Neuron and neuropathy. Move your body parts, get on a soft pad that will actually rock so that the brain has to figure out you’re not in danger holding onto the back of a chair. Stand on a soft pad that sinks a little bit, not too much, and rock and you’ll feel your feet will begin to move again. You’ll begin to feel the toes working. Check your diet, check your hydration levels, and sodium levels. Make sure magnesium is an important as part of your training. I did a bunch of studies about ATP. That’s the energy in the muscles. You have to have magnesium for the energy in the muscles to work.
If we get our body moving, we’re actually getting the neurons firing, which is to do with neuropathy. If we can get the neurons firing, the muscles then can work again.
How much magnesium? I know there’s different types. I take magnesium glycinate for cramps.
Check out magnesium threonate because magnesium threonate passes the blood-brain barrier. Other magnesium doesn’t. If we want to increase the magnesium levels in our brain, you want to have that threonate but glycinate is good as well. That will help with cramps and again, the threonate gets more into the blood flow which helps transport it around the body. That gives you a whole bunch of tips, but there’s nothing better than moving.
Don’t worry about the gym, find things that you love. If you love to dance, get up and dance. That can be your movement. If you love to hike, make sure you get out and hike. If you love walking your dog, take your dog on a walk, whether you’re throwing a ball for them, maybe dance with her too. I got up this morning, went out for a walk at 7.00 and I skipped the first quarter of a mile. Forwards, backwards, sideways, double skipped.
I’m sure people, if they were out looking go, “Look at that guy skipping down the street.” It was so much fun. We have a side curb that’s slightly curved down the road so when it rains, it pushes the water back in to the side rather than the square, and sometimes I’ll say to my girlfriend, “Walk on that. Walk on uneven surfaces,” because it tests your brain to give you different pressure points.
I urge everybody. Move, do things you love, find something you used to do that you’d love to do again and work towards doing it again because then when you’ve got passion, you’ll stick to it because you can do anything. I can train, I believe, anybody to do something again they used to do if they’re willing to put in the work. Play.
I’ll tell all my friends when they get into the bunker or they’re in the sandbox, they should use that opportunity to move in a different way.
I don’t normally promote programs, but I’m going to promote somebody else this is not me that I met with who’s brilliant. He has a program called Primal Play, and it’s for the aging community. It’s PrimalPlay.com. I don’t get anything for saying it. This is just someone that I truly believe in so simple. His name’s Darryl Edwards. You can see him speaking on TEDx about movement. It’s all about going back to just moving as we were made to. He has fun little games.
It’d be great to see a game of tag in these senior community center where you’re just playing tag but you’re not running round, you’re just trying to tap each other on the shoulder and you’re trying to avoid and block it and you’re moving, you’re playing, or tap someone between the knee and the hip. Now you’re moving but you don’t run. It’s reactive play. If you can find things that are fun, it will light you up.
I spoke with him. I did it with my girlfriend without telling her why, she started laughing like crazy playing it and that will happen. I give you this challenge, Gale. When you’re around your husband next, say, “We’re going to play a little game of tag. We’re going to see who can tap each other on the shoulder the most in one minute,” or you can say between the hip and the knee. We’re going to try and tap each other and you got to try and avoid it and block it and just watch how much he’ll enjoy.
We enjoy working out now, by the way.
You’ll kick his butt. Don’t tell him why, say, “Let’s just play a game of tag,” “No, come on,” “Go on, just 30 seconds. Let’s do it,” you start doing it. He’ll start laughing or he’ll get really annoyed, one or the other. Watch how they just naturally laugh because you’re being child-like. It’s not childish. Be child-like.
I hate to end this episode. This has been great. For those of you who have enjoyed this episode, share it with your friends and family. If you have questions for Dan, you can always email us at GrowingOlderWithGusto@Gmail.com and be sure to stay curious and connected. Dan, thank you so much, this has been great. Any more advice before we end?
One little piece. Can I say it’s one of the two things that I didn’t say?
Sure.
Challenge Yourself To Grow The Anterior Cingulate Cortex
There’s a part of the brain called the anterior midcingulate cortex. It surrounds the corpus callosum which is our brain. I’ll keep this very simple. Everybody that has a larger volume mass of the anterior cingulate cortex lives longer. It’s so simple. This is critical information. When we were younger, we did things that challenged us, we took it on whether it was learning a cartwheel, we doing or becoming a dancer or sports. We were always challenged. That creates a growth because of the neurons that then which are neurons in there that forces it to grow.
Those people that sit in comfort, it declines roughly 5.5% every decade. If we’re not challenging ourselves, that part of the brain will decline and it’s not that you will die from the decline, but everybody that continues to challenge themselves through life will continue to grow that anterior cingulate cortex. I urge everybody. It’s not about doing things that you like, it’s about doing something you don’t like, and yet you’re willing to do it. It’s the challenge, it’s the decision making, it’s the mindset.
If we don’t challenge ourselves, a part of the brain will decline. It’s not that you’ll die from the decline, but anyone who keeps challenging themselves throughout life will continue to grow their anterior cingulate cortex.
If you say, “I love to walk. I don’t feel like walking. It’s too cold out,” if you get up and you go on that walk anyway, you’re doing something you don’t like to do that was a challenge and you’re achieving it. “I’m going to get up and I’m going to do some balance exercises, I don’t want to do it but I know it’s good for me. All right I’ll do it.” If you get up and you do it, that part of the brain strengthens. It helps you through challenges and it leads you to a better quality of life.
Do things that you don’t want to do, but do them because it’s good for you. When you start learning to love it and you no longer don’t want to do it, find something else that’s a challenge while you do it because you will have a longer life. This is proven scientifically through brain study. Having a large anterior midcingulate cortex, your life will be better and you will live better longer.
That’s what it’s all about. Your health span, not just your lifespan. Thank you so much, Dan, for joining us. This has been terrific, and I’ll let about more questions. Maybe we’ll do another episode.
You’re great. Thank you, and love to all your whole audience. I really appreciate and I know how special all of them are not because I know them, we all are. Thank you so much.
Thanks, Dan.
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