This story of mind-blowing resilience is a wake-up call for anyone feeling stuck, sidelined, or afraid to bounce back.
On a recent episode of The Debbie Nigro Show, I had the joy of speaking with global wellness pioneer Dan Metcalfe—international performer turned brain-injury survivor, Olympic coach, and now CEO of Total Balance Company and Born Superhuman.
Hard to believe this superhuman got in touch with me to see if I was interested in uncovering how we could inspire listeners together.
Here’s what I read when I opened his blind email to me.
Hey Debbie.
“I’ve been following The Debbie Nigro Show and truly appreciate the inspiring stories you bring to light. I believe I could add a compelling angle to your discussions with my unique journey in health and mental resilience. As someone who has performed live for over 5,000,000 people globally and played lead roles in Andrew Lloyd Webber shows, I’ve learned resilience like no other, especially after being paralyzed during a performance. This experience resulted in a brain injury in 2018, leading to partial brain death, but through sheer determination, I’ve completely recovered and continued to inspire others.”
I wrote him back….” You had me at Hey Debbie!” lol
So here’s Dan Metcalfe’s Story.
Once paralyzed during a live performance of Starlight Express in Las Vegas, doctors told Dan he’d never walk again. Instead of giving in, he rewrote the script of his life—and proved them wrong. By tapping into the brain’s natural ability to heal, he discovered how to turn trauma into transformation.
“Why be a victim when you can be a hero?” Dan said. “And the hero isn’t for other people—it’s for yourself.”
Now fully recovered (after surviving two traumatic brain injuries), Dan’s groundbreaking work in brain-to-body mobility training is helping over 70,000 people worldwide—including individuals with Parkinson’s, MS, and seniors at risk of falling—reclaim their balance, strength, and sense of self.
Dan is living proof of the extraordinary potential within us all. From performing for millions in Andrew Lloyd Webber shows to creating life-changing innovations in human performance, his journey embodies the unwavering determination and resilience we all have access to. He’s trained tens of thousands—and learned from every real-life obstacle he’s faced.
“Turn hope into belief,” he says. “We are all born superhuman.”
Life Changing Training for Aging Longevity
The Total Balance Board system isn’t about fancy equipment—it’s about reactivating the miracle machine we already have: the brain.
When he first created the now-patented training system, Dan had no idea just how dynamic its impact would be. At its core, Total Balance is based on the belief that no challenge is unbeatable when met with determination, creativity, and empathy. His methods are redefining what’s possible in both peak performance and physical rehabilitation.
“Balance is the foundation of a successful physical life,” Dan says, “and my passion lies in helping people overcome challenges with movement, stability, and confidence.”
Key Takeaways:
- Falls are the #1 cause of injury-related death in seniors. Dan’s system helps rewire the brain to prevent them.
- His motto? “We don’t stop playing because we age. We age because we stop playing.”
- He believes we all have superhuman potential—and he’s living proof.
From performing for 5 million people to coaching Olympic athletes and now as a highly in demand motivational speaker, Dan Metcalfe is showing the world that comeback stories aren’t just possible—they’re powerful. His story isn’t just about survival—it’s a blueprint for unlocking the extraordinary in all of us.
“Never underestimate the power you have. Every challenge has a solution.” —Dan Metcalfe, Born Superhuman
Catch this wildly powerful and inspiring conversation with Dan Metcalfe on this week’s episode of The Debbie Nigro Show! If you’d rather read than listen the transcript of the audio is below.
AUDIO TRANSCRIPT:
Welcome back to The Debbie Nigro Show. Another incredible guest about to join us right now. Boy, I can pick them. I really can pick them. I love the stories of people who have been so down and so challenged that you think, oh my gosh, how is this ever going to work? How are they going to come back? You know, kind of like where I was. But they do. And how they do it is the most fascinating information to share because we’ve all had moments in our lives where we have
0:00:42
(Speaker 2)
to dig really, really deep. And you know, sometimes digging deep is not enough. You have to dig deeper. Okay. So, about to introduce you to Dan Metcalfe. Dan is superhuman, okay? International performer, when you hear what happened to him, brain injury survivor and
0:01:00
(Speaker 2)
founder now of the Total Balance Company. He’s performed for over 5 million people around the world, came back from partial brain death, coached Olympic athletes and celebrities like Shirley MacLaine, and now he’s helping thousands of people reclaim their balance and mobility. And I just want to say, hey, Dan, I can’t wait to spend some time with you. Hi.
0:01:19
(Speaker 1)
Hey, Debbie. Great to be on the Debbie Nigro Show.
0:01:22
(Speaker 2)
Oh, Dan. Dan got to me in an email, blindly, and had the most lovely way of communicating. And I read all about him. I was like, I wrote him back. I go, you had me at hello, hello. Sure, you could be on the show. Dan, we talked about the fact that your story is so long and incredible and loud and challenging.
0:01:42
(Speaker 2)
What’s that? Oh, that you? It’s not. Incredible and loud and and challenging. What’s that? Oh that you
0:01:48
(Speaker 5)
It’s not it’s gone. Okay with you. Okay, good
0:01:52
(Speaker 2)
How can we do this in 15 minutes, but we’re gonna so
0:01:55
(Speaker 4)
Why don’t you just in your own words?
0:02:03
(Speaker 2)
Tell us that original story of challenge that happened to your life because people probably know about it, but they don’t know. It’s you
0:02:10
(Speaker 1)
Yeah, thanks so much. So it actually started before that, the brain, partial brain death, where I was playing the lead in Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber shows around the world and I’d opened a show called Starlight Express in Las Vegas and during one of the shows I actually had an accident on stage where I was paralyzed and the doctors told me that I would be disabled for life and they wanted me to sign the papers because sadly it was cheaper to disable me than it was to try and fix me.
0:02:33
(Speaker 1)
So I really had to take my own life into my own hands and often we become victims of the information we’re fed but we have so much ability, so much brilliance within ourselves that it sometimes gets numbed down by what we’re told, and if we believe it, that’s what we become. So that was the beginning of my story of finding out the superhuman in all of us.
0:02:58
(Speaker 2)
Wow, you make a really loud point. Just had this conversation yesterday about somebody who was going through a medical thing, and I started on their behalf reading everything I could possibly read and I remembered that when I was going through a very dark experience, ovarian cancer, I refused to read everybody else’s story and all the other information because I said I’m going to own how I get
0:03:16
(Speaker 2)
through this myself. I’m not going to be tainted by what others’ negativity or difficulties will be. I can’t put that in my head. I just got to stay in my own head and work with my own power. Is that what you’re saying? Yeah,
0:03:29
(Speaker 1)
absolutely. It’s great to be educated. It’s great to have knowledge, but we have to also understand that not everybody is invested in our lives for the greatest of our potential. And so I have this saying, why be a victim when you can be a hero? And the hero isn’t for other people, it’s for yourself. But, Debbie, you didn’t know the inspiration you were going to become for others that didn’t know where to start
0:03:50
(Speaker 1)
or how to believe in themselves. And I’ve always found the greatest companies, the greatest solutions have come from people who need to find something because of the pain they’re going through. And it becomes honest, it’s genuine, and it’s powerful, and it affects
0:04:05
(Speaker 1)
millions of people, depending obviously on the outreach that we have.
0:04:08
(Speaker 2)
Wow. So, who inspired you, Dan, along the way to be so great about getting yourself back and believing in yourself? Was there somebody?
0:04:20
(Speaker 1)
Yeah, that’s a great question. I grew up back in England and I didn’t have the greatest relationship with my father growing up, but he told me eight words actually the night I saw Starlight Express for the very first time before I started theatre school. I’d never seen the show before. And at the end, I was like, wow, that’s an incredible show. I didn’t even know what I was going into as far as training to try and get in the show. And my dad turned around to me at the end of the show,
0:04:45
(Speaker 1)
he goes, what do you think? I said, oh, dad, it was incredible, it was amazing. These were like demigods to me, these performers on stage. He said, one day you’ll be in that show. And I said, no, I’ll never be good enough. And that’s something we keep telling ourselves. that I live my life by. Somebody has to do it, why not you?
0:05:05
(Speaker 1)
Somebody has to do it, why not you? Someone’s always gonna lead, whether it’s Roger Bannister beating the four minute mile record, or Usain Bolt beating a new record there, or so many amazing, Margaret Thatcher,
0:05:17
(Speaker 1)
one of my favorite prime ministers ever in England, the first female prime minister, someone’s gonna do it. And so every listener that’s listening to this, someone’s gonna have the success and you have every right to be that person
0:05:32
(Speaker 1)
that then leads more. We can break barriers just by opening up our self-belief and the miracle within.
0:05:39
(Speaker 2)
You’re inspiring me. I just feel like I’m leaving the studio right now and conquering the world. This is impressive. Listen, I love your energy. I love what you’ve overcome.
0:05:50
(Speaker 2)
Tell me how you got to the coaching of the Olympic athletes and this incredible balance and mobility product you created, which I imagine is how it helped you and you are now helping others.
0:06:04
(Speaker 1)
Yeah, I was off, I was paralyzed. I was married at the time and I had to start earning money and the reason being, I’ll keep this very quick, basically they said sign this paper to be disabled for life and we’ll continue to pay you your workers’ compensation while I was out the show and I refused to sign so they refused to give me the money using every excuse under the book. So I had to start coaching. Well, I had been at professional soccer clubs back in England before I went into show business. So I started coaching from a chair and took this young team that had never won a game
0:06:35
(Speaker 1)
in seven weeks from that position to third in the state in Nevada. And so suddenly the Olympic program was reaching out to me and saying, hey, we’d like you to come in as a coach. And they gave me a head coaching position that I transferred across to Southern California. I became a head coach there on the West of America. And then I started my own nonprofit organization for kids based on soccer, boys and girls of
0:06:59
(Speaker 1)
all ethnicities, and became the number one youth organization for success at that point in soccer in America. And then a gentleman by the name of Bob Eubanks, many people would know Bob from the newlywed game. Sure. Came to a gym that I had opened,
0:07:14
(Speaker 1)
which was a sports performance movement based gym, and he was falling. And I said, let me help you. He was a little resistant because I was known as a really tough coach. I said, Bob, you’re 79, I’ll meet you where you’re at. And so we went from him not being able to walk and what I call the senior shuffle, which is basically I want to keep both my feet on the ground, but I
0:07:33
(Speaker 1)
need to move in six weeks, going from that to running six miles an hour on a treadmill, running up and down stairs. And this is where the beauty came in. It came to me in a dream of a higher level of understanding of balance because balance falls, I should go back to that, falls at the number one cause leading to death in seniors. Right. And I was worried about Bob, he had fallen a lot. Well I stopped training everything comes from the window. I love that. You’re never thinking of your balance. Right. Because that neural pathway is on fire. It’s doing what it should. It’s incredible.
0:08:50
(Speaker 1)
Then I discovered by accident people with Parkinson’s started getting my system and incredible results. The top scientist for Parkinson’s said everyone with Parkinson’s should have this. I was blown away because it was just something I studied, but I realized I was a vehicle for a higher level of messaging to help people save and recover their lives. MS, Parkinson’s, strokes, so much. But if I can carry on because I know I’m kind of speaking over this.
0:09:18
(Speaker 2)
Oh my gosh, I could listen to you forever. You are really something unusual and I knew that when you wrote me and I said, wow, this is not – I’ve heard a lot of pitches in my life and I’m a voracious reader and information not – and I know when something stands out, it’s a little golden. So I knew you were golden. But the product line, Total Balance Company, what you created is to help people’s brain to body training to be able to increase their balance, their mobility and their dynamic muscle strength.
0:09:49
(Speaker 2)
And wow, you’ve been training over 70,000 clients since this. So I think that more people could really appreciate how effective this is. Tell me about the product.
0:10:01
(Speaker 3)
Yes.
0:10:02
(Speaker 1)
So it’s the on the product we have the greatest technology in the world which is your brain. When we can get your brain to activate and take over the control we don’t use something else to try and stimulate you. You’re already great but in 2018 I was in a bicycle accident where I got hit in the head by a metal pole and I was knocked unconscious, part of my brain died.
0:10:27
(Speaker 1)
I had to learn to talk again, learn to function and it was a gift because it made me study the brain more. So when I created the Total Balance Company system which includes a balance training board but the board is not the product. The product is how do we engage your brain to start moving again? And I’ve been fortunate enough to work
0:10:47
(Speaker 1)
with an incredible company called Energy for Life with Parkinson’s disease and have hundreds of success stories with them. I’ve only been with them a short time. But when we start looking at how can we get the brain to feel when we’ve had a slowdown
0:11:02
(Speaker 1)
of neurological messaging, for example, I’m a huge believer we don’t stop playing because we age, we age because we stop playing. Yep, love it. And think about what are the activities we do as we age. We get used to sitting in a chair, we get used to walking to the same location or just walk to the car drive. We’re not engaged like we were with kids. And you’d laugh, Debbie, if you had seen me the other day,
0:11:27
(Speaker 1)
I’m on the way to the gym, and I saw this kid’s playground next to me. And I just pulled over in the car, went on, I’m sliding down slides, I’m swinging on swings. It was early in the morning, so nobody could see,
0:11:38
(Speaker 1)
and they didn’t think I was weird. But it woke me up and I urge people, you know, do things, just one thing, it might be as you’re walking to the bathroom, do a little skip, do a little dance, put the music on, move, like nobody’s watching because the reality is you’re doing that, no one’s really watching. But if we can re-engage the movements and the pressure points in our feet from not being stuck in one thing, because what we do repeatedly becomes our habit. Yep I got you and the
0:12:09
(Speaker 2)
neural pathways in the brain you know the hippocampus it’s like you know it’s like walking the same rug in and out of your house where it gets worn out now and it’s like you need to make some new pathways is that correct? You’re spot-on.
0:12:20
(Speaker 1)
If you look at one of the tests they do to judge your balance and mobility, I’ve done tons of studies into this. If you stand on one leg which they use as a balance full risk assessment, when you stand on one leg, only three parts of your brain are really engaged which is your frontal lobe which is your information stand balance, your cerebellum at the back of your brain which is going, okay how do I not move instead of how do I move? And then your corpus callosum which joins the left and right side of the brain that
0:12:48
(Speaker 1)
says, okay, how do I find the balance by both sides of my body doing the same action for the result? Whereas, when you start doing dynamic instead of static balance, dynamic, it’s incredible. You use over 18 parts of your brain that’s for everyday life.
0:13:04
(Speaker 2)
Oh, man, you could hang out. You could inspire me all day long. Dan Metcalfe, Chief Executive Officer at Total Balance Company and also Born Superhuman, really amazing person, story, mission in life and breakthrough. He’s helping so many people. Your website for everybody who wants to know?
0:13:22
(Speaker 1)
Totalbalancecompany.com but also bornsuper born superhuman calm the seven pillars for natural health
0:13:29
(Speaker 2)
All right, we’re gonna have to do more together. This is too simple. That’s too quick. You were right There’s not enough time to get it all in but boy Did I love having you shine today on this show Dan Metcalf and I hope that we’ll stay in touch You’re amazing. Thanks so much having me and have the most beautiful day everybody. Yeah and can I borrow that accent for the weekend because it sounds very sexy Dan. I know that’s sexist to say but I just need the accent. Alright have a great sexy Dan. I know that’s sexist to say but I just need the accent. Alright have a great
0:13:52
(Speaker 2)
day, more to come here on the Debbie Nigro Show.
