Unlimited Life

Nicole Brandon

Thank you so much. It’s wonderful to be here. This is Aurora and she may come and say hi to you and Aurora is very special. I think she Shirley Temple reincarnated into a dog. She has so many expressions, it’s great, but it’s lovely and interesting as we’re talking about fitness and healing and health and that is an American Eskimo and the American Eskimos were brought with the Ringling brothers and Barnum and bailey circus. So they’re the dogs that are trained to do all these amazing feats and I think that it’s a great learning lesson for all of us as we all have these capabilities.

Tom McCarthy

Very cool. Well Let’s get started with going back to 2001. So at that time you were actress doing all sorts of cool things and then tell us what happened to you and and and how you started to use what happened to you to not only help yourself, but to help so many other people.

Nicole Brandon

Thank you. So, it was an extraordinary time. I was title winner in dance champion around the world, martial arts champion around the world, aerial acrobat contortionist, rode bareback horses, high dive, whatever you could do, you know, physically I did it. And was leading in a limited life and was acting and was writing and there were all these different parts of me that were all coming to fruition at the same time. And I was driving in Los Angeles and I saw a driver headed towards my passenger door and I realized that he was going not going to stop. And the next thing I knew the car exploded in a ball of flames and it disintegrated and it was gone. And I remember watching the fire and thinking isn’t that interesting that I had a life where I could do all these extraordinary things with my body and at the very end, there’s nobody that is completely gone. And some man said, should I call the police and I said, you can see me because I thought I was gone, there was no possible way for me to leave this car. 

And the next thing I knew I woke up at the hospital and because I was a national title winner and an international title winner, I had the best doctors in the world looking at my body’s, I had doctors flying in from different countries at the top sports doctors in the world from the top sports teams and everybody looked at my body and said the same thing that the career as I knew it was over and my life as I knew it was over, that at that point I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t sit, it was basically a rag doll. And it was amazing how many people left my life because when you’re healthy and well, which I think this may touch a lot of people, it’s amazing how people want to be around you the minute that something is wrong and you become a responsibility for somebody or they don’t feel like you can give to them or do something wonderful for them, pay their rent or make them money or do whatever it is all of a sudden people start to disappear and I remember being in the hospital and crying and at that point.

I don’t know if I cried for days or weeks or hours, I just remember that I couldn’t stop crying that the crying was so deep and then I had this epiphany thinking I have more knowledge about the body than anybody in this hospital. I was a global world champion and fitness in dance, in martial arts in sports and I had taken time over years of getting certified, I was trying to get certified in something new every month for three years and I thought that all get certified in fitness things, shoulder injury, me repair prenatal, just so when I get older I wanted to know these things for myself. It wasn’t and I had certificates that were still rolled in drawers. But at this moment I thought I know more than any person that’s in this hospital right now and I can do this. I can put myself back together again. 

And I understood bodies up until that point, very much like Christmas lights that you see the lights that are blinking beautifully and then you see the ones that are snarled and snagged and I could always see people’s bodies like that. I could see where the problem was. I could see where the snag was and just snag the snag or I can look just like a circuit breaker in the house and see, okay, the dining room shut the living room shut. Okay. It’s this part of the body that shut or it’s the main switch that shut And I was always able to help people. If I was in gyms. If I was in studios, I would go over to people constantly, it was my nature to do that. And so I thought I can do this, I could put myself back together again and I made three deals with the universe and the first deal was that if I could do this, if I could put myself back together again, there wouldn’t be a day that goes by that I don’t teach people what I know about the unlimited potential of the human body. And the second deal was that I would never surround myself with people that didn’t know what I was capable of doing and understand the unlimited potential of the human form. And the third was the why I’m here to be able to teach commitment and conversation. And within a year of being told that I wouldn’t walk that, I wouldn’t stand that I wouldn’t do anything again. I climbed the great wall of china in record time. 

There is a mark on top. And I went to work with the Chinese acrobats as a contortionist. And I came back and said, now I teach and I know that we have talked about Pilates as a methodology and when I was a dancer, we would take Pilates classes. It was part of our training. So I understood Pilates, but understanding the history of Pilates, I understood that Joseph Pilates was a very sick little boy. He had everything. He had rickets. He had asthma. He had all sorts of ailments and he decided he was going to give himself his own fitness program and he was going to devise a fitness program based on the best exercises from around the world. So he took exercises from boxing, from fencing, from wrestling, from gymnastics, from swimming. And he put them together. 

But what he realized was the one common thread between all of the exercises and all of the sports was that when a body is oxygenated at a high level, when you raise a body part higher than the heart that the body repairs the tissues and muscles much quicker. So if you’ve ever seen someone who’s broken their arm, they put the arm in a sling and it’s higher than their heart. If you heard your leg, they tell you rice rest ice compression elevation, you put it on a pillow. The soldiers are doing jumping jacks. So you watch people jump rope or swim or basketball players and volleyball players or tennis when you’re serving any time a body part is higher than the heart. Your body is optimizing its repairing and it’s working through levels. 

And so I thought I can do this, I can use what I know about the body and I can use the methodology of Pilates to be able to heal myself. And I did that. And then I came back and I started healing people immediately and I had friends say Nicole stop, you’re going to get sued. You can’t just start touching people and healing people and you know, so I said okay well then I’ll get certified that way I can help people. And I decided to get certified in physical therapy and then I wanted to be certified in Pilates and at that time there were five elders that were still alive that had worked with Joseph Pilates and they were between 85 and 92 at that time. And I decided I’m going to get certified by each one of those five elders because I wanted to understand each of their methodologies. I wanted to understand the fluidity. I wanted to understand the awareness and balance. I wanted to understand the strength and so I went ahead and I literally trained diligently with each of these masters. And after completing the training with these five masters, they had noted that I had become the youngest master in the world. So I was then noted as the youngest fitness master in the world. And I opened up studios and started training people and certifying people. 

But the principles of Pilates can be used in any form of healing, it can be used in anything that you’re doing the very first motion of the human body. You know, a baby is born and it cries, it has a little scream or whatever. But the first physical motion of the human body is the body’s ability to reach. So you put a baby in a crib and it doesn’t roll over yet or set up yet. But you put a mobile, above, above a baby’s head and it reaches where you lean in and it grabs your hair or your fingers and when that reach gets strong enough, the baby rolls over. That’s what we call enlightenment, right? You receive and give that circle. But babies don’t learn to walk, they toddle and they fall. But when you reach we learn to balance, we don’t learn to walk, we learn to balance and we are meant to reach our goals, our finances, our dreams, our optimal health. 

And somewhere along the line, the baby goes to be picked up and somebody says, not now, I’m on the phone and the baby shrinks or you go to run and someone says, don’t run or you go to grab something and when were stopped from reaching the body becomes sick and ill and out of alignment. And so when you shake hands with someone, if you’re reaching them, when you talk to someone, when you hold someone, if you can reach someone then your whole body is in alignment and in balance and you really can have optimal wellness and reach all your dreams.

Tom McCarthy

That’s awesome. So that’s great. Talk to us about arthritis. Why do people get arthritis? And what can they do to if they have are either what can they do to prevent arthritis? And then, because you talk about arthritis free living. And if someone does have arthritis, how can they, how can they recover from arthritis? What are some things that that they can do

Nicole Brandon

Such a great question and thank you so much arthritis is interesting because so many people think that they have arthritis, they’ll say, oh, you know my hands hurt and I must have arthritis, not necessarily you know that we are holding tension or that we are holding stress or that we don’t have the correct blood flow or energy flowing through. And and I have a friend of mine who is a very famous singer and when she sings you can see she balls all of her energy in it and there and the way that I look at a lot of the exercises and arthritis itself, if you think about a pickle jar, like if you’ve ever had a jar in your house, a pickle jar of jelly jar, something that you can’t open. You bang it on the table and whatever and then you bang it on the floor and then finally you open it, you hear that little popping sound that pops and then once it pops open, then you almost forget that you ever had trouble with that pickle jar with that jelly jar. It’s the same thing when you’re holding so much stress when you finally release and alleviate that stress and that oxygen. But it’s alive. 

You know, something is, is working inside of you to be able to really alleviate the pain, to be able to lengthen, to be able to strengthen very often when you have arthritis, you don’t realize that even just warming your hands like a simple power of thin machine that you can get at the nail salon that they put your hands in for warm wax, you can buy it on amazon for $26 a power of the machine and put your hands in the warm wax and it totally relaxes the muscles and the joints and gives you that freedom warm water there twinges and hinges or any of the classes that they do and then there are exercises for people that are so easy and so simple. What we don’t realize is that when we move energy towards us and we move energy away from us, sometimes we make it so arduous if you see people that are weightlifters and they’re trying to lift all this weight in their neck and their shoulders and there’s so much tension. 

But if you think about receiving a gift and you say, oh thank you, oh my gosh wow, thank you so much and you receive that and you give something to someone, I could take someone with that same barbell and double that way, triple that way and just say receive and given they can’t believe that they’re lifting that much weight. So when you change the energy of how you are using your joints, you are going to alleviate pain. Very often arthritis will come from your bone density, it will come from your blood flow, it comes from your tendons, it comes from your ligaments. It comes from other various health issues that have found their way to their extremities. You know, we always talk about exercising barefoot or being outside on the beach or being in the grass and allowing yourself to actually feel the earth. 

So you’re not in these shoes that are constricting your feet, that you’re not actually cutting off the circulation for what you need and crippling the system. But can you live pain free? Absolutely the same way in teaching someone to reach to extend to be able to reach past someone. So they’re not squishing their hands and then as their hands feel safer and safer and safer, they can start to be able to hold hands again. And it’s just being able to shift the consciousness and shift the body. The risk. People have carpal tunnel all the time and they have all these problems or they have arthritis through their hands and their wrist, the thumb is the stronger muscle if you move the thumb and not the risk, you actually are opening the space and so it’s effortless and seamless to be pain free. It’s just understanding that you have the capability to be pain free and that anything that has come on right now is coming from some other part of your system that just like those Christmas lights or just like the switch can be switched back on and just like that pickle jar all of a sudden you have that freedom of movement and I have people that tell me not only am I not in pain anymore, I don’t remember pain. Yeah, I remember I used to be in pain. I remember I used to have arthritis. I remember I used to have back pain. I remember and I don’t even have the memory because my body is so free.

Tom McCarthy

That’s awesome. That’s awesome. That’s so beautiful. So if somebody has, let’s say neck pain or back pain,

Nicole Brandon

Yes.

Tom McCarthy

So you talked about changing the mindset, the mentality for receiving, right? Just just take me through that again. Like if I’m in my hips are back, what do I do

Nicole Brandon

If you’re in pain in your hips and back? There are different things that you could do one. Are there exercises that are super easy to do? You put your hand on a dresser on a bureau and your kitchen, whatever the kitchen counter you want to cross one leg over the other knee. So if a little video, like, instead of I would take you cross one ft over the knee and I can send you a little picture so you can post this with this if you like. And all you’re doing is you bend the standing leg as you’re doing that. And by bending the standing leg, you’re releasing the back totally releasing the back. And just by leaning forward, you actually are opening that area completely. I recommend people do this when they travel. I have people that tell me they used to take flights and they would get off lights and their backs would be racked and now they go to the hotel and they do this and they’re like, it’s amazing. I’m free. I’m good. Everybody else is crazy. I’m fantastic. And you can even do this in the shower in warm water, It opens the back and once the back is open, you don’t have that problem again. It just, it literally just releases it. It’s like, it’s all gone. It literally takes the stress away.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah. So tell us about your program Living, living without our arthritis. What?

Nicole Brandon

Arthritis free living? Yes.

Tom McCarthy

So tell us about that and and tell us where people can find that or

Nicole Brandon

Thank you so much.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah. Yeah.

Nicole Brandon

Yes. So arthritis free living was a program that I created as I’ve been teaching for arthritis foundations for years and creating programs for arthritis programs. I decided I would love to take some of the exercises that people can do in their home. Whether they’re just sitting there with their hand exercises with leg exercises with water bottles, with hand towels, with the newspaper, with the dusting, right things that you can do that. Don’t take a lot of time and not a lot of money just for you to be able to be in your home and go through simple exercises a couple of minutes a day that will totally alleviate the arthritis pain and have you living pain free. 

And so I’ve created that and I created a little bonus video for people as well and I love being able to share that information because anybody with arthritis, they’re stuck in the pain cycle and to be able to say, oh sure tomorrow you’re gonna feel perfect. They’re like, okay, but I didn’t feel perfect yesterday or the day before. No, really tomorrow, you can’t feel perfect. Somebody had asked me earlier today, what is that image like for you? And I said, I always think of Cinderella with the woman with the wand and all of a sudden your life has changed in a moment when you realize that it’s just as simple as that pickle jar as opening that once you have opened that area and free that area to allow it to be oxygenated to allow it to be free. It totally can change your life.

Tom McCarthy

That’s a great analogy, I like that because we’ve all open the pickle jar, that was really hard and then it popped and then, oh, you know, that was, that was easy. And even just that mindset of having that I think creates new possibilities for people that have been in pain for so long, and it gives real hope, like, you know, it’s not this arduous, You know, decades long journey. It can be as simple as, you know, boom, boom, you know, poop, right? And and not having to live with that anymore. So you give people really hope, which I think is really, really cool. And it all came from, you know, 2001 your journey, which was a tough one. But you know, you open that pickle jar for yourself and

Nicole Brandon

Absolutely and thank you and to share with others. And I think that for everybody to find the right exercises for yourself, it doesn’t matter what age you are or what state of health you’re in. It doesn’t matter if you know, you are bound to a bed or to a chair or if you are up climbing mountaintops that I always look at people’s bodies like silverware that you’re a knife, a fork or a spoon. So you have the really straight back or you have the little spoon, you know, the strong legs or the flexible like the fork and that whatever sports that you want to do that, you’re drawn to do those are gonna be exercises at your body loves that. 

Your body is excited by. And if you are an editor and you’re in a dark room all day long and you love that darkness, you might want to go on archaeological digs. You know, it’s like whatever that is that you find if you have really strong legs and you love being by the water, you might want to try water polo. And when we find the right exercises for our bodies that bring us joy and elation all of a sudden they want to do these movements and we find we’re able to do movements far that exceeds our imagination just by aligning with our joy. And what’s in our natural state

Tom McCarthy

Is just what you’re talking about. Just gives people hope, which as much as the exercises I know we’re going to help people. I think even just your message of you know that that they can be pain free is very, very empowering. How can people find you Nicole, how can they find your arthritis free living And the other things that you do?

Nicole Brandon

Thank you. arthritisfreeliving.com. Really wonderful and easy and nicolebrandon.com

Tom McCarthy

Okay.

Nicole Brandon

Find me there.

Tom McCarthy

So nicolebrandon.com and arthritisfreeliving.com That’s awesome. Yeah. So I love your just the attitude about how healing can happen and possibilities what before we say goodbye, what final words do you have for everybody watching this? What would you like to leave them with?

Nicole Brandon

The one thing that I want people to know for sure is that you can be on the other side of any pain, any trauma, any trauma and anything that has stopped you and take every wall and every hurdle and every barrier and turn it into a gate. Because when you’re at a gate, it’s just a moments pause. Just you can always open the gate even if the hinges arrested and it’s just leading you in a new path and direction. And when you open that gate on the other side is an unlimited life is pain free living is optimal help. It is available for each and every person. We are able to reach every one of our dreams and our goals and our destinies and the health and the fitness and the body and the life that we dream of and desire and deserve and never let anybody tell you that you’re not well because I mean I, every doctor that came in told me that I would not be doing what I am doing and I can tell you, you know yourself and you know what’s possible and it’s their job, surgeons, it’s their job to do surgery and people whatever it is and it’s you your job to lead and to live healthy and happy life. That is your job.

Tom McCarthy

Beautiful. Thank you Nicole, that’s been so empowering for everybody. I appreciate you being with us today. That was so awesome.

Nicole Brandon

Thank you Tom it’s wonderful being here with you.

Tom McCarthy

Look forward to seeing you soon. Take good care of.

Nicole Brandon

Thank you. Same here