254. The Power of Choice: How Monica Norcross Transformed Her Well-Being Through the Mind-Body-Spirit Connection

00:00:10
This is happiness solved with America's happiness. Coach Sandee Sgarlata.

00:00:21
Hello everyone, and thank you for joining me today. I'm so happy you're here. I'm Sandee Sgarlata. I was born in Virginia Beach and raised in the Baltimore Annapolis area and had very humble and tragic beginnings. And as a result, my life was a hot mess.

00:00:37
Thankfully, 33 years ago, I got my act together and since that time I have dedicated my life to serving others and raising awareness that no matter what you've been through, you can choose happiness and live the life of your dreams. Happiness Solved is dedicated to giving you content that is empowering, motivational, inspirational, and of course, a dose of happiness. It's my way to give back to the world and share other people's stories. This thing called life can be challenging and my guests share their amazing stories, wisdom, and life lessons that demonstrate anyone can choose happiness. You see, happiness is a choice and the choice is yours.

00:01:17
Today's episode is amazing and I am so grateful for you. Thank you for listening and don't forget to leave a review and follow me on social media at Coach Sandee Sgarlata. Enjoy the show.

00:01:34
Monica Norcross. Yay. I'm so glad to be here. So excited. I met you in Denver at the Achieve Conference University.

00:01:46
Got to spend a lot of time with you, fell in love. We're like soul sisters now. Just adore you. And I'm so excited to share you with my audience because you're just a gem. Thank you so much.

00:02:02
Thanks for having me. Well, back at you, my friend. Back at you. Thank you. So a little bit about you.

00:02:10
You've been in the fitness industry, in the wellness industry for twelve years. You're a certified professional trainer, fitness nutrition specialist, Cope certified and a Zumba instructor. Woohoo. Zumba. That's very fun.

00:02:25
Got to love Zumba. I've only taken the class a few times, but it's on the schedule, the gym that I go to and I'm like, I got to get back into that Zumba. There's nothing like dancing, like nobody's watching, right? Very good for you. Yes.

00:02:39
Very fun. Very fun. Yeah. Oh my gosh. So I want to hear about Cope certified because I have no idea what that is.

00:02:48
Okay. But I love how you specialize in teaching people how to care for a body that reveals spiritual truth and deepens the love relationship with God. I mean, what better? Love it you get here today, I want to hear your backstory. You may have told me, I don't remember everything people tell me, but I want to hear your story because everybody has a great story that people can learn from.

00:03:14
Sure. So how you mean how I got to be working? How you got to where you are today? Yeah. What inspired you?

00:03:19
What was that turning point? This is great. It wasn't great at the time, I can tell you that. I was sitting in the plastic chair of a doctor's office, actually a general surgeon's office and anxiously looking at his eyes, wondering if he was going to be able to read the seven six or seven different kinds of tests I had had run from five different doctors to help me understand what my blinding pain was in my lower right abdomen. I had had two Cat scans, an MRI, an ultrasound, an X ray, a blood test, and an experimental shot.

00:04:00
So I'm sitting in this chair. I'm looking at him. He's sitting across from me looking at his computer, and his brow is furrowed, and I'm just on the edge of my seat going, can you help me or not? Do you know what's happening with me or not? Nobody five doctors, nobody can tell me what's wrong.

00:04:17
Oh, my gosh. This is scary because it's not appendicitis. I don't know what this is. Well, that's your first thought, right, is appendicitis? I went to the Er, but what.

00:04:27
People don't realize is appendicitis. You don't have pain down there. Because I had an emergency appendectomy and thought I had really bad gas for, like, 12 hours. Yes. And it was all around my belly, and it was painful and same thing.

00:04:42
But midnight that night, they're wheeling me into the surgery to remove my appendix. Yeah, at least we knew it wasn't that, but we couldn't figure out what it was, and it was really painful. And this is the general surgeon. This is my last stop. There's nowhere else to go.

00:04:59
I've been to everybody, and he looks me in the eyes and he says, I have no idea what's wrong with you. Oh, my gosh. Well, at that moment, I realized that physical health and mental health and spiritual health are connected because my anxiety levels went skyrocket. Okay? They went up hardcore.

00:05:21
What is wrong with me? What am I going to do? What's next? How am I going to fix this? I can't live like this.

00:05:28
Oh, my goodness. And my spiritual health, too. God, where are you? Why are you letting this happen to me? What am I going to do now?

00:05:37
And I thought to myself, it just was this obvious moment of these things are all connected. My physical health is the only problem, but everything else is impacted is impacted by this. And I thought, wow, that's kind of a big deal. And so, of course, I went home, and I decided in that moment, I'm going to have to figure this out. I'm going to have to go research.

00:06:03
I'm going to have to start getting very serious about what might be wrong. And with my background in health and wellness and my background in fitness, I knew that I had enough training that I could start digging into looking into some areas of the body that might not be the most obvious to other people. And so when I discovered some of the tools and tricks and techniques that we now use in class, that actually healed me. And the wild thing was that in doing those things, I was able to work in the same time frame, doing the same things, add in some things that totally addressed my mental health. And completely addressed my spiritual health.

00:06:46
And gave me the understanding, especially when I went through to the end of this and I got healed and I felt better and my anxiety levels came down and I was able to address all those things. It was almost like God kind of went, I let you go through this so that you can now turn around and help other people. And I was just blown away by that because I didn't have any idea that I was going to be doing something like that. But here we are. So that research and those tools and those techniques actually that I worked with and modified and worked for me are what healed me and what led and became distill connection.

00:07:34
Love it. Because ultimately you were able to see that that happened for you. Yes. And not to you. And that's when the light bulb switches.

00:07:48
Yes. And that's when you start to realize what an impact you can have for somebody else. I mean, I know I'm not the only one who's had unexplained pain. How many times have you heard it? No one can figure out what's wrong.

00:08:02
The doctors can't figure out what's wrong. And I'm not knocking doctors. They are well trained, amazing people. But my goodness, there are things in the body that none of us understand. There are things in the body that certain people get and others don't.

00:08:14
People have to understand that doctors are practicing medicine. Lawyers practice law. Right. It's a practice. It is.

00:08:25
Doesn't mean any of them are perfect. There's so much we don't know. It's true. And that's another reason that I kind of get blown away when I think about God because I look at the way we were created and I think the intricacies here mind blowing. There's no one on the planet that can tell you they fully understand the human body.

00:08:46
Nobody. How many years of experience and technology advances do we have? And yet we still don't get it. And so I'm blown away by that. And that makes my awe just get bigger.

00:09:02
Well, and this brings us back to the whole mindset conversation because that's the thing that people need to realize is that it's up. Know, I when you were talking, it made me think of my dear friend Karen. She's a yoga instructor. It was funny because I introduced yoga. Me and another, we had a couple of friends put together a little yoga class and brought her along.

00:09:33
Right. And she hated it. Right. This was like 15 years ago now she's like a 500 level certified yoga instructor. But here's the thing, the reason I'm bringing this up because yoga is not for everybody.

00:09:47
But it's another practice that helps you to, right? It's incorporating the physical aspects, the mental, the spiritual, it's like the whole thing. She has lupus and you know that she has zero, zero symptoms, let's just say, because she practices yoga every single day. And if that doesn't tell you right there because I have another friend on the other side, I have a colleague that has lupus. Her health conditions are off the charts, the problems and the pain and everything that she's experiencing.

00:10:34
So I look at my two friends, two people in my life that both have lupus and the one is no symptoms. Do they call that asymptomatic? I think so. Asymptomatic, yeah. I don't know.

00:10:46
Whereas the other one has all sorts of symptoms, right? And so if people would just listen to folks like you and really just get that mind body spirit connection is real. It is real. Well, I lived it and so I can't deny that. And I can tell you too that one of the things I learned about the mindset and the way that the brain works is called the limbic system.

00:11:15
And that's one of the things that we do in classes. We work on retraining the limbic system because the limbic system is the part of the brain that responds emotionally to threats to your safety and well being. And so when we are chronically ill or when we have a continual threat to our safety and well being COVID anybody? When we have a continual threat to our safety and well being and we respond to that in that emotional way, then the brain gets grooved in that way and becomes conditioned to respond that way over and over and over again. And then it's really difficult to come out of that.

00:12:00
But the good news is we can retrain the brain and it's not that hard to do. And that is one of the things that we work on at the still connection on a regular basis in everything that we do. We have some tools and techniques that we use while we're doing other things for the body, for the soul. We are working on retraining that brain so that limbic system can that overactive limbic system can calm down because it can get chronically turned on, it can get chronically activated and that can cause all kinds of issues in the rest of the body. So I'm amazed at what we've been able to do and the things that we've been able to see in people that have spent time in the Still Connection.

00:12:43
They are just living in that peace that passes understanding that peace that is just beyond what should be. And I love that that is such a fulfilling thing and such a wonderful thing to watch in people well and. Just to know that there's people that are taking control in charge of their own existence. Because this is your life. Yes, right.

00:13:07
And you only get one shot at it in this lifetime anyway. Right. That's right. So what I'm curious about is that limbic system that you were talking about, is that connected to that fight or flight? Yes.

00:13:21
Okay, because that's what I heard. Yes. Because it's in our DNA. Yes. Because we used to have to run from lions, tigers and bears.

00:13:30
Right. And you're in that fighter. Well, now we're not being chased by lions, tigers and bears, but it's all these other big things that we're creating. In our mind and that come at us from social media and the Internet and things along that line. And the amazing thing really is that what we do at the Still Connection is based and done in stillness.

00:13:50
And that is like a bad word in our society. Stillness is like a bad word. It's like a dirty word. We just are trained these days to be very busy. We have to be busy.

00:14:05
I mean, how many times have you heard it? I'm good. I know, it's just I know. Same picture, just listening. I should have showed Monica my phone and I've got the exact same picture of my son and I behind me.

00:14:22
Oh, I love that's. That's like one of the best pictures we've ever taken. And it's four years old, but I don't even care. Plaster that one everywhere. Just saying.

00:14:31
Of course, but how many times you heard people say, how are you? I'm good, just busy. They're just busy. We just have so much going on. And I read recently a quote or a projection about the Internet when it first was invented.

00:14:49
Okay? They projected and predicted that the internet was going to allow people to only have to work 25 hours a week.

00:15:03
Is that not laughable? Can you imagine? Wouldn't that be great? I mean, who does that? All it did was give us the ability to do more faster.

00:15:13
And so we took that and ran with it. And that is causing and wreaking havoc on our brains, our bodies and our souls. Because the Still Connection is based on Psalm 46 Ten, which is a Bible verse, and it says, be still and know that I am God. The Bible and your relationship with God and your spiritual health is meant to be dealt with in stillness. And we just don't do that anymore.

00:15:43
We just can't find the time to do it. And when we do find the time to do it, the brain is flying still because there's so much happening and it's a discipline to get into that calm still place. And when we do that at the still workout, when the still connection excuse me, we use that stillness to not only stay in connection with God, but use that time to work on healing the body using fascia release and working on that limbic system and those anxiety levels with deep breathing and some other wonderful scripture meditation and some other wonderful techniques. So I've just been blown away at how it's worked and I'm amazed by the way we're discovering those connections and how miraculous some of these results have been. I love it.

00:16:37
And keep in mind for those that are listening, if the Bible doesn't resonate with you, I can guarantee you there's a similar phrase in every single religious text that has ever been oh, that's true. Talked about. Because that's at the core of every religion anyway, is that stillness and oneness with your creator, whoever that may be, whatever you call it, whatever you choose to call, that what resonates with you. Yeah. Love it, love it, love it, love it.

00:17:15
So just tell us a little bit about is this a virtual course? How can people do and be a part of the still connection? Sure. So you had first started our website, Thestilconnection.com, and we have a large content video library. I have levels of membership.

00:17:35
Okay. So we have content library is one level. Then we have a level that involves some zoom group zoom calls with me. And then we have a level that involves more personalized work with me and then a level even higher than that. So there's lots of options for really anybody and their budget.

00:17:55
But the beauty is that content library is loaded with videos of all links and going over all kinds of different things. So we have some that are designed to help wake up in the morning, designed to go to sleep at night. We have some that are a full nearly an hour that kind of use every component that we use at all. We have seven components in the still connection, and that's, that scripture, meditation, deep breathing, cognitive training, strength training, posture alignment, fascia release, and stretching. And so we use all seven of those components, but sometimes we'll focus on one over the other.

00:18:41
In fact, I just finished a series called the still series Feet, all about feet, because the feet are the base of the body, the foundation of the body. So we connect that spiritually to what is the foundation that you're building your life on. So while we're working on the feet, we are also working on the foundation that we not only of the body, but where we're building our lives. And so it's a really amazing connection. Love it.

00:19:10
That's fantastic. And yeah, the feet, people don't put enough emphasis on how important they are. That's true. Yeah, that is true. So much happens in the feet and that can affect so many things up the body.

00:19:27
In fact, recently we had someone tell us that she had been working on something on her feet with the tools that we use. And she had had a locked jaw from a miss. Something happened when she had her wisdom teeth pulled and something happened and her jaw was locked and she couldn't open her mouth and she couldn't eat. She was drinking milkshakes every day. The doctors couldn't help her.

00:19:51
She was working on something on her foot, her jaw unlocked. That's the way the body is connected. It's through the fascia system. And when we do that, as we work on the feet and the still series feet, I fully anticipate hearing people talk about other things in the body that release and that find freedom from that chronic pain or whatever might be bothering them. I'm excited about that.

00:20:19
Oh, that's incredible. Wow. Love this. Love this so much. Is there anything else that you want to share with the audience before we close up?

00:20:31
Well, the homework that I give every time I end one of our classes or one of our videos is that everybody's job? The one thing you need to do every single day is belly laugh. Because belly laughing is one of the best things you can do for yourself, one of the best things you can do. And if you don't have a place to do that and you need something to inspire you, you can like us and follow us on Facebook and Instagram at the still connection. And I post funny things all the time designed to make you laugh.

00:21:03
I love it. You made me think before we started recording, I was telling Monica how I just got back from a trip and I was a little stressed last week. And there was one night I was laying in my hotel room. It was my second night there and I didn't sleep. I never sleep well the first night.

00:21:20
So it was the second night and you're in a hotel room. You don't have a lot of choices of things to watch on television. But I happened to see a Melissa McCarthy movie called Spy. I was crying. It was like one of those almost pee your pants kind of laughing, right?

00:21:42
Yes. And that was over and I turned know I was there for a few days. It was Saturday. That's right. Because I ended up watching Saturday night live and again racking up, cracking up hysterically.

00:21:57
And I tell you what, I remember just the next morning calling my husband and we're like, I haven't laughed like that in so long. Oh, it's so important. And it felt so good. It's so good for you. Here's a challenge.

00:22:15
Go google the benefits of belly laughing. It'll shock you how long the list is. It will shock you. I was amazed. I'm like, oh, that's great homework.

00:22:24
I'm going to just give people that homework every day because it is so good for you. It's amazing how good it is for you. It's phenomenal. Go check it out. Oh, my gosh.

00:22:35
I love it. Monica, I love you. You're so amazing. I'm hoping to see you. Are you going to be going to Denver in I can't.

00:22:45
We are leaving on a trip to Israel very shortly after that. Yes. So I'm not going to make it to Denver in October, but I'm planning to go in February. Yeah. I'm not sure if I'm going to go either, just because I just learned today that my son is going to be home for the weekend.

00:23:03
He's in college. This is his fifth year of college. His victory lap, he likes to call it, which is fine. Hey, he's going to graduate. We're good.

00:23:13
I love it. Hey, there's no rush. There's no hurry to be an adult, so great. Yeah, no, don't rush it. But I haven't seen him since the beginning of August, and I normally fly out to Louisville for his birthday weekend, but I was like, babe, this is your fifth year.

00:23:31
I'm like, four years in a row, I've come out for your birthday. I'm like sorry. I'm like I'm sorry. Yeah, that's not happening. But now he's coming for my birthday, so that's even more special.

00:23:46
I won't see him on my birthday, but I'll see him, like, within a week of my birthday, so best birthday present ever. Of course, that would be a stay home thing. I get that. Yeah, I think I may need to reschedule that. But you are so amazing.

00:24:04
Everybody check out thestillconnection.com sign up for her courses. It's amazing. I just love everything you're doing, and I love being surrounded by people like you, who we're all on the same like, we just want to help other people. We just want to help other people.

00:24:26
Love it, love it, love it. All right, my friend, take care. And thank you, everyone for listening today.

00:24:33
Louis, today happy.

00:24:42
I certainly hope that you enjoyed today's interview. Thank you so much for joining me. And as always, I hope that you. And your family are healthy and safe and that your lives are filled with peace, joy, and happiness. Take care.