A different shaped heart conversations about disability awareness
Welcome to A different shaped heart conversations about being awesome with a disability and raising awareness at the same time and absolutely Yes sometimes you have to say F…..CK you to your own mindset and especially your disability!
A different shaped heart conversations about disability awareness
From Brain Injury To Brain Mastery With Hypnosis, NLP, And Energy Medicine
Matt Johnson
A Winning Heart: https://awinningheart.weebly.com. A Winning Heart sponsor: https://melodyclouds.com. Please donate to A Winning Heart by going to Payment Venmo Win1195 at https://venmo.com/. Win Kelly Charles’ Books: https://www.amazon.com/Win-Kelly-Charles/e/B009VNJEKE/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1. Win Kelly Charles' MONAT: https://wincharles.mymonat.com. Flying Has Become Hell for Passengers with Wheelchairs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRntgEiTHIY. PodMatch: https://podmatch.com. Win Charles’ TiTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@a.winning.heart?_t=ZT-8yE9mRvWmz1&_r=1 . Win Charles has given you an exclusive offer of $50 off of delicious chef-prepared meals: https://www.cookunity.com/referral?utm_campaign=wch3003078&utm_source=referral&utm_content=link&promo=wch3003078. How Cdiff changed my life: https://open.substack.com/pub/wcharles622/p/how-cdiff-changed-my-life?r=1baro&utm_medium=ios. A gentle voice: https://blubrry.com/3955765/.
On A Winning Heart today (Monday, November 17, 2025), Best-Selling Author, Win C welcomes Matt Johnson. Matt is a hypnotherapist and NLP coach who turned his recovery journey into powerful methods to help others break free from subconscious blocks. After a devastating brain injury left him living in darkness, Matt discovered that hidden PTSD was sabotaging his healing. By rewiring his subconscious with hypnotherapy and NLP, he not only recovered his health, he developed a method for helping others release deeply rooted emotional baggage and transform their lives. To learn more about Matt visit www.mattjohnsonnlp.com
A single moment on wet rock turned Matt’s life into a blur of pain, darkness, and relentless sensitivity to light and sound. What followed wasn’t a quick fix but a decision—cutting off every path except the one that led back to living. We walk through the gritty reality of traumatic brain injury and the quiet
Everyday AI: Your daily guide to grown with Generative AICan't keep up with AI? We've got you. Everyday AI helps you keep up and get ahead.
Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
Welcome to a different shapes hut, you guys. And today with me I have Matt. And I'm gonna let Matt take it away and share his story.
SPEAKER_00:Hi, I'm Matt Johnson. I am a hypnotist and neurolinguistic programming coach, uh, which is basically helping people work with the operating system of their brains. Uh I got started in this about 10 years ago. I got a severe brain injury. I was hiking at uh Point Loma tide pools here in San Diego when I slipped and landed the back of my head on a slab of solid rock. I hit so hard my brain rebounded, it hit the top of my skull, and I twisted the part with uh above my eyes, my optic nerve and all that badly. I can't even describe the pain I was in. If you've ever been zapped by electricity and felt that intense pins and needles type feeling, that's what was going on in my head. For several years after that, I was so sensitive to light and sound, I couldn't even be in a room with the lights on, it was just too painful. And you know, I had a room I nicknamed my dungeon. I had black hefty bags taped over the windows, and um basically, you know, in in prison they call it solitary confinement, and you know, it's definitely not an easy environment, but I did something on day two sitting in that room uh that got me out of there, and that was I made a decision. Now the word decision comes from the Latin root day, which means from and kaider, which means to cut. I I had uh no clue how I was gonna get out of there, but I just I knew I wouldn't stop until I got out. And so I you know started out going the medical route. I had four different neurologists. The first one told me, you know, there's nothing I could do for you, but then tries to schedule me for a follow-up visit. And I'm you know thinking to myself, you know, why would I come back? There's nothing you could do for me. Just, you know, I didn't say that, but uh just didn't make sense to me. The second one gave me a pill that you know uh maybe worse. I I called him uh the next day and he gave me another one, made me better, took some of that sting away. And so I said, Great, you know, um the pain's at least somewhat gone away. Can you help me sleep? Because I I was having these uh brutal downward spirals where I, you know, the pain would make it harder to sleep, which made the pain worse. And he told me, No, there's nothing I can give you. So on to neuro number three, and uh right away she told me, Oh yeah, let me give you amitrictyline, and it worked. It did the uh did the trick. I'm beyond grateful to my doctors, I would not be where I am without them. The only reason I tell that story is how many people would have stopped with that first one. You know what I mean? And so uh I I went about a year and a half, maybe two years, of just going strictly the medical route. I read every medical study there was out there on healing a brain injury. Um I came up with a three-page document of everything that helped me, you know, every single treatment, everything from amino acids to hyperbaric oxygen. If anyone uh listening to this would like a copy of that, uh let me know. I I also gave a presentation of it to the San Diego Brain Injury Foundation where I go through the the method behind each one of those treatments, and uh I give both away for free. I just you know you email me, I'll give you a Google Drive link. Uh but about that time I realized that I knew more than my neurons did on the tiny little subject of healing a brain injury, which terrified me because I realized that science was not gonna get me out of that room, and so I'd been a skeptic my whole life, but I started thinking, you know, more instead of saying what else is out there, and lucky for me, I live in California, so I had a lot of things to choose from. I started getting into energy medicine and things like that. One of the first things I tried was called Reiki, and I told you I had the pins and needles type feeling in my head that that electricity. The best description I can give was she took those pins and needles and kind of made them fly in formation, if that makes sense. And yeah, it took that sting away. And I'm like, Whoa, I have no idea what you're doing, but please don't stop. So yeah, at the end of that uh session, I asked her, you know, can you teach me how to do this? And so I spent a few days with her, learned Reiki, and I got into pranic healing, qigong, uh civil holistic faith healing, uh basically anything I could find that helped me. I tried to just dive in and you know, uh learn it. And I started to turn the tide. I made it a huge amount of healing over the next couple of years, but I just could not get rid of that light and sound sensitivity. And so at this point, I'm thinking, do I have permanent damage? And so I found a special type of brain scan. Most MRIs just look at the tissue, which doesn't, if you have a brain injury, doesn't really tell you a whole lot. Uh this uh the scan that I count that I found was called a spec done by Dr. Daniel Amen. It actually uh maps the electrical activity in the brain, and so I went and got my scan. Long story short, my brain was okay, but areas that were supposed to be dark were lit up like fireworks, and I was diagnosed with PTSD that day. Okay, I'd had it my entire life or most of my life and never even realized it. And if I hadn't gotten the brain injury, I I never would have even known, most likely. But um, you know, at that I'd known I'd had uh you know severe anxiety issues, and you know, I'd already tried several talk therapists and meds and things like that, and I knew by that point that wasn't the path for me. And lucky for me, I'd seen the incredible power of hypnosis when it helped my dad quit smoking. You know, he tried to quit for over 30 years, and you know, pills, patches, gums, you name it, failed every single time until he got hypnotized. After one session, he told me never even crave cigarettes again. Now, you know, this is one of the toughest addictions there is is wipe it right out. And I was also familiar with uh neurolinguistic programming or NLP from a guy named Tony Robbins. And Tony famously had a woman that had 152 different personalities, and he was actually able to integrate her right there on the spot in about 45 minutes. That's the hourless stuff. And so you know I uh went to uh you know NLP and hypnosis school, wound up getting quadruple certified, uh, asked every single instructor I had, you know, the exact same question, how do you heal PTSD? And they all tried to help me, but none of them really had the answer. And so I, you know, I went back to digging and I spent another two and a half years just binging, you know, hypnosis and NLP courses, and I finally put together uh a protocol that uh I was able to heal myself, and I found my calling in the process. I I love this stuff, and you know, again, the the brain injury, I I definitely don't want another one, but it it gave me an incredible gift because I you know I was on the wrong path in life until I got it, and it it showed me what I'm supposed to be doing.
SPEAKER_01:So long-winded answer to tell me about yourself, but that's and that's okay, but I um can ask you this when you say what you are on the wrong path in life, before the brain injury, what were you doing?
SPEAKER_00:I was in tech and I I did cybersecurity for uh uh almost 20 years, and you know, it was it was a living, it wasn't you know something I really uh you know aspired to be. It just kind of just kind of fell on that career path, you know what I mean, like a lot of people do. And so the injury really gave me no choice but to but to heal myself.
SPEAKER_01:And so you I know you said you have a TBI, but um how did you exactly get the TBI? You said that you were hiking.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, I I slipped and landed the back uh my feet came out from under me, and instead of learning landing on my rear, I landed the back of my head on a rock. Yeah. Ow. Yeah, yeah. That's what I said.
SPEAKER_01:Did you see um did you see stars or did oh yeah, you black out?
SPEAKER_00:I you know, when I came to, I couldn't open my physically could not open my eyes for about 20 minutes. And you know, um, yeah, I got taken to the hospital and all that, but yeah, yeah, yeah. I was in bad shape for years after that.
SPEAKER_01:So what would you say now to people that have are listening to this that have new traumatic brain injuries that are newly injured with a traumatic brain injury?
SPEAKER_00:First thing you have to do is decide. Um, like I said, you know, when you decide you cut off any other possibility. I, you know, I had no clue how I was gonna get myself out of there. I just knew I wasn't gonna stop until I found the answer, and that took me, you know, several different ways to to finally make it make it back to living my life again. Um for me, you know, my my kids were still fairly small, and I I wanted to get back out and be a part of their life. You know, I I could hear them outside the door, but I you know I wasn't a dad the way I wanted to be. And um that really is what gave me the the motivation to keep trying. You know, we'll we'll do more for other people than we will ourselves sometimes, and that was probably the case here. Yeah, but um it's when you decide like that, it it that's the difference between you know going to that first neurologist and saying, Oh, well, you know, he can't help me, there's nothing that can be done versus all right, you don't have my answer, who does? You know what I mean? And that's you know, I asked that question so many times uh over those years, and you know, it was never uh a straight process, it was you know a lot of bumps and you know bruises along the way and um a lot of you know uh things that didn't work, but uh until I came up with the system that did.
SPEAKER_01:Now, if um people want to get that report you mentioned earlier, how can they get it? Do they go to your website? Do they click on a special link?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, you can um uh you can go to my website and um it it's uh the link will be up there.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So it's public link. They don't need to sign in, they don't need to do any of that.
SPEAKER_00:I'll tell you what, I will give you a special link for the show notes so they don't need a sign in or anything like that. Um please. But um would you like me to do it right now?
SPEAKER_01:Um you can just email you can just text it to me and I'll put it.
SPEAKER_00:I'll give you the link to the Google Drive so nobody has to sign in or anything like that, and they can just access it all they like.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, because that's amazing that you um healed your own brain. And so to this and when was the injury? This was 2016. So do you still feel adverse effects from the injury um today?
SPEAKER_00:Sometimes. As long as usually as long as I keep my sleep uh dialed in pretty well, I'm okay. Um, there are some days that you know I you know I do feel the effects, but um they're tiny compared to what they used to be. You know, I'm I'm I would guess I'm probably around 95% healed, something like that.
SPEAKER_01:Wow, congratulations. Thank you. And as we said, go seek medical help. But as Matt said, also you need to decide for yourself.
SPEAKER_00:Be in the driver's seat, but yeah, definitely get the medical help you need. You know, if you get a brain injury, you gotta get a CT scan that day, you know what I mean, just to make sure you don't have a brain or anything like that. But yeah, yeah, listen to your doctors, you know. Uh but if you know, if what they're doing uh doesn't work for you, or um if they if you ask them for help and they can't give it to you, then you know, start looking around for all right, you don't have my answer, who does?
SPEAKER_01:And who does? Yeah, yeah. The pal of Google, the pal of uh Google Basically, yeah. The pal uh the pal of Facebook groups locally. I mean, I'm down here in Phoenix, Arizona, with the Mayor Clinic five minutes away from my house. So yeah, if I um if I had a trailer, I would go to the mayor clinic. But yes, sometimes I people that know me in real life and people that know this podcast know that I have advocates to help me, know that I'm my own advocate. Sometimes I get called impatient insist, and I get called the terrible patient because I know what I want.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yes, exactly. Yeah, it's we have a thing in our culture where you know if somebody's got the lab coat and the piece of paper on the wall, what they saw what they say goes for a lot of people.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_00:The the whole reason I told that story is you know, the those people that I went to, they all had the same, you know, basically the same piece of paper, probably from different schools, but they're all neurologists, and you know, they but they all had different pieces of the puzzle, you know what I mean. The first guy, you know, had never dealt with a brain injury before, that was pretty obvious. Second guy had the the third one, you know, knew a lot more than the first two. So it's again, it's it's listening to your doctors doing you know what's medically necessary always, but you know, it um if that's not working, if that's not getting you where you want to go, then you you can listen to your gut. Yeah, especially if you're dealing with something, you know, you know, really big medical challenge, you know what I mean? You've got to take control of it and say, all right, here's where I'm going, you know, who can get me there? And you you just keep going until you find, you know, the right people, the right answers.
SPEAKER_01:It's so funny because I'm dealing with an injury, my um leg craps underneath me because I have zip palsy. And I um now as a result have to get uh have to, I want to get a full hip replacement, but in and out citizens patient insisted on a full hip replacement. No, a full hip replacement is the best option, and I knew that from the get-go. So sometimes you have to trust your own gut.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, absolutely. And you know, it's one of the things here in the states, um, you know, we were very dialed into Western medicine. And it when you've got an acute type situation like that, you've you've you know you've got a busted hip or something like that, yeah, they're the best game there is. But if you've got something chronic or things like that, I highly encourage people to check out energy medicine qigong. Yeah, the fountain of youth, it is phenomenal. Um, you know, chronic healing, all that, it's your body is an electrical device. When the electricity stops running through your body is when you take a dirt nap. And anything that anything that you know impedes that electricity, which you can get blockages and things like that all the time, uh it's gonna, you know, it's gonna harm wherever you know you've got that blockage. And you know, Eastern medicine, you know, very much, you know, you know, qigong, chronic healing, you know, even acupuncture, it's all about opening up the those uh they call them meridians, they're basically the electrical line. Yeah, but yeah. Um I'd never been into that kind of thing before. I you know, I was in desperation mode and and tried it, and I was uh blown away by you know how much it helped.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly, exactly. Um and and I was gonna say um the body knows how to heal itself.
SPEAKER_00:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:I have many fallen objects in my body, you guys know that I know. Um, but the body knows how to heal itself, and it's interesting because once you put a fallen object in my body, a little bit of a movement, a little bit of TLC, the body does the rest of the healing, and so the body knows how to heal itself given time, given the appropriate attention.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, absolutely. And I I would add to that, you know, I I told you I would I'm a geek on the subconscious. Um your subconscious is is what runs all that, it controls everything. You don't have to think about your breathing, heartbeat, body temperature, how much insulin you create after a meal, all that. And it also controls that healing process. And just to give you an idea of the power of the subconscious, I the research has shown that you know it can reprogram your DNA, literally. Uh Bruce, uh Dr. Bruce Lipton in Biology Belief. And uh back way back in the day, Dr. Bernie Siegel from Yale did some really fascinating research with multiple personality disorder, where he saw patients' eye color change, and physical markings, scars, and things would disappear and reappear depending on what personality was coming through. That's how powerful your subconscious is. Um, we we've all heard about the placebo effect, and you know, it it's been shown to have up a up to a 70% cure rate in clinical drug trials when patients are getting nothing but a sugar pill, just the belief that they're getting something is usually, you know, not usually, but a lot of times enough to actually heal, you know, whatever the malady is. But um the more I learn about it, the more I'm just you know uh astounded by how how powerful the subconscious mind is. I I remember, you know, when I was sitting in a dark dungeon. If you've ever seen that movie, The Secret, somebody sent this to me, you know, after I got my injury. But um there was a guy who was in a plane crash, all he could do was blink his eyes, and that that's the way he communicated. Uh, and he told the nurses that way, I'm gonna walk out of here. And they're like, Yeah, right, you're never getting out of this bed. He walked out of there, and it's just you know, he started just by breathing deep and you know, um you know, working the one thing that he could control and just gradually expanded, you know, one of you know, baby steps, putting one foot in front of the other. Yeah, but yeah, yeah, that's that's the incredible power you have at your disposal. It's just you know, that power can be negative and work against you, or you can harness it and and really, you know, do things that will astound you.
SPEAKER_01:Sometimes I think it's mind of a man.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:It is mind of Amanda. And as we end this fabulous interview, where can people find you? Where could people get a hold of you if they choose to do so?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, sure. It's uh my website is Matt Johnson N L P. That's M-A-T-T-J-O-C-N-S-O-N-N-LP. Uh, I help, you know, I told you I, you know, I healed my PTSD. Um, I help people with you know mental emotional baggage, things like that. You know, if anybody's got questions about brain injuries, things like that, I'm I'm more than you know open to helping you out. Uh Wynn, I'll send you those links uh to uh to the document to the presentation. So uh you can put those in the show notes if you like.
SPEAKER_01:And yeah. And Matt, I know you have questions for me.
SPEAKER_00:Uh what would you say, um what would you say has been a gift in in in your journey and your, you know, I I know you have cerebral uh palsy. I I've worked with people like you know, I've worked with dyslexics and things like that. I mean, some of the most famous people you can think of have been dyslexic, you know, Da Vinci, Walt Disney, Richard Branson, uh, you know, uh, you've if you've seen that Ray Charles movie, you know what I mean? He incredible music talent, probably because he was blind, you know what I mean? So, I mean, what has been, you know, the superpower or the you know the silver lining behind what you've gone through?
SPEAKER_01:The superpower. Um, people think that I always people think that I will always have a negative attitude. Why me? Why do I have a disability? Why do I need a hip replacement? So on and so forth. But the truth is I try my hardest to keep a positive attitude. Yes, it's pain some days, and other days it's perfectly fine. But I tried my hardest to keep a positive attitude towards everything.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that is so important because you know that that literally shapes your biochemistry. You know what I mean? It's you know, when you've got negative emotions uh going on in your nervous system, your body literally becomes more acidic, and which makes your, you know, makes you more vertical, basically. And breaks you down. So keeping that positive attitude is is huge. Um, I I'm gonna date myself here. I I remember, you know, back in the early 1980s, my parents got us a uh one of those Atari 2600 video games, and it had a switch on it for novice versus expert mode. And if you put on expert mode, a game that made the game way harder for you in some way. Um I I have a belief that life is kind of like that. You know, the some of us come in here in expert mode, and you know, it's it just if you know I'm fascinated by it, and I I have so much admiration for you know everybody who comes through uh life that way. I I truly believe you're you're here to learn something special or you know, leave something special, and you know, I I applaud you for everything you're doing.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I appreciate that now, and I'm coming to find out that my gift followed me down to Arizona, it's now following me into rehab in the hospital where I'm going to continue doing content. I just won't do it in the hospital per se because hospital wife I is icky. But um I really feel like my gift followed me, my job, and then my gift followed me down to Arizona.
SPEAKER_00:I believe that. Absolutely. Yeah, I just like I said, I I admire what you're doing so much. Uh it's you're an inspiration to a lot of people. You're you're showing what's possible.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I appreciate that. And as we wrap this interview up, you guys, I hope that you enjoyed another fabulous interview, and I certainly did. And if you want to reach out to Matt, please do. We'll have all that information in the show notes, plus his presentation that he did to the um the uh San Diego Brain Injury Foundation. San Diego Brain Injury Foundation. And that's awesome. And if you look up support groups for brain injuries, there's a ton of them, including probably here in Arizona. I know that um the Bells Neurological Clinic here in Phoenix has one. I just Google brain injuries board groups. And because you're not alone in this journey, you're definitely not alone. And so if you want to reach out to Matt, please do. We'll have all his information in the show notes. And I hope you guys enjoyed and also have to listen to you. Thanks to you guys. Bye you guys.
