133: Live Your Mission, Part 2 with Matthew Stensland-Bos

00:00:00 Chazmith: Hi. Welcome to Our Power Is Within Podcast. I'm your host Chazsmith, and my mission for this podcast is to inspire you to take your power back and realize that you are the healer that you've been looking for all along. We are all capable of healing in mind, in body, and in soul. 

00:00:25 Chazmith: Before I introduce today's guest, I was actually excited to share with you that this episode is brought to you by CFS School, founded by Jen Mann and Cardin Rabin. If you're not familiar with Jen and Cardin, check out recent episode 119 where I get to pick their brains, hear about their personal health and healing journeys, and discover how CFS school was birthed. CFS school is a nervous system healing program including an integrative brain retraining approach, polyvagal therapeutics, trauma resolution techniques such as somatic experiencing tools and inner child work and parts work. It is designed to help guide, support and empower you on your self-healing journey to heal from a variety of mind body disorders, some including chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, pots, autoimmune disorders, sensitivities, and more. There is a self-study option that is perfect for people who want to go at their own pace. While the program is set up in 12 modules, I personally found it super helpful to tune into what felt most supportive and spend more than one week on some modules where I really wanted extra practice. However, if you are someone who wants more guidance and live support, sign up soon for discovery call for the next live cohort, which begins at the end of June. Links in the show notes. 

00:01:40 Chazmith: Okay, so our guest today is actually a repeat guest who is back for round two. Matthew [Stensenboss] and I had so much fun chatting the first time and I had such amazing feedback from so many of you that I knew I needed to have him come back for another juicy chat. Today we dive into a combination of some questions that were submitted by listeners as well as most commonly asked questions that he receives as a neuroplasticity coach. And we even touch base on things like what he has learned over the past couple years through his personal coaching experience. What a fun chat. I love this guy. I love his thought process and how he explains stuff. So I think we're all in for a treat. Enjoy. 

00:02:26 Chazmith: Matthew, thank you so much for being back with me for round two. 

00:02:29 Matthew: Hey, thanks for having me.

00:02:29 Chazmith: Yeah, I'm really excited. We had such a great chat the first time around, so I look forward to today.

00:02:34 Matthew: Me, too. It's gonna be a lot of fun.

00:02:36 Chazmith: Yeah. So we're gonna dive right in. So the last time that you joined me on the podcast, we were mostly focusing on your personal recovery story. So it was like our testimonial story where you shared a lot about your experience personally and what you learned along the way, the challenges and struggles you had and how you overcame them through that whole process, which I believe, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, you navigated your healing journey for several years, right? It was a quite a long journey.

00:03:07 Matthew: Correct. Before I found the brain retraining tools I needed. I've been doing it for, I don't know, almost 15 years depending on where you put the beginning marker. And then once I put the right tools together and started to move forward, finally it still took me several years. I don't know, maybe three and a half depending on where I put that marker. Because for a lot of people it's not like an absolute obvious demarcation point of this is done now, but yesterday it wasn't done. You know what I mean?

00:03:36 Chazmith: Right. Yeah. I know that when we talked you were kind of at the beginning of your coaching practice, you were just starting to immerse yourself into the other side of the spectrum which was actually coaching and helping to be a guide for other people along their healing journeys. Correct?

00:03:54 Matthew: I'm not sure how far I was into it at that point. I don't remember when we talked, but I'm now about three years into it, so yeah.

00:04:02 Chazmith: Yeah, it's been a while since we talked for sure. So you've definitely got a lot of experience under your belt since the last time we talked with coaching and helping other people, which is really awesome. We're gonna kind of get into that and we're gonna definitely go into what you've learned through being a coach and being a witness to other people's experiences. But for starters, I just wanna actually do a check-in and see in the past, let's say year or so, year and a half, what you have encountered in the line of any challenges, like if you've had any new acute symptoms or just potentially any sickness or even just any emotional or mental challenges along the way since we've last talked and how you navigate these challenges or these tough times?

00:04:48 Matthew: That's a great question. As I was saying to you before the podcast today, I don't know if it was COVID or if it was a cold, but I got a nice old immune response a week or so ago, you know, complete with body chills and nice cough and wanting to sleep a lot. And that was really cool because it just seems like my immune system works beautifully and I get one of those every so often maybe every year or so. I do a lot of playing piano at nursing homes and restaurants. So then I end up being exposed to different things and my immune system works really well now.

00:05:23 Chazmith: Can I ask you a question first?

00:05:24 Matthew: Yeah, please do.

00:05:25 Chazmith: I don't know how you reacted before mentally or emotionally when you would get "sick" or have these types of healing phases, but now compared to before, how do you feel that you're able to respond emotionally? When you experiencing something like a cold or an illness, do you just welcome it and do you have any fear around it or just overall, what's your mental state when you have something like this that you encounter?

00:05:55 Matthew: It's not a big deal. I don't really change too much. I just rest a little extra if I'm like, try not to expose myself to people if they're, you know, if I'm in that state. But not too much changes for me. I don't enjoy it. I don't enjoy being sick, but it doesn't scare me. It's just more of like, "Ah, come on, I don't wanna deal with this right now."

00:06:14 Chazmith: Right. No one wants to deal with those symptoms, but you don't have a fear that it's gonna linger or last like it did once before in your life.

00:06:23 Matthew: I don't know if I can speak for everybody, but I would say anybody who's been really, really, really low, that thought comes up. The difference is though, does that thought come up in the background and you're like, "Nah, I'm good," or does that thought come up and you let it run wild? And the thought came up for me, but I was like, "No, that's not gonna happen." I've had other times where I've picked something up and then give me a little time and I'm good again.

00:06:46 Chazmith: I love that. Yeah, because there was probably, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, a point in your life in your sickest days where if something else showed up, there was probably a lot of fear around whether or not that was gonna be the next chronic thing you experienced.

00:07:00 Matthew: Oh yeah, for sure. I don't know how much we want to get into symptoms. Maybe it's all good. I remember right before I started retraining, I picked something up and I didn't leave the bedroom for three weeks, hardly did anything for six weeks. And when I say hardly did anything, I mean literally like did nothing. I still remember that, but it's like difference between an emotionally traumatic memory that's imprinted on my nervous system versus a thing that happened that makes me aware but not scared, just like a, oh my eyes on that. I see that. That's interesting. And I'm good.

00:07:38 Chazmith: That is awesome because that just shows a testament to how far you've come, which is wonderful because I know myself included so many of us, how easy it can be after suffering for so many years and then finally feeling better when you have something happen. It could potentially send you into a emotional spiral of fear if you aren't able to discern the way you were and just notice that fear sensation arising and then reminding yourself that you're not where you used to be and that this outcome does not need to be a repeat of your past.

00:08:13 Matthew: For sure. It's like I've said to people before that once you get to a certain point in retraining, and I don't know exactly where this point came for me, maybe it was two years in, there was just no way that I could go back. It wasn't even a matter of I'm not willing to go back, I won't do it. It was like that old pathway just wasn't there anymore. And there's like, you know, a phantom limb. I could still feel where it used to be, but I couldn't use it.

00:08:39 Chazmith: I love that. Okay, well then I'm gonna ask you the next question. They say, I don't know if you've ever heard this expression, but I don't know the exact expression, but it's along the lines of when somebody teaches, they also learn or the teacher is also the student, right? Have you heard that?

00:08:58 Matthew: Yeah, absolutely.

00:09:00 Chazmith: Right. So you are a coach and you help guide and support many people on their recovery journeys. So I'm curious to know what ways your experience of being a coach has helped you be a student and what you've learned through these past three years of coaching, either through your own challenges or triggers that may have shown up for you in that coaching arena, and also, what you have seen and learned through being an intimate witness of other people's experiences.

00:09:36 Matthew: Those are great questions. One of the things that I've noticed is just how incredibly resilient people are. Getting to see it through sort of outside eyes reminds me like, "Wow, we've all really done something Herculean by managing to pick ourselves up and get through this and move forward." But there was a part of your question earlier on that I wanted to address, and I don't remember what it was, but you were asking what have I picked up along the way? What has helped me as I've taught people in my own journey? One thing that I guess that's been a theme in the last two years has been because you know, I'm doing a lot of stuff, not just normal people stuff, but I'm like full-time plus I play piano everywhere. I'm coaching people, I'm preparing all these different things. I've definitely learned how to apply the tools more and more to ideal living instead of just avoiding symptoms. Because when you're really, really, really sick and you get to the point where you're just able to function, that feels like Christmas every day. But then you get to a point where you start to realize, oh, I can thrive more, I can enjoy more, I can be present more and I can have more balance and alignment. And so I've kind of learned how to say if something comes to me, just because it's in front of me doesn't mean I have to do it. Just because it's in front of me doesn't mean that that's a requirement. I can say no, I'm actually gonna wait for something better or I'm gonna do this, but I'm gonna do it my way. That's definitely something that I've picked up and I've definitely learned some of that from watching how my clients have gone about their process. 'Cuz my process was very much like grind through it, blast through walls, even if I was dizzy and bleeding, metaphorically speaking. And some other people's process has been more like, I'm just more graceful I guess, is how I've seen other people do it. And that's been inspiring.

00:11:37 Chazmith: Yeah. Yeah, that's definitely one element I think that makes a lot of sense. Can you think of any other examples of ways that you have learned through witnessing other people's experiences? Anything pertaining at all to the whole healing journey?

00:11:54 Matthew: I'm sure I'm gonna think of something right after we get off, so I'm gonna just invite that in right now. Let's see. I've been really just shown again and again how much connection and alignment are so vital in this journey. I've seen how clients who don't have any support or not a lot of support, how they struggle more. And for anybody who's listening, who's feeling like they're not very well supported, don't worry, you can still retrain. But I definitely see how even little connections, even like having one friend that you can talk to over the phone, how much of a difference that makes. And even more so when there's somebody who's able to hug you or just hold space for you, that's massive. And just watching how important it is for people to kind of feel that they can make their own choices and determine where they want to go, but the healing journeys in their hands instead of it being this outside prescribed path they have to follow. That was definitely the case for me in my journey. And then seeing it again and again with clients just highlights how that stuff, especially the alignment, is almost more important than specifically the details of how you go about retraining sometimes.

00:13:08 Chazmith: Right. Yeah, that makes so much sense. Now as far as sticking with this theme of being the student, as you are the teacher in your own personal life, what ways have people that you've coached potentially mirrored or reflected within you opportunities for continued growth? And what I mean by this is as a coach, has there been times where you have had your own triggers arise, or not even necessarily triggers just having reflected upon you opportunities for you to grow to the next level through learning how to coach and help navigate and hold space for other people, if that makes sense. You know, like learning where you didn't have enough boundaries and you needed to start honoring boundaries around your coaching practice, learning what was the right balance for you in saying yes, for saying no or how much to take on? Or even just having say somebody talking about something that you noticed still kind of lit something up inside of you or triggered you in some capacity. Does all that make sense?

00:14:22 Matthew: Yeah, yeah it does. I can't remember the last time I was triggered by a client. It's probably been a couple years at least. But as far as like opportunities for growth, like I was saying, just that learning that sense of oh, okay, just because I'm well now doesn't mean that I flipped the switch back to, all right, well I'm gonna do everything all the time and ignore my alignment. Because you can end up getting into that push mode where you're not gonna get violently ill, but you're just not gonna have as high of a quality of life. So I definitely have had to learn what my boundaries are in terms of not so much overgiving but being on it too much of my time. Like if I get a text from a client I'm very passionate about, like I want to be there, but I'm like, okay, sometimes on a Sunday I gotta leave my phone alone. That kind of stuff because it's not productive if we're spending all of our time giving and not putting anything into, I wouldn't even say recharging cuz that suggests that we're depleted. I'm more like growing other things, nurturing other things. And so for me an example of that is playing piano for fun, not just to perform or going on walks that have no set timeframe, that kind of thing.

00:15:40 Chazmith: Yeah, play.

00:15:41 Matthew: Yeah, exactly.

00:15:42 Chazmith: Following your own joy. And I was asked that too and I get what you're saying because the thing is that sometimes when we are pursuing something that we love and are genuinely passionate about and enjoy, which it sounds to me like you as a coach are passionate about coaching and you probably experience a high level of joy and satisfaction in helping and supporting people and it can be so easy sometimes to really immerse ourself in something when we do experience that. But also remembering that there's so many other things that also do bring joy and our elements of play and part of our purpose that are separate from that element. And I don't know if you've ever encountered finding it challenging to sometimes balance that because you can just get so caught up in the one thing.

00:16:32 Matthew: Yeah, absolutely. I tend to get kind of narrowly focused, but that's part of the reason I don't just coach playing piano a lot, even for work, it helps me so that I put one thing down and stop obsessing 'cuz I, I'm pretty good at obsessing 

00:16:50 Chazmith: Uh-huh. I love that and I relate, I was talking to somebody else on another episode about how when I get into something, especially if it's a creative outlet, you know, I can get so immersed in it and I have to remember that while I am experiencing a level of joy in the immersion, I also know that I can sacrifice sometimes other things that are also very valuable and important. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. It's good that you are committed to multiple different things that you know will help create that balance

00:17:21 Matthew: For sure. And I find that take coaching for example, your answers start to get very narrowly focused because you get into a rut of same problems, same things, but like when you have something else that you draw from in your life, you have more freshness to bring and then your answers are more spontaneous and the space you hold is more real. And I find that's important. 

00:17:43 Chazmith: Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so you kind of already mentioned one aspect of the question I'm about to ask, which is you talked about how connection and alignment are so important for healing and how you've noticed that clients who don't have support can often struggle a bit more. Now I'm curious to know if through this three year experience, if you've seen other patterns amongst clients in terms of what patterns do you witness that you notice in the clients that have really great results that stand out to you? First, what do you often see as a pattern within the dynamic of people who might not have as much of a deeper level of healing or who struggle or are a little bit more challenged in reaching the level of healing that they desire?

00:18:39 Matthew: This is a great question. One that I've been thinking about a lot lately. I could go on for an hour about this, but I'll name a few of them. One is what I'd call uniqueness in a bad way or terminal uniqueness. I would say 80% of the people that I work with, at least at some point. And some people it's literally every call they have this thinking that's like, well if I have this, I can't heal 'cuz this is different. Other people heal because they had this and it goes down to the micro detail. Like I could tell them, oh, so you're a middle-aged man from the east coast who grew up in a middle class family and has gotten these 10 specific diagnoses and you've been healing for this specific amount of time. And I could show them a person with those exact details like to the T and they'd still come up with a reason why they're different. That chronic uniqueness is a really bad thing in the sense that it stops people from healing because you're just looking for reasons why you can't heal. And the truth is that brain retraining can help anything. Like I don't even care if you're dealing with a broken leg. I'm not saying brain retraining is all you need to heal a broken leg, but like let's say you're living in severe chronic stress and you break your leg. This happened to some friend's mother recently, a couple years ago she broke her ankle and she was under so much stress that she did all the right things physically, but it wasn't healing because she was under too much stress and nutritionally, you know, she wasn't taking things in 'cuz she was under all that stress. So even then the brain retraining matters. So wrapping that back around, it doesn't matter what people are dealing with, this will help and quite possibly be the solution. And you're not special and that's a good thing that you're not special. You need to look for the reasons why you're actually like other people who've healed, not different. Another big thing I see is people at some point, it might be three months in, it might be six months in, it might even be two years in, but they quit. They quit either completely or they quit showing up consistently and they start just kind of saying, ah, it's not changing, it's not working and they quit too soon. Or they kind of slack on it. And that's a big mistake because plateaus are very normal. Having periods where it seems like nothing's changing is very normal and if you stop doing the practices, you're just gonna end up stopping your progress. And I wanna say that it's very natural to feel kind of down if you're two years in, you feel like not much has changed. But it's a very dynamic process and for me the process wasn't like, oh I feel great. Oh then I had a setback and I don't feel great. It was mostly I feel terrible or I feel kind of okay for multiple years and I had to just say, Nope, I'm gonna keep doing this, I'm gonna keep going no matter what it takes. And that kind of ties in with gotta believe that you have the power to change this victimhood or on a subtler level, just feeling powerless is a dream killer. You may not have power over everything right now, but you have power over something. Another one I see is a lot of times people want to wait for things to be perfect. They take this idea that they've gotten from especially something like DNRS where they believe they need to be totally calm and totally ready to do something. They need to retrain on this for six months. All the conditions need to be perfect. I'm not saying that if that's working for you, great, keep going. But like I find more often than not that people need to get to where they've got just enough foundation to hold themselves and then just go, just go do it. Because otherwise you could be waiting around forever for that perfect moment. I think I mentioned the first time I was on that I was rarely if ever calm and happy in preparation for something that I was gonna do. Mostly it was just I could manage it and managing it over and over and over and just plowing through it and saying, I'm gonna do this in an aligned way as best I can, but whatever I can't do aligned, I'm gonna show my limbic brain that it's okay. I ended up doing things that I would've probably waited years to do at best if I'd waited for. Perfect. So those are a few I could go on for a long time on that.

00:23:07 Chazmith: No, these are great examples and we're gonna talk about a couple of them. So regarding the chronic uniqueness, do you have any sense of why we adopt this mentality? Because it doesn't really serve us and I've witnessed it with so many people and I am guilty of having sometimes had the thought come up and I do feel that I'm at a place, a good place where it can quickly dissipate. It doesn't hold power over me. But why do we adopt this even after we hear five testimonials, 10 testimonials, 20 testimonials about people who've recovered from similar symptoms. But we rather than focusing on the similarities and using that as evidence of what's possible, we can zoom in on the one characteristics that's different and hold and grip that as the reason we are unique and we can't heal, it wouldn't help us. Why?

00:26:41 Matthew: That's a great question. And my answer would be it ties into the same reason people get sick in the first place. It's that limbic brain trying to protect us. And you could say that the protection is because everything is perceived as a threat, including opening yourself up to disappointment. Because if you think about how painful it can be, if you say yes, I'm going to heal, I'm gonna believe and then comes and hit you in the face again, most people have been through that, some people have been through it for many, many years. And even that the limbic brain may try to protect against so in a certain limbic way, it makes sense I should say.

00:27:31 Chazmith: Yeah. Not wanting that to get the hopes up again and only to be let down again.

00:27:37 Matthew: Yeah. And also just beyond that, I've sometimes unfortunately looked at different community spaces where people not only don't think brain retraining works, but will violently and practically foaming at the mouth swear that Annie Hopper is satanic and brain retraining is a filthy lie that will make people sick. And so, you know, some people if they do it wrong, they can find themselves in a worse place. And I think that's also something people are a little bit scared of. They don't want to get worse, I guess I understand that.

00:28:20 Chazmith: I've never heard anybody talk out of it. I've heard people that don't really know much about it or understand it or who haven't given it a fair chance or done enough research and seen enough testimonials to trust the system. But I've never heard anyone like badmouthed who knew what it was. That's so intriguing. My guess. I'm just lucky enough to not be a part of any of those communities.

00:28:46 Matthew: I went and sought out a couple just because I wanted to see if there were spaces where people could use some illumination on these topics. And then I realized very, very quickly nobody wants them in there. If you ever wanna have a little fun with that, and I don't really mean fun, I mean kind of a not so fun, go to the chronic illness subreddit and tell them how much you love brain retraining and see how many people will attack you. It's kind of crazy.

00:29:18 Chazmith: Well do you think some of that comes from the other thing you mentioned, which is people wanting to stay victims because it's easier sometimes to be in these communities where you just bitch and moan and complain and whine about what you're going through. And the common denominator in the way people in these groups relate to one another is through their victimhood, but because they're not at a place where they want a solution in a sense like they do, obviously we, no one wants to be sick, but there's some element within them in some part probably unconscious that is getting a secondary gain out of the experience where there maybe if you go and say, Hey, there's things that can help you and I can show you the way they're like, no, we don't want you to show us the way you're wrong. That's aren't things. And I don't know if it's part of tied into the victim mentality.

00:30:15 Matthew: It absolutely is because the victim mentality to me is a spectrum. It can be all the way from the very obvious, like everybody hates me, the world's against me, nothing ever goes my way. That's like the really obvious victim mentality. But it can go all the way to, ah, it's probably not gonna work. I don't know if there's anything I can do. So it's human right, at least to some level. But I do think, I know for a fact actually that a lot of people, they are getting a need met through being sick. And that doesn't mean they're choosing it, but it does mean it's hard to let it go because what if you open yourself to the idea that it's actually at least somewhat in your power, what happens then? Then you open yourself to the idea that if you can't do it in some way, it's your fault. And that's not quite correct, but it's a lot simpler. It's a lot easier for people to say, well it's outta my hands, it's not my fault. It's something else's fault that's not quite as scary. Cuz what if it's in your hands but you can't do it? You don't have the

00:31:32 Chazmith: Power, right? Well you do have the power, you just don't know you have the power or you don't tap into that power.

00:31:38 Matthew: Right? And I mean that's kind of their thinking on some level is what if it's in my power but I still can't do it.

00:31:47 Chazmith: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I can see that. So the other thing you mentioned too, which I wanted to touch base on is that people quit before the magic happens. That was not your verbatim, but that was the notes I took. They quit prematurely. That's real because especially I think sometimes in the community there are people who have really high levels of healing and success in a very short amount of time. And sometimes I think we place this expectation on ourselves that we quote unquote should also be able to have these healings and relief in a short amount of time. And when we don't, we start to feel like it's not working or yeah, we're wasting our time or what is this all for? But we never know when we could be like right around the corner from a massive breakthrough. So we know, I know you know that more often than not the actual symptoms in the body are absolutely not an indicator of whether or not healing is happening at a deeper level. And they're usually an often and can be the last element to disappear in that experience. And so sometimes we also know through doing brain retraining that you can get worse before you get better. And so yeah, it is a disservice for somebody to quit prematurely. And I know I have a personal friend, she's a great, great, great friend and she has been doing brain retraining, but you know also using other self-healing tools for many, many years and by any standard most people would look and say, why are you still doing that? It's obviously not working. And yet after many, many years I've suddenly begun to watch her entire life transform and she is having and witnessing such profound levels of healing and suddenly being able to open up and broaden her life so much. And I think what if she listened to all the naysayers? What if she quit six months ago and said, I give up. None of this is working when that massive breakthrough was right around the corner.

00:34:14 Matthew: That's such a great example. I appreciate you sharing that because I'll mention this just as a side note, I tend to work with the people who have been at this a while. It's not to say I haven't worked with any newbies, but I tend to work with the people who are kind of at their wits end and have been stuck for a while. And they also have that impression that like, well I didn't get any better after six months. And all these video testimonials showed people getting better after six months or a year. I actually think that's more the exception. There's plenty of people who do that. But I would say for people who are more than just like I got sick all of a sudden a few months ago and before that I was fine with people like in my case where it was like a long, long process. I don't actually know if I've met anybody who just magically all of a sudden overnight got better. It was more of at least a couple years in most cases. And just realizing that it can be a little bit depressing if you're standing at the beginning of this journey and thinking, oh my God, I gotta go through two years of this or whatever it is. And I don't know what the timetable's gonna be, but it's better to think that than to think, well if I don't get better after six months or a year, it's just not working. That's just not true. There were symptoms that I had two and a half years in, I was like, what's going on with this? I shouldn't still be experiencing this. But I was so committed at that point out of sheer stubbornness that I was like, fuck it, I'm not gonna let this stop me. And then eventually those things, they just disappear, but you don't know how long it's gonna take.

00:36:02 Chazmith: Yeah. And had you just quit, you wouldn't have had those experiences of breakthrough. So just as a little side note, I can't quite remember all the details of when we first talked, we're talking primarily about brain retraining and I know that's what you also did. I did find you through the DN r s community. But in this three plus year span that you were really focused on your healing, did you strictly do brain retraining or did you tie in and incorporate other self-healing modalities and supportive tools as well?

00:36:45 Matthew: You asked great questions. One of the signs of a great interviewer is when it makes the person think about things they wouldn't have otherwise thought about. And it gets to bring it into more engaging topics. So I appreciate that. So initially I was obsessively focused only on brain retraining. And the only things I did along with that were like maybe some vagal toning type stuff and trying to  take steps in terms of my purpose and my alignment, my authenticity. I reached a point where I was kind of at a stuck point with retraining and it takes a while to figure out whether you're stuck truly or whether you're just at a plateau. But I could feel there were just a couple little things I needed to add in. So at one point, about a year and a half in, I needed to add some pieces that were kind of more bottom up instead of just top down. And I learned some reflex tools that helped because for me, I'd gotten my brain to a point where my brain could be calm, I could have that in line 24 7, but then my neurology was still struggling. There was still trauma deep in the tissues below the level of my mind. The reflex work helped with that. I just incorporated that in. And then there's a trauma process that I did over two years in that helped make it so that I was no longer just like getting through but still living in trauma as I was getting through. It was more like if something came up it was annoying and frustrating instead of traumatizing. And I use that trauma process with people to this day because it's just so powerful. I have people think I'm exaggerating but I'm not. Like every week I have somebody with a 10 outta 10 trauma, like the kind where some people would be shaking and sobbing talking about it and it's gone in one session. The traumatic charge that is. So those were a couple tools that I brought in outside of brain retraining. The other thing that kind of grew as I went along. So at first I wasn't doing anything nutritionally and I think I started taking some very basic, very basic supplements like maybe nine months into retraining again. But once I was maybe at the very end of it and I knew like, okay, I'm brain retrained now. I just want to build my body stronger, I want to look at my longevity. It's the same reason why, just because people can drink alcohol all the time if they choose to, doesn't mean they're gonna have a diet of crackers and beer for the rest of their lives. It's the same way that I just wanted to look at my nutrition as well and it's another tool I use with clients. There's a protocol that I use based on hair metal analysis and at the tail end I started to kick that up a little bit more. This wasn't really a methodology or a modality I should say, but pretty much six months into retraining and past, I just really made my focus, how do I live as much as possible? How do I do whatever it takes to follow my purpose? When I really truly got to the point where brain retraining was something that I did religiously but it was still not the most important thing in my life anymore. That was a really important point. It wasn't that I was done retraining, wasn't that I was done healing, but I was more focused on my mission than anything else. That was a really important point.

00:41:04 Chazmith: I love it. This is all so good. I have a few follow up kind of questions, comments for you. Yeah, please do. Okay. Where do I start? Okay, so as you're doing all of this kind of new stuff that you integrated slowly over time, were you still also doing classic brain retraining in addition to?

00:41:28  Matthew: Oh hell yeah. The thing that I always tell people is initially I do not recommend doing multiple things. And if you do, make sure your brain knows that brain retraining is the key. Brain retraining is the most important part of your healing. Anything else just supports that. Cuz if you start going into, well brain retraining is not gonna work, so I'm gonna do this, you can actually destroy the whole process. So you could be working with a doctor and getting massages and going to chiropractors and doing different devices as long as your brain knows that those are only supporting the brain retraining.

00:42:05 Chazmith: Yeah, like supplementary tools to the brain retraining is what you're saying in your experience. Like your supplemental protein is not in replacement of your actual food source or something. Yeah,

00:42:29 Matthew: Yeah exactly and like I can't take a B complex multivitamin and expect that to replace eating a grass-fed hamburger and some cooked vegetables. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm.

00:42:42 Chazmith: Okay. So that makes sense and I'm glad we're talking about this cuz I know when we were talking about quitting before the magic happens, I did wanna address this concept of discernment and getting like the intuitive hits and knowing when you need to pivot, right? So there's getting to a point where you've convinced yourself something's not working and just straight quitting before the magic happens. But there's also this very real element that as we're brain retraining, we are getting more connected to our authenticity, to our truth. We are unlocking that intuition, accessing it again. And sometimes we very much can have intuitive hits and an intuitive feeling that what we're doing is not perhaps enough in and of itself and we might be really called into a different experience. And I think that's important to highlight of knowing and discerning that difference, knowing when it's potentially the brain resisting something because it's working or knowing when, hey, I'm on the right path, this is helping me, but I know I also could start incorporating X, Y, and Z into the mix. Does that make sense?

00:44:02 Matthew:It makes a lot of sense. That was why I think initially I had to develop the muscle of no, no, no, no, no, this is all I need. This is everything. Because if you don't develop the ability to stick with it and to say no to everything, put yourself in a bubble and just retrain. You're not gonna know when it's intuition and when it's fear. But if you're actually truly doing everything you're supposed to be doing, and I mean you don't miss days of rounds, you're doing an hour, you're catching your pops, you're doing all this stuff and you're still running into some challenges, that doesn't necessarily mean brain retraining is not working, but it might might mean you can add to it. And I think one of the ways of thinking about that is does it feel like it's opening and expansive to add something? Does it feel like you're turning away from brain retraining or does it feel like you're including something with it? For me, it didn't, it never crossed my mind to quit brain retraining. It was more of a, all right, what can be incorporated into this to make it more complete for me? You're gonna notice that if it's fear or if it's resistance, you're gonna be turning away from brain retraining. You're gonna be turning away from the idea that you can heal and you're gonna be going on to something else. But if it's intuition, it's more likely to be including if that makes sense.

00:45:34 Chazmith: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. For me, I knew I got to a place where I didn't wanna quit brainer training, but I felt limited and I felt like I needed to somehow incorporate some other aspects into my practice.

00:46:56 Matthew: Right? And I think there's certain things that are more likely to be a wrong choice, not across the board, but like if you start going back into the medical model of like, well, I've been brain retraining this far and now I need to go do this protocol to heal lyme disease, that's much more likely to be a bad choice. And I'm not saying in all cases everybody's gotta use their own discernment, but that's very much like, okay, I'm going back into this world where I have this disease and I need to treat it with this problem versus the nutrition that I've used is more of a baseline ground up vitality strength, which I would do in any case. I have multiple friends and clients and people doing it, whether they need it for healing a disease or not. So that's the big difference. Are you trying to target this disease or are you trying to optimize your vitality? Are you trying to thrive and be the best you can be? It's a mindset thing more than anything, honestly. Mm-hmm.

00:47:03 Chazmith: Yeah, that makes sense. Now another thing I wanted to ask you as a follow up is you're talking about this trauma process that you experienced yourself about two years into your journey and you're now assisting, guiding and supporting clients through this process. What can you share with us about it? I wanna know more.

00:47:24 Matthew: Yeah, so I'll compare this with something like E M D R or just traditional therapy where you talk a lot about the trigger. So let's say just as an example, somebody got killed in front of you, like got hit by a car when you were a kid. And when you think about that, you know, you just immediately have a stress response, trauma response, heart rate goes up, anxiety goes up, whatever the case is, that's, you know, what we would consider a trauma. And sometimes we have to differentiate that from like just overall limbic issues where genuinely all the time you're in limbic hell and it doesn't matter what thought comes in, you're just struggling. So this is a nice compliment to rounds and brain retraining because the brain retraining gets your brain as a whole to start working correctly. But the trauma process can target things a little bit more effectively. I'm not saying the rounds won't work for traumas, but sometimes doing visualizations just doesn't quite get these traumas. At least it didn't get that for me. Mm-hmm

00:48:36 Chazmith: So what would I do to help tone down that reaction that I am having?

00:48:45 Matthew: The whole process is too much to explain here and it doesn't work very well doing it alone. But the gist that I can explain is unlike rounds where somebody can just like teach it to you and then you do it alone, this is something you do with somebody cuz it requires somebody to kind of guide you through it even when you learn the steps. But it's cool because rather than having to talk through like, you know, I was so depressed, I was so scared, it feels awful. You just pretty much find that moment and if you're aware of what that specific worst moment was, it doesn't really get much worse than that. You're already thinking about the moment. And then we go through a process of, we connect it to kind of the core statement of what it means emotionally and then we connect it in with the body, connect it in with a process of letting your brain do away with the image in a way that it's effective across the board but it's also individualized so that each person can kind of do it in the way that their brain makes sense for them the most.

00:50:00 Chazmith: Gotcha. Does it have a name just in case anyone who's listening wants to look into it or like learn about it and have a friend help them or potentially take it to their coach or therapist to help support them?

00:50:15 Matthew: I wanna say it's called it T or something like that. I learned it through trained in it through the therapist who was working on it with me. And it's one of those practices that there's no official certification for it. It's not even like EFT or NLP where there's courses that you can go to online to get it. It does have elements of NLP in it I believe.

00:50:49 Chazmith: Okay. Potentially you said I T T?

00:50:55 Matthew: Yeah. Something to do with image transformation. So

00:51:01 Chazmith: Cool. This is the last question I had in regards to everything you shared about, we've been talking about. You said that something that was really important for you is to just to ask yourself, how do I continue to follow my purpose, my mission and live my life as much as possible? I would love to hear your insights on how you help support clients who are at this place in their life where they just don't know what that is. Cuz I know it exists so much in this community and I know I struggle with it. I think you did a post the other day on Facebook and you said, do you struggle more with the knowing or with the motivation? And I am on the side of struggling with the knowing. And I think sometimes the reason is we can start to, when we're getting sick and we have illness, our life starts to get smaller and smaller to the point that we don't even know anymore what our calling is or what brings us joy or what makes us tick or what that purpose is. And so when you encounter this with clients, how are you able to support them to tap into that?

00:52:17 Matthew: The best thing I can say to people is like, you know, some people like me are fortunate in that I was very, very, very clear on what I was here to do. I didn't exactly know the details of it and that part I had to, you know, figure out through trial and error and a lot of sweat. But if people feel like they have truly no idea, usually just start small. Like rather than trying to think of it as this big huge vision of like, yeah, I'm gonna start a clinic where people can come and they can learn brain retraining, we're gonna do it for free because people can't afford it. Like that's great if that's your vision, but it doesn't have to be massive. It doesn't make it less than if it's something that would be perceived as simpler. For example, if you feel like the most important thing for you to do right now is just be more available to be a better parent to your kids, again, that's a wonderful, powerful purpose. It doesn't have to be, you know, the rest of your life, big mission picture that may come later. So I try to encourage people to think about what feels either exciting or expansive or calming or just little things. It could be, being outside a lot feels so good right now. Is that your bigger purpose? Not really, but it's a clue. It's a direction. And if you don't know your bigger purpose right now, it starts with following the little threads, the little pieces, and then finding ways to do that a little bit at a time. Because a lot of people are sitting there going, well I think I wanna do this, but that's way too much. I couldn't possibly do that. And then I say, well, okay, what's the tiniest possible step you could take to that? For me, it was before I was trying to coach, I was starting to try to get back into doing music. So what was the smallest possible step I could take? One of the things was just sit at the piano for 10 minutes a day and play each day. That's it. And then, you know, eventually I said, all right, I'm gonna go talk to one nursing home and I'm gonna ask them if they want music. I just planned a half an hour with them and that was after I'd been doing tiny steps over and over and over for a while. So I guess in summary it would be follow the little threads of joy, of expansion, of calm and then try to take little steps and if you're thinking it's too much for me, I can't do it, then you need to take even smaller steps. I'm talking like if you wanna start writing a book, maybe the first day all you do is literally open a document, put the title on my book, save it and be done for the day. There's always a smaller step you can take.

00:55:28 Chazmith: Yeah, that's so true. I love that. What are you up to these days in terms of your self-care, daily rituals, daily routines? What does that look like for you to sustain the level of wellbeing and optimize health that you desire?

00:55:47 Matthew: Well there's an interesting thing that I've been thinking about lately at this point comes when you're at the point where you're, you've been limbically, retrained long enough that you can afford to get lazy. I feel like eventually you do get lazy and that lazy might be that you completely quit doing anything for a while. It might be that you just go a little less hardcore. But I finally reached the point where I've been lazier in the last year cuz I've been so focused on other things. With that being said, I still have certain things that I do daily. One of those is a walk. I mean, it used to be that I would not skip that walk if there was a death or a hospitalization or whatever. Like I was that serious about it. Now my level of laziness is I will walk like 99 out of a hundred days if I don't get a walk in once in a while, you know, whatever. I don't really do rounds anymore as a regular thing. I do them as I'm inspired to, but I just have points where I check in with myself. Often when I'm walking I just talk to myself, think process through things. And then I do some things that are more on the physical health side because I actually find them to be very, um, invigorating and uplifting. I eat a certain way because it feels good. I do some detox protocols that I think are just a natural part of living a human life, even if you don't have health problems, things like that. My main focus is still on how do I move forward with the life that I wanna live.

00:57:38 Chazmith: Focusing on your mission. Yeah. That's awesome. I love it. I'm gonna ask you the final question and I'm pretty sure I asked you this last time, and it could be the same answer or it could have shifted because time has happened and life has happened and your experiences have happened. If you could only share one message with the world at this point in your life, what would you want that parting message to be?

00:58:23 Matthew: Well, the thing that comes to me, I'm searching for something else, but sometimes you gotta go with what just arises naturally. This may have been what I said a year and a half ago or whenever it was, but in my mind there's only two important things and one of my friends once said, those are the same things. So maybe it's just one important thing. It's loving the people you love and living your mission. Everything else doesn't mean shit, truly. It doesn't mean anything because everything else pales in comparison to those things. Imagine if you had all the money in the world but nobody to love. You could do anything you wanted except your mission. What kind of hell would that be? But conversely, if you have people that you love and you can follow your mission, like you could be homeless and you could be unsure where you're gonna eat next. And I would choose that any day over a contented prison where I have no love and no purpose.

00:59:39 Chazmith: I love it. You know, it's really funny. It is the exact same message that you gave last time.

00:59:48 Matthew: I wondered about that.

00:58:50 Chazmith: What, that's awesome. That's awesome. That means that you're living true to it, you know? Which is really cool. And it makes me think of, there's this, I won't be able to say the quote verbatim, but it's a Bob Golf quote. I'm not sure if you know who that is.

00:59:59 Matthew: Yeah, he's… love is a verb or something like that. Yeah,

01:00:00 Chazmith: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. One of his quotes in his book is, I'd rather fail at doing what I love than be good at doing what I hate. You know? Yeah. That's what it made me think of.

01:00:11 Matthew: Jim Carey has a quote about that too. He said he watched his dad try to, you know, do this career and it made him realize that his dad ended up failing in some way and made Jim realize like, you can even fail doing what you don't want to do, so you might as well go for what you wanna do. Cuz if you're gonna possibly fail either way, go fail at what you love.

01:00:35 Chazmith: Yeah, very true. Well, this has been fun. I am so excited I got to have you back on and just get at this update and share it with the world. So thank you so much for being here with me.

01:00:52 Matthew: It's really my pleasure. I'm glad you invited me back and we should do this again in six months or a year or whenever.

01:00:58 Chazmith: Yeah. Right. Absolutely. That's a wrap. And as always, my hope is that you felt inspired by this episode or found valuable insights. Please consider sharing this episode on your social media and tagging me at Our Power is Within on the Gram. You can also leave me a voice memo on my website, ourpoweriswithin.com, or join the Facebook group link in the show notes so that we can connect. And PS. if you particularly enjoyed this episode, reach out to Matt and tell him. I'm sure he would really appreciate hearing from you too. And until next time, make this week great.