When I was creating my company I had to come up with a name for it. Obviously, right? I wanted it to have a personal meaning as well as a more global one. Well, I happened to be reading a Joseph Campbell book at the time and I thought, maybe something with myth or mythic in it. Now, I was also born with heart issues, and, since “heart” has so many positive meanings in it, why not combine the two? Boom! Mythic Heart Inc. was born.
For me, Mythic Heart represents everything that I hold dear, everything that excites me. Not only does the name reflect my own heart-health journey, it connects to that infinite, expansive part in all of us. Our Mythic Heart is our core self, our higher self. It’s that deepest part of us that can see the world with fresh, child-like eyes and tap into the power of our unlimited creative imagination. There’s nothing that excites me more than helping people remember how to be awed by life, to remember their gifts, and live a mythic life that inspires themselves.
When we start Operating from our Heart, our Mythic Heart, from the knowing, creative, connected space of our core self, we start to see our lives as truly being much more heroic than we may have originally thought.
For me:
- For the first time, the family dog was having seizures and vomiting all night long on the kitchen floor; a herald. Hours later, my purple-bluish right arm and shoulder started to be born from my mom on the bathroom floor. She was rushed to the hospital. To her surprise, I was alive, and delivered via c-section.
- 16 months later, my parents met the eyes of the surgeon as he exited the operating room. His face smiled, he beamed, then did the thumbs up. My heart surgery went well; the congenital narrowing of the aortic artery is repaired. I was labeled a miracle, and the greatest Christmas gift my parents could have received.
- Six years old, I was lying in bed looking out the hospital window, dreaming of climbing the giant tree in my backyard. My temperature was 106 degrees. I had endocarditis, a usually fatal heart infection. In days, on Mother’s Day, my Dr. would come up with a new treatment that would land us both in the medical journals. I went home 7 weeks later; I climbed that tree.
- A week after high school graduation, I was diagnosed with having had a stroke, and a separate, unrelated brain aneurysm. In light of this experience, my thirst for knowledge, truth, and self-understanding was re-kindled. The “ticking” aneurysm remained in my brain. It was a near constant source of anxiety.
- My first awareness as consciousness drifted back are the light bandages wrapped around my head. The brain surgery was over. I was alive. “Jonathan, can you raise both your arms?” the Dr. asked. This was the moment, the test. Did they successfully clip the aneurysm or did it rupture and cause damage? I paused, took a breath, then thrust BOTH my arms above my head. They worked. I was going to be fine. I was 22 years old.
- One moment I would feel terrific, fully of energy. The next moment, and for no discernible reason, my pulse would race from my normal resting 58 beats/minute to a “resting” rate of 150. I would have an instant headache, dizziness, and the world spun. Climbing a flight of stairs would leave me breathless. It would mean a trip to the ER, maybe stay overnight, just to get my pulse down from those dangerous levels. Atrial Fibrillation. This experience would repeat itself at least a dozen times from the age of 40 to 45.
- I choked slightly. That’s right, I forgot there would be a tube down my throat, as I slowly became more aware. Then I remembered I was to breathe through my nose. I was barely conscious. I heard the surgeon speaking with my parents. He said they’d replaced 2 heart valves and performed 5 other procedures on my heart. It went so smoothly they had enough time to finish the long list of things they wanted to accomplish. It turned out to be one of the most extensive open-heart surgeries performed at that Los Angeles hospital. It was 2016, and I was 45 years old.
Start seeing how your own life is truly Mythic.
Training and Education
Although I received a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Minnesota, I feel my more profound education came after. I spent nearly 20 years working in various capacities with adults and children with developmental disabilities. What I learned: the infinite levels of communication; compassion; value; connection; having and finding a voice; and how we learn things and change behaviors. What I learned was beyond what any course could teach.
I am an NLP Instructor. Part of this NLP training included learning about the structure of effective seminars and presentations. Some of the topics including: the practice of using nested loops when speaking, hypnotic/metaphorical stories, understanding different speaking styles, and addressing the different types of learning styles.
For over 12 years I’ve been a Certified Hypnotherapist, for much of that time seeing clients in a private practice. I graduated from the only nationally-accredited school for hypnotherapy in the United States.
For 5 years I’ve been the chief hypnotist and sole content creator for Mindifi Hypnosis Apps. The apps cover a myriad of self-improvement topics and have millions of downloads from all over the world.