Performance

Music was my first love and prior to my career in psychology I spent a decade in the music industry, first as a musician in my own band, and later working with other artists at labels including Sanctuary Records, Sony Music, and Universal Classics and Jazz. During this time I personally witnessed the incredible power of creative Flow. I saw how performers harness this energy to achieve greatness, and how painful it is when the ability to access this energy becomes blocked or interrupted. I became passionate about working with performers and this powerful Flow state, but it wasn’t until my discovery of Brainspotting, several years into my psychology career, that I finally found the key to doing so.

Using this leading edge neurophysiological technique, I have spent the past few years working with athletes, actors, writers, musicians, and public figures, helping my clients to develop and master Flow states in order to stay in the zone at will.

“If something stands between you and your success, move it.” – Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson

Performance blocks arise from deep within the subcortical brain. They emerge from far beneath your words and thinking mind, where trauma, injuries, or adverse experiences may be held. They result from the lack of order that stress and pressure create in your nervous system. Your emotional state has a direct impact on your ability to perform both mentally and physiologically. Emotional dysregulation disrupts clear thinking and fine motor skills, and has an impact on the fluidity or tension in your muscles and coordination, as regulated by your cerebellum.

Frequently misunderstood conditions such as “the yips” or “the twisties” are good examples of the so-called phenomena which can easily sabotage a performer’s career. These blocks can manifest in a variety of other ways, including tics, stutters, cramps, focal dystonia, writer’s block, stage fright, panic attacks, the ‘sophomore slump’, and so on. 

Rather than addressing these blocks, performers will frequently try to mask them or overcompensate – to ‘keep the show on the road’ – which often leads to maladaptive coping strategies such as substance misuse or compulsivity, and can result in greater emotional and physiological injury over time, or burnout and collapse.

I work with my clients to shine a spotlight on these blocks and to resolve them. As we enable your brain to re-order itself, your blocks dissolve and your attention becomes naturally and freely redirected towards optimal and expanded performance.

My services are discreet and can take place both online and in person; either in my office in London, or at a client’s location as needed. I can work with individual performers, or with groups, such as bands, choirs, casts, or sports teams.

“When I’m rocking a groove, there is only nature working. Free from all prison of my mind’s construct. I trust my animal instincts completely. I let go of every thought, let go of all the world, and KILL the groove.” – Flea, bassist from the Red Hot Chili Peppers

“Do, or do not. There is no try.” –Yoda