I have been a sport psychologist for the past fifteen years – primarily running a graduate training program in sport psychology at Boston University and working with athletes, teams, coaches, and musicians in private practice. I became interested in mindfulness about ten years ago, when I began teaching courses in positive psychology. Gratefully, I had the opportunity to bring Joshua Summers into the classroom to teach my students (and me) about mindfulness and mindfulness mediation. I quickly began to understand that the concept of mindfulness had a depth and offered great potential for helping one to become more fully alive and optimize performance, if the individual could learn to cultivate a mindful approach to living and performance. The challenge, of course, is learning how to cultivate a mindful approach in one's own life and then learning how to bring the approach to others.

Parallel to my teaching, I began to realize that the athletes and musicians who came to me for help were often wrestling with debilitative performance anxiety. I turned to the traditional cognitive behavioral interventions offered by the field of sport psychology. Sometimes these strategies worked for my clients – I would help them create phrases to bring to mind in the predictably most difficult sport moments (being behind in a close game or losing a foot race or boat race by inches and still needing to concentrate on task relevant cues). Or I would help them create imagery scripts of coping with difficulty and, at once, creating an optimal performance experience. Yet, for some athletes, such strategies came up woefully short. And I had nothing to offer but my instincts cultivated from my own experience as an Olympian (rowing) and professional athlete (sailing).

However, I began to realize that it was not just my own experience facing intense anxiety as an elite athlete that was helping me help my clients. I began to realize that what I was doing with them was precisely this: I was helping them learn to cultivate a mindful approach to their competitive performance life. Instead of turning away from fear, I offered my clients strategies and support to tolerate such thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations. I began to see radical change in my clients’ internal experience and ability to perform under pressure.