A licensed psychologist and flow researcher shows you how to stop students spiraling into anxiety and prime them for peak performance instead.

Dr. John Skidmore, a licensed psychologist who taught the psychology of music performance at Brigham Young University for over 30 years and wrote his dissertation on flow in musicians, gives you a working model for the stressed-out studio. You'll learn his ABCs of the brain (activated, body and breath, correct thinking, decide), why banning words like 'nervous' in favor of 'activated' changes everything, and how struggle becomes stress when we mishandle it. He then maps the five stages that prime flow, including the 'my preparation is complete' declaration that takes the analyzer brain offline. Watch him shift a volunteer's entire performance mindset live using nothing but Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.