This course is the one I wished I had access to when I started out in music. Not because it's only for beginners, but because it would have prevented some of my darkest moments and saved me from facing my shape-shifting demons time and time again.
I've performed everywhere from the local pub to Madison Square Garden with B.B. King, and for 90,000 people at the Paralympic Games Opening Ceremony. I've shared the stage with Michael Jackson, Etta James, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant.
I'm not sharing this to name-drop. I’m sharing this to illustrate that the level of anxiety we feel is often not rationally related to the circumstance, making it an unpredictable beast. But there is one thing that revealed the monster of anxiety to be the smoke of dry ice and, at times, an incredible superpower… EDUCATION.
Anxiety is a stress response to fear.
My lack of education on how to handle anxiety left me psychologically and physically unable to perform, let alone enjoy life with the people I loved. As a kid, I travelled Australia while being treated for leukaemia. The stage was my special place, yet as an adult—even at a time when life was amazing—I couldn't step into a venue without feeling sheer terror. Looking back, I trace so much of this back to one simple gap: no one ever taught me how to understand what was happening inside me.
One night on tour, in the front of the van, I hit a wall.
Five hours of agonizing psychological warfare later, we reached the venue. My hands shook as I tried to lace up my boots. My chest tightened. My mind was a tornado of catastrophic scenarios.
The darkest realisation was this: I could no longer handle this on my own.
Two hours later, I launched myself onto the stage. Nobody would ever know that I had just spent five hours on the edge of a complete breakdown.
Six months later, and after twenty-two years in the music industry, I pulled the pin on it all.
I thought my body and mind were crushing me, but really, they were trying to wake me up.
This very real, very human experience was the beginning of my journey back to myself.
If you've ever felt trapped in your own mind and body, wondering if this is just how life will be from now on — this is for you.
Knowing what I know now, the darkness in my life was simply the result of a lack of education on how to move through these states. For every lesson I learned that opened my world back up, I found myself thinking: "Why the hell wasn't this taught to me when I was a kid?"
This course is my answer to that question.