Today’s lovely guest is Philippa Ziegenhardt, counsellor at The Australian Ballet School and creator of Stage Minded.
Philippa’s own dance background as a professional ballerina with the Hamburg Ballet makes her the perfect person for little ballerinas to confide in - because she knows exactly what they’re going through!
As Philippa mentions on the Stage Minded website, like many performers her identity was always wrapped up with being a good dancer. Philippa knows what it’s like to have a good day or a bad day in the studio and how thats often predicated by whether you feel fat or skinny in your leotard that day.
For over seven years, Philippa has been helping young dancers develop a strong mindset capable of tackling stage fright, self doubt and the ever popular inner critic. Because these days, it’s not good enough to just have strong legs and feet. You also need a strong mind!
The thing is, it’s always been this way. However nowadays there’s more of an emphasis around training the mind and developing tools to navigate all the emotions that come along with dance training, which is fantastic. The dance world is so fortunate to have leaders like Philippa. As you'll learn in our interview, Philippa is so incredibly passionate about helping the next generation develop mindset tools and radiates empathy and compassion for her clients. I really enjoyed our conversation and love meeting people who want to help dancers perform at their best and build resilience.
Through Philippa’s online program ‘Mindset School’ you can also be one of Philippa’s clients. So after you’ve listened to the podcast, jump on stageminded.com to explore Philippa’s amazing resources further.
Developing mindset amongst dancers is a massive topic to cover and as you begin exploring one area a whole set of sub-topics appear. For example, we honestly could have spent a whole episode just talking about ‘combatting stage anxiety’!
Instead of spending all our time on one topic, I asked Philippa if we could cover as many key topics as possible so it may inspire a conversation between a mother-daughter in the car or help someone identify a mindset weakness that needs some further attention.
I hope this episode helps and remember ballerinas, mindset is absolutely everything!
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