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Ana Domingues | Clinical Hypnotherapist for Ballet Dancers

@raisingaballetdancer

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Dancer you are an elite athlete…now TRAIN like one
The Mental training elite athletes use - Now for dancers
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I watched this happen for 30 years.
Not to dancers who weren’t good enough but to the ones who did everything right. Trained really hard, took every correction, gave up everything else for this. And still, the moment it mattered, something shut the door.

It’s not your technique. It never was.

It’s your nervous system, and it’s what you believe about yourself underneath all of it, quietly running in the background every single time you step out there.

So I went and studied what nobody in this industry was studying. Neuroscience. Hypnotherapy.
Because dancers deserve the same mental support that every other elite athlete gets, and nobody was building it.

Welcome to my page. This was built thinking of you.

Ana Domingues — Clinical Hypnotherapist & Neuroscience-Applied Mindset Coach for ballet dancers. by @raisingaballetdancer

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2 months ago

I am 53 years old. A professional inside the ballet world for more than 30 years.
And there is something I can no longer stay silent about.

The technical demands of ballet have never been higher.
The pressure on dancers has never been greater.
Decade after decade the standards have risen and dancers have responded with more hours, more sacrifice, more dedication.

But the mental support never kept up.

The technique evolved. The demands grew. And dancers were left completely alone to handle all of it.

That gap has been quietly destroying careers for decades.

This is why I am here. This is why Raising a Ballet Dancer exists.

To close that gap. So dancers can finally step on stage and dance with the joy they have always deserved.

I’m Ana. Clinical hypnotherapist and neuroscience applied mindset coach working exclusively with ballet dancers.

I am here to make sure this evolution finally writes a new chapter.

One where dancers have the support they have always deserved.

Because it is time this evolution starts working for you.

Not against you.🤍

Dance studio (photo) @cucaanacoreta_escolaballet by @raisingaballetdancer

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6 months ago

I know how you feel.

You train every single day. You give everything you have in that studio. And still, when the moment that matters most arrives, you cannot show up as the dancer you know you are.

Your technique falls apart under pressure.
You freeze before the difficult step.
You walk into auditions and cannot access your real level. Corrections never seem to stick no matter how hard you try.
And you don’t understand why.

Let me tell you something that nobody in the ballet world is saying out loud.
You are an elite athlete. But you are not being supported like one

The physical demands of ballet are extraordinary.
The years of training, the discipline, the pressure to perform perfectly, the competition for every role and every contract, by every measure, you belong in the same category as the world’s top athletes.

But here is the difference.

Elite athletes have mental performance coaching, nervous system regulation and mental rehearsal as a standard part of their preparation. Not as a luxury. As a requirement.

Ballet dancers?
When injuries happen — bad luck.
When fatigue accumulates — mental toughness.
When they fall apart on stage — nobody asks why.

At the highest level every dancer is technically prepared. What separates results is not more hours in the studio. It is mental training. Because mental training is what finally allows you to access the technique you have already built.
The cost of training without mental training is staying exactly where you are right now.

Your technique is ready.
Your dedication is there.
The only thing missing is the decision.

I’m Ana. Clinical hypnotherapist and neuroscience applied mindset coach working with ballet dancers.

I help ballet dancers close that gap.
This is the work.
And it starts here ✨ by @raisingaballetdancer

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6 months ago

Sometimes, what holds you back isn’t a lack of technique. It’s a belief about yourself you’ve repeated for so long that it feels like the truth.

These 10 questions will help you start uncovering what you really believe about yourself as a dancer.

10 QUESTIONS TO ASK YOURSELF AS A DANCER

1. What do you believe about yourself as a dancer that feels like a simple fact but might actually be a story you’ve repeated?
2. When you receive a correction, what does the voice in your head say about you, not your dancing, but you?
3. Where do you hold back in class and tell yourself it’s because you “can’t,” when perhaps you don’t believe you’re capable?
4. What kind of dancer do you secretly believe gets cast, and why have you decided you’re not that dancer?
5. If someone watched only what you do, not what you say you want, what would they think you actually believe about your future?
6. When another dancer is chosen instead of you, what do you immediately believe that says about you?
7. Who are you on stage when you’re not worried about being evaluated? When do you feel most like that dancer, and when do you feel least like them?
8. What have you stopped allowing yourself to dream about because a part of you believes you’re not capable of achieving it?
9. What belief about yourself feels permanent, even though you can’t actually prove it’s true?
10. If that belief turned out to be false, what would change tomorrow?

In my work with dancers, I see so many different struggles: performance anxiety, perfectionism, comparison, fear of failure, and self-doubt.

But when we explore what’s underneath, there’s one belief I encounter again and again:

“I’m not good enough.”

And often, dancers have carried that belief for so long that it no longer feels like a belief. It feels like a fact.

But a belief isn’t a fact. And it can change.

Save these questions, take some time to reflect, and notice what comes up. 🤍

If one of them brings something up for you, send me a DM. Let’s explore the belief underneath.

Ana Domingues
Clinical Hypnotherapist
Neuroscience-Applied Mindset Coach for Ballet Dancers by @raisingaballetdancer

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a day ago

Somewhere along the way, ballet learned to admire physical training…
but to question mental training.

A dancer can spend hours every day training their body.
Take extra classes.
Do Pilates.
Strength and conditioning.
Physio.

And we call that commitment.

But say that a dancer uses visualization, meditation, hypnotherapy, or trains their nervous system…

it can still be interpreted as a sign that they are struggling.
That they aren’t mentally strong enough.
That they should be able to “handle it” on their own.

Why?

In elite sport, mental training has long been understood as part of high-performance preparation.

And ballet asks an extraordinary amount of a human being too.

The technical and artistic standards are incredibly high. Dancers are expected to perform complex movement with precision, musicality and artistry, often while being watched, judged, compared, corrected, cast, rejected and expected to reproduce their best under enormous pressure.

And all of that happens through a human brain and nervous system.

You don’t leave them outside the studio when you walk in.

Your beliefs affect how you interpret pressure.
Your nervous system affects how your body responds to it.

So no, mental training doesn’t replace technique.

It allows you to access the technique you’ve trained so hard to build when it matters.

And perhaps this is the belief we need to start changing in ballet:

Mental training isn’t something you do because you’re weak.

You do it because you’re asking yourself to perform at an extraordinarily high level.

Yasmine Naghdi. Steven McRae. Anna Rose O’Sullivan. Marianela Nuñez. Inès McIntosh.

These are just a few examples of top dancers who have already understood something that the ballet world is only beginning to talk about:

Mental training is part of the training.

They don’t wait until something is “wrong” with them to train their minds.

They understand that if they want their bodies to perform at an extraordinary level, their minds need training too.

So maybe the question isn’t:
“Do I really need mental training?”

Maybe the question is:
When are you going to start training your mind with the s by @raisingaballetdancer

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7 days ago

Ballet dancers spend years training their bodies for the moments that matter.

I believe their minds deserve the same level of training.

Because when pressure hits, more technique isn’t always the missing piece. Sometimes what gets in the way is what’s happening underneath it: your subconscious beliefs and your nervous system.

That’s why I created The 4 R’s: High-Performance Mindset Training for Dancers.

REVEAL — Identify the subconscious beliefs shaping how you respond under pressure.

RELEASE — Regulate the nervous system response that creates tension, shallow breathing and freeze in high-pressure moments.

REWIRE — Reprogram those beliefs at the subconscious level through hypnosis-based audios and repeated mental training.

RISE — Bring that training into the studio, auditions and stage so you can access your technique and perform with freedom and presence.

Because you’ve already spent years training your body.

It’s time to train your mind to perform too.

Ana Domingues
Clinical Hypnotherapist & Neuroscience Applied Mindset Coach for Ballet Dancers by @raisingaballetdancer

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16 days ago

Serena Williams’ story could be your story too.

Not because your coach needs to lie to you.

But because you may also be performing through beliefs about yourself that you’ve accepted as facts.

Serena believed she was terrible at the net.

According to her coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, he told her she was winning 80% of her points there, even though it wasn’t true.

And something shifted.

She started approaching the net with less hesitation. By the end of the tournament, Mouratoglou says she was winning around 80% of those points.

What I find fascinating about this story isn’t the lie.

It’s that Serena already had the ability.

Her technique didn’t suddenly change because of one conversation.

What changed was what she believed she was capable of doing with the technique she already had.

And this is where her story can become yours.

You may have spent years training your body, developing your technique and becoming a stronger dancer…

while also spending years repeating:

“I’m terrible at auditions.”
“I can’t dance when someone important is watching.”
“I always mess this up.”
“I’m not confident.”
“I’m not good enough.”

And eventually, you may stop hearing those as thoughts.

They start to feel like facts about who you are as a dancer.

Then you walk into an audition, a casting, a performance, or a class where you feel watched, carrying those beliefs with you.

You hesitate.
You overthink.
You tense.
You stop trusting what you have trained.

And when something goes wrong, your mind says:

“See? I knew it.”

This is why the first step in my 4 R’s framework is REVEAL.

Before we try to change the way you perform under pressure, we need to become aware of what you have come to believe about yourself.

Because sometimes the problem isn’t that you’re not capable.

It’s that what you believe you’re capable of has become smaller than your actual ability.

So the next time your mind tells you, “This is just the kind of dancer I am,” ask yourself:

Is this actually a fact?
Or is it a belief I’ve repeated so many times that I stopped questioning it?

Save this for the moments when you start believing you’re less capable than you really are. by @raisingaballetdancer

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13 days ago

Elite athletes don’t train their minds because their bodies aren’t strong enough.

They train their minds because of how much they ask their bodies to do under pressure.

And yet, somehow, in ballet, we still treat mental training as something extra.

Something to think about later.
Something you might need if you’re struggling.
Something that comes after technique.

But why?

Dancers spend hours every day training technique, strength, stamina, flexibility, musicality and artistry.

We understand that all of these things require training and repetition.

But when it comes to the mind, we somehow expect dancers to already know how to handle the pressure, the comparison, the constant evaluation, the fear of mistakes, the auditions, the rejection and still access years of training when it matters most.

Every time a dancer walks into class, into an audition, or onto a stage, their brain and nervous system walk with them.

That’s why mental training cannot continue to be treated as secondary to physical training.

Self-talk is one of the most basic examples.

You can spend years repeating a movement until it becomes automatic…

while also repeatedly telling yourself:

Don’t mess this up.
Everyone here is better than me.
I’m not ready.
What if I fail?
Maybe I’m just not good enough.

Repetition is training for your body and for your mind.

So how long are we going to keep asking so much of dancers physically while treating the mental side of their training as optional?

How many dancers need to struggle silently before we understand that mental training is not a sign of weakness?

This isn’t only about performing better.

It’s about giving dancers the inner tools to handle pressure, recover from disappointment, trust themselves, access the technique they’ve worked so hard to build and navigate an extraordinarily demanding career in a healthier way.

Mental training is not Plan B.

It should not begin only when something has gone wrong.

If we expect dancers to perform at an extraordinary level, we need to prepare the whole human being who has to perform.

Train the body.

Train the mind too.🤍

Ana Domingues
Clinical Hypnotherapist
Mindset c by @raisingaballetdancer

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3 days ago

You would never expect your technique to change without training it.

You repeat the correction.
You practice the variation.
You do it again and again until one day your body responds differently.

But when it comes to your mind, you may treat the patterns that show up under pressure as if they were simply who you are.

“I’m an anxious dancer.”
“I’m not confident.”
“I always overthink.”
“I fall apart in auditions.”
“I’m just not good enough.”

And this is what I wish more dancers understood:

A pattern can feel like your personality simply because you’ve experienced it so many times.

That doesn’t mean it has to define the dancer you become.

Your brain has the capacity to learn and change.

And this is why I believe mental training needs to be treated as training, not as something you turn to the night before an audition when you’re already terrified.

You train your body consistently.

Your mind deserves the same intention.

Because after all the years you’ve spent developing your technique, you deserve to be able to access it and show what you’re truly capable of when it matters most.

If you’re ready to start training the mental side of your performance in a deeper way, DM me the word TRAIN.

I’ll be happy to talk with you about what you’re struggling with and how we could work on it together.🤍

Ana Domingues
Clinical Hypnotherapist
Neuroscience-Applied Mindset Coach for Ballet Dancers by @raisingaballetdancer

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10 days ago

Perfectionism can make you believe that being harder on yourself will make you a better dancer.

So you push harder.
You focus on every mistake.
You compare yourself.
You constantly look for what needs to be fixed.

Because underneath all of that there can be a belief:

“I’m not good enough yet.”

And this means you are trying to improve from a very different place.

From fear. From pressure. From constantly trying to prove that you are good enough.

When every mistake, correction or imperfect class starts to feel like a threat, your nervous system can respond as if it needs to protect you.

Your muscles can become more tense. You can start overthinking and consciously controlling movements that your body already knows. Your attention becomes focused on avoiding mistakes instead of learning from them.

And think about the irony:

You are doing all of this because you desperately want to improve. But the state you are training from can make learning, adapting and moving freely harder.

This is why letting go of perfectionism does not mean lowering your standards.

You can be ambitious.
You can work incredibly hard.
You can keep reaching for excellence.

But you can do it from a place of learning and growth instead of fear and “I’m not good enough.”

Because excellence and perfectionism are not the same thing.

You don’t need to be perfect to become the dancer you’re capable of becoming.

If you recognize this pattern in yourself, the best advice I can give you is: do the mindset work.

Don’t just keep pushing harder and hoping that more training will make this disappear.

Because if perfectionism is keeping you training from fear, from pressure and from “I’m not good enough,” more technique alone won’t change that pattern.

Work on the pattern that is keeping you stuck.

Because it may be the very thing preventing you from achieving your goals and becoming the dancer you want to be.

Ana Domingues
Clinical Hypnotherapist
Neuroscience-Applied Mindset Coach for Ballet Dancers by @raisingaballetdancer

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8 days ago

I love ballet.

Its beauty. Its discipline. Its extraordinary standards. Ballet has been part of my life since I was 5

But being inside this world for so long also meant absorbing some of its beliefs.

I learned to compare myself. A correction could become “I’m not good enough.” Not being chosen could become “Maybe I don’t belong here.”

And eventually, you don’t need anyone else to say those things anymore.

Their voice becomes your voice.

I carried that voice for years. And later, as a teacher, I began to recognize versions of it in dancers around me too.

It wasn’t until I did my own inner work and began studying neuroscience, subconscious beliefs and the mind, eventually becoming a Clinical Hypnotherapist, that I began to understand what I had experienced and witnessed for so many years.

And I started seeing ballet through a different lens.

Dancers don’t only need extraordinary physical training to reach their full potential. They need inner training too.

Because dancers are artists but they are also human beings with a brain, a nervous system, beliefs and emotions.

All of that enters the studio.

It enters the audition.

It enters the stage.

You can spend years building extraordinary technique, but if you can’t access it under pressure, all that hard work can’t fully come through.

That’s the part I believe has been missing: support and training for what’s happening inside the dancer.

Not lower standards. Not less ambition.

I want dancers to have the inner tools to navigate the pressure, comparison, uncertainty and rejection of this career without breaking themselves in the process.

To access their training when it matters.
To trust themselves.
To show who they truly are.

That’s why I brought this work back to ballet.

Not because I want to change what makes ballet extraordinary, but because I love this world enough to believe we can give dancers something more.

Ana Domingues
Clinical Hypnotherapist & Neuroscience Applied Mindset Coach for Ballet Dancers

If you want to experience your dance journey with the passion that brought you here, while becoming the dancer you know you’re capable of becoming, you’re in the by @raisingaballetdancer

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12 days ago

What if the thing holding you back isn’t your technique?

You can spend years training your body.

Taking corrections.
Repeating exercises.
Working on your turns.
Your extensions.
Your artistry.

And still walk into an audition and freeze.

Still tense up when someone important is watching.

Still compare yourself to the dancer beside you and suddenly feel like you’re not enough.

Still make one mistake and let it affect everything that comes after.

Still know you can do something… but somehow not be able to access it when it matters most.

And when this keeps happening, it’s easy to come to the wrong conclusion:

“Maybe I just need to work harder.”
“Maybe I’m not confident enough.”
“Maybe I’m simply not good enough.”

But more technical training isn’t the answer.

Because you don’t only perform with your body.

You perform with your mind and nervous system too.

And they can be trained.

You can learn to regulate your response to pressure.
You can change beliefs that have been shaping the way you see yourself.
You can develop a different relationship with mistakes, comparison and fear.
You can learn to trust what you’ve trained instead of fighting yourself when it matters most.

Imagine what could become possible if your mind started supporting everything your body has worked so hard to achieve.

Because becoming the dancer you want to be shouldn’t mean losing the freedom and joy that made you love dancing in the first place.

You deserve both:

To pursue excellence.
And to feel free enough to show who you truly are.

If you’re tired of knowing you’re capable of more but feeling like your own mind keeps getting in the way, I’d love to help you.

DM me the word TRAIN and tell me what you’re struggling with right now.

Let’s see how we can help you close the gap between the dancer you are today and the dancer you know you can become. ❤️

Ana Domingues
Clinical Hypnotherapist
Neuroscience-Applied Mindset Coach for Ballet Dancers by @raisingaballetdancer

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8 days ago