She Transported Herself to 1595 London
Wednesday night I sat In the theater, tissues on standby, watching my 13-year-old daughter Mykala perform in Something Rotten — a delightfully chaotic, Shakespeare-roasting musical set in 1595 London.
I expected to be proud. I did not expect to be professionally fascinated.
Because what happened on that stage wasn't just a bunch of kids hitting their marks and remembering their lines. Something else was happening. Something I recognize from my work every single day.
Those kids were in the zone.
You know it when you see it.
There's a moment in a performance — in any performance, really — when the effort disappears. The self-consciousness drops. The thinking stops. And something fluid and alive takes over.
I watched Mykala and her castmates stop being middle schoolers from Ketchum, Idaho. They became Elizabethan playwrights, scheming brothers, and townspeople navigating Renaissance England. The costumes helped. But what I was watching wasn't stagecraft. It was a full trance.
Their bodies were relaxed. Their eyes were present in a way that's hard to fake. They weren't performing lines — they were living them. The audience felt it, too, in that particular way a crowd goes quiet when something real is happening in front of them.
Here's what's actually happening when someone "gets lost" in a role.
When actors — even young, wildly talented middle school actors — fully inhabit a character, their brain activity shifts. The default mode network, that relentless inner narrator responsible for self-monitoring and second-guessing, goes quiet. What's left is pure, automatic, deeply rehearsed flow.
Sound familiar? It should. Because that is almost the exact neurological profile of a hypnotic state.
Hypnosis isn't sleep. It isn't complete unconsciousness. It's a focused, receptive state of awareness where the critical, analytical mind relaxes its grip — and the deeper, more instinctive part of you takes the wheel. The same part that knows your lines, your choreography, your free-throw, your pitch deck cold.
The same part Mykala accessed in front of a packed auditorium on a Tuesday night.
The zone isn't magic. It's a mental state you can train.
Here's the thing about peak performance — whether you're center stage, on the starting line, or walking into the most important meeting of your year: the physical preparation only gets you so far. At some point, the work shifts inward.
The athletes and executives I work with often tell me the same thing: "I know what to do. I just can't get out of my own way."
That's not a skill problem. That's a software problem.
Ninety-five percent of your behaviors, reactions, and performance patterns are driven by your subconscious mind — the deeply grooved programming laid down long before you ever stepped into a spotlight or a stadium. Hypnotherapy works by accessing that layer directly, updating the old files, and installing the mental patterns that support peak performance instead of sabotage it.
Pre-competition visualization. Confidence anchoring. Dissolving the inner critic that decides to show up right before curtain. These aren't abstract concepts — they're specific, trainable skills that work precisely because they operate at the level of the subconscious.
Mykala didn't know she was in a trance.She just knew she'd rehearsed, she trusted her cast, and when the lights came up — she let go.
That effortless letting-go is the whole game. In the wings, on the field, in the boardroom. The performers who consistently operate at their peak aren't trying harder. They've learned how to get out of their own way and let the deeply prepared, deeply capable part of themselves run the show.
My daughter figured that out at 13, belting her heart out in a Sheakespearean spotlight.
I've never been more proud — or more convinced — that the most powerful performance tool any of us have is the one we're born with.
Until the next deep breath,
Megan McCann LPC-I, CHp