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The Alchemy of Performance Anxiety
Transformation for Artists
By Clare Hogan
"The alchemy of performance can become a way of life for anyone."
With mental health increasingly in the spotlight, The Alchemy of Performance Anxiety offers a new perspective on anxiety. Forty percent of disability worldwide is due to depression and anxiety (Anxiety UK). This new book focuses on the application of psychological alchemical practice to address, explore and examine the nature and cause of anxiety in order to tackle and overcome it. Author Clare Hogan believes that it has never been more relevant to illustrate the reality that scientific, artistic and spiritual understanding, together with practical application, has the capacity to eliminate anxiety and gain personal control, liberation and fulfilment.
Clare Hogan is a lecturer in the psychology of performance at the University of Salford, England at Masters and undergraduate level. Clare also counsels students with anxiety issues and teaches individual vocal technique.
Designed as a personal development book rather than a scholarly work, it is relevant to all ages, but was written with 18 to 30 year olds being the main inspiration through apparent and ever increasing necessity.
"The primary goal of this new book is to understand that control of one's experience and liberation from anxiety and suffering is not only possible,
but within everyone's capacity to achieve."
The author firmly believes that the apparent increase in emotional and psychological stress over recent decades is not only a cause for concern, but one that needs recognition at a practical and experiential level in our institutions. To some extent this is happening; this book is a contribution.
About the author
Growing up on a farm belonging to a religious order of Cistercian nuns, Clare Hogan was raised in an intensely religious household with her parents and siblings. She was educated at a strict Catholic school where fear, guilt and humiliation were part of the curriculum and from an early age was on medication for anxiety and behavioural issues.
At the age of nine her father died, prompting a catalogue of traumatic experiences including her mother's relationship with an older woman who disliked and resented the children. At the age of 15, Clare was admitted to a psychiatric hospital where she stayed for over three years. At 18 she realised that formal education was her only hope and within a year (at the hospital) she passed O Levels, started singing lessons and successfully auditioned for the Winchester College of Art and Music.
From there she went on to study at The Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) where she enjoyed a life of freedom, independence and growth. This was disrupted during her first year when her mother died suddenly. She had to return to the farm in Dorset and became the legal guardian to her younger brother.
Eventually, they both returned to Manchester so that she could complete her degree. These were challenging years during which she was usually in therapy, on medication and highly anxious about the future. After graduating from the RNCM, Clare went on to do postgraduate research in music analysis and psychology.
Having received many years of mostly Jungian psychotherapy, and having been drawn to Buddhism and metaphysical law since adolescence, she later began the systematic application of alchemical principles and thought which, together with a meditation practice and the acceptance that personal responsibility for causes provides the only control that there can be for effects, transformation was a welcome inevitability.
Clare teaches at the University of Salford in England at Masters and undergraduate level. Her subject is primarily the Psychology of Performance. She also teaches meditation, counsels students with anxiety issues and teaches individual vocal technique.
ESSENTIAL DETAILS
Title:The Alchemy of Performance Anxiety
Author:Clare Hogan
Genre:Personal development, Psychology, Performance, Anxiety
Publisher:Free Association Books
Publication date:31 Aug 2018
Availability:Paperback, eBook
ISBN: 9781911383192
Price: £12.99
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Online profile:
http://www.literallypr.com/public_relations/file/Clare-Hogan.php
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