My name is Nate Shuman. I am a senior at The Dalton School in New York City. I have been obsessed with numbers and sports for as long as I can remember. In Kindergarten, I learned chess as part of my school’s curriculum and fell in love with its inherent complexities and competitive nature. Chess has been a huge part of my life for the past 11 years, competing at the highest levels, nationally and internationally. My chess credentials (2x World Youth Qualified Representative, 3x All-American, 4x Individual National Co-Champion/Champion, 10x Grade Team National Championship Titles, 5x Divisional Team National Championship Titles, and US National Master) do not reveal what I was going through internally. My successes masked ongoing battles with performance stress and anxiety that deeply affected me on every level. 

As an avid athlete, chess has always been my mind sport. I started practicing mindfulness and biofeedback work at the age of 9, collaborating with a performance psychologist to help manage the pressure of competition at the highest levels. Over the last three years, I have been working with, mentoring, and connecting with students in grades K-12. Creating and engaging with people in the community is a priority for me. I have been sharing my journey with them, guiding them on how to set goals, implement self-regulation, manage frustration, encourage rest and resilience, and how to use stress to improve performance. I have found tremendous gratification in creating a grades K-12 chess peer mentoring program as well as my Mindmates program, consisting of performance workshops based on mindfulness and biofeedback currently geared towards chess and athletics. Last summer, I took a course on the science and practice of mindfulness, which explored theories and practices of how mindfulness and current neuroscience research affects outcomes among youth. The neurological changes the brain undergoes as a result of consistent and sustained mindfulness practice are especially compelling to me as it pertains to overall happiness as well as their impact on general performance. This journey has inspired me to conduct an independent science research project at school throughout my junior and senior years to better understand and academically support the work that I am doing. I hope to continue to develop my clinical research in performance science with competitive chess players that I have begun at Dalton through their Science Research Project electives and my mentorship work this summer with a Neuroscientist/Neurotheologist. 

I have always loved sports, competing in travel baseball, basketball, and now captain of my school’s varsity tennis team. Bringing Mindmates Athletics to adolescent youth athletes is a natural fit. Professional athletes use performance science and mindfulness practices to reach a flow state and to advance their performance. This knowledge has not been made available to scholastic-age kids, and I hope to change that by making Mindmates available on a broader scale. Please join me on this journey!

- Nate Shuman