APB is a Global Speaker, Celebrity & Entertainment Agency
Jayne  Storey

Jayne Storey

Performance Practice Specialist & Multi-Bestselling Author

Jayne Storey

Performance Practice Specialist & Multi-Bestselling Author

Biography

Jayne Storey is a multi-bestselling author, coach and speaker, and the Founder of Chi Performance, a methodology she created in 2004 to share everything she's learned from a lifetime of meditation and martial arts training, to help golfers and other athletes play with freedom and flow.

She has been training for over 30 years, (it’s 37 actually!) mostly in the Chinese styles like kung-fu and Tai Chi (she’s also practiced Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do, Wing Chun, Chinese Boxing, Fencing and spent three years training in the Indian martial art of Kalarippayattu).

Alongside martial arts, Jayne has practiced formal seated meditation (like the Buddhist monks) for 25 years and has never gone more than a few days without practising first thing in the morning.

Based on the understanding her background has given her, of the relationship between the mind, the breath, the body and attaining the coveted flow-state (aka ‘the zone’) she has written three bestselling books to help people improve their golf and sport using the centuries-old principles and practices she has trained in for most of her life.

There are many reasons why she wrote these books, and they had to have STRONG REASONS WHY because she started planning them way back in 2011 and constantly rewrote them until she was satisfied that they were the DEFINITIVE GUIDES to help struggling athletes overcome all forms of self-interference, perform at their best and enjoy their sport more.

Alongside martial arts, Jayne has loved sport since she was a teenager. When she was younger, she enjoyed cycling, running and pushing heavy weights in the gym but now she tends to swim and take long walks in the park, but she still works out in her home gym every week (although she has to stretch a lot more afterwards than she used to!)

So many athletes, especially golfers, suffer instead of excel in their sport, getting angry, frustrated and disheartened. Jayne’s unique experience has shown that it’s not their fault and it’s not because they have no real talent or potential – it’s because of the current mainstream paradigm and THE WAY SPORTS PERFORMANCE IS COACHED.

More specifically, there is little distinction made between the approach necessary to train and hone movement skills and the approach needed to execute and release those skills when playing and performing.

The body cannot move well when the mind is overloaded with technical instruction or even affirmative and motivational thinking, but most coaching will have you think about your technique while talking positively to yourself.

Here’s a little story to illustrate how the Chi Performance method developed.

Around the turn of the millennium, due to the feedback Jayne was getting from her Tai Chi students, who were commenting that the regular classes they were attending were naturally helping them to improve their recreational golf, competitive swimming and holiday skiing, she decided to investigate.

Jayne soon discovered that the meditative state attained when practicing Tai Chi with its breath control, internal focus, and mind-body unity, is a direct parallel to the flow-state experienced by athletes in those moments of excellence like the pure golf shot, the perfect underwater turn in the middle of a freestyle race, or a fearless slalom ski run.

Her students at the time (she was still teaching classes then and hadn’t yet begun working full time with athletes) started enjoying their sport more and performing at levels beyond what they previously thought they were capable of. Every Saturday at ten o’clock when the doors opened at her Tai Chi club in Virginia Water, they would regale her with one example after another of how their balance, breathing, posture, leg strength and so on had all improved, how much better they were getting at the sports they loved, how much more able they were to execute their skills – and this was in additional to all the mental health and wellbeing benefits they were gaining too, not to mention the medals and trophies they were winning!

It soon became Jayne’s overarching mission to bring this training to all athletes who want to practice and apply ancient wisdom to sports and this is what she’s been doing ever since. Just to be clear, you don’t have to spend years learning Tai Chi in order to take your sport to the next level. This is exactly why Jayne put together the Chi Performance method, which is based on the essential elements of the world’s oldest mind-body disciplines like Tai Chi and its related arts, so that you can train in as little as 20 – 60 minutes each day and still get all the benefits to improve your sport.

Recently, there has been a huge spike in AI activity, but it is essential for leaders, executives, management and teams to simultaneously develop human initiative, attitude and potential alongside the digital workplace. Simply put, Jayne teaches her audience to quiet the mind to reach peach performance.

In business, when the mind is quiet, even the most complex tasks and the busiest schedules can be completed with less anxiety and mental stress, communication is more effective, goals and action-plans can be made with greater awareness and there is an uptake in responsibility, leaving individuals and teams feeling energized rather than depleted.

Teams and companies who learn to quiet the mind are likely to be the strongest, most efficient and effective in this ever-changing, fast-paced, digital world, and will retain the ability to develop human potential alongside AI, which will contribute to a more harmonious world for us all.

Speaker Videos

Jayne Storey ShowReel

Speech Topics

Beyond the Mental Game

Quietening the mind to attain the experience of flow. We will cover a range of ancient principles and practices to calm the busy mind including various breathing exercises and forms of meditation and stance-training drills from Tai Chi and Yoga. We will look at why mindfulness apps don’t really help and common mistakes and assumptions about the meditative state and flow. Following this we will look at harnessing deeper levels of insight for completing complex tasks and projects and finish with how to build a daily practice of your own from what you’ve learned.

Audience members will be able to put together a daily Performance Practice to help dispel anxiety and remove all forms of mental interference and stress. They will be shown how to build and develop the practice, apply it to the busy working day and revisit it at times of overwhelm to get back in flow and feel more at ease.

Stillness is the Master of Motion

Attaining a state of relaxed readiness so the body can respond naturally to the intention for the shot; how intent is quicker than the mind and why thinking slows down the release of complex movement skills, including decelerating through the ball. How thinking about moving disrupts the signal from the motor system throwing off balance, rhythm and timing. The daily practice of standing meditation as used in Tai Chi and its applications for all sports. True balance, ground force reaction and leverage. Moving from the ground upwards. Preparing your body with the twin qualities of structure and relaxation; using the body’s centre of gravity for more centrifugal force. What’s missing from modern biomechanics and how ancient practices free the body to release athletic skills.

Audience members will put together a foundational practice to help in the preparation for delivering complex sporting movements without resorting to technical thinking which can disrupt and inhibit the body. Advice will be given on how to build and develop the practice, implement it during pre-shot routines and in the midst of competition.

Deep Practice & High Performance

Preparing the inner conditions necessary to enter the flow-state or zone, bypassing many of the assumptions and myths of psychology and the mental game. How to develop inner quietude by focusing on the body. Understanding the body as the true foundation of Presence. Being in the body is being in the moment. Learning a range of movement principles and practices from Tai Chi and Yoga. The twin qualities of structure and relaxation. How being aware of the body quietens the mind. Self-awareness and the loss of tension. Stillness in motion; letting the mind rest in the centre of the body. Using the body as a foundation to quieten the mind.

Audience members will be able to develop a body-based daily practice to develop greater inner quietude, self-awareness, clarity, confidence and the ability to perform under pressure with ease and mastery.

Tai Chi Experience

Jayne has been practicing Tai Chi Chuan since 1987 and has been teaching week in – week out for the past 25 years. She has learned from many of the great exponents of the art, specifically the Yang (Yeung) Family Long Form. Teachers she has studied with include the late master Chu King Hung, Sifu John Hine, John Ding and most recently Kevin Bryant who is a disciple of Jim Uglow.

In this session delegates will experience the root of Jayne’s unique Performance Practice methods by exploring meditation, softening exercises, chi kung (Qi Gong) breathing and postural awareness and of course, some of the movements of the Tai Chi form.

It is an ideal way to help busy executives and personnel unplug from their devices, de-stress and reconnect to the body. It is also an opportunity for athletes and performing artists to experience first-hand how the training helps to overcome performance anxiety as it offers a way to quiet the mind and develop a body that is athletic yet relaxed.

Studies show that regular practice of Tai Chi reduces tension and mental interference, improves cardiovascular health, enhances flexibility, aids digestion, promotes better sleep and improves mental health.

Companies who have enjoyed this experience include Academy for Chief Executives, Avaya, British Gas, Debenhams, GlaxoSmithKline, Hampshire Police Constabulary, Huf Haus, National Health Service, Unilever and Vistage.

This session will provide a bite-size deep dive into the world of Tai Chi, exploring Eastern philosophy and practice and how it can promote well-being at work or provide benefits for athletes needing to perform under pressure.

Testimonials