Mary Schumann is the Founder and President of Mindful Athletic Performance, a consulting practice focused on the psychological and mental skills of athletes for performance improvement. As a clinical and sports psychologist, Mary has over twenty years of experience working with adults and adolescents at all levels and backgrounds. She has taught for twenty years at the college level, most recently at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA. She has also taught sports psychology skills to young, international athletes and coaches visiting the United States in the Sports Diplomacy Program sponsored by the U.S. State Department.

Mary has a passion for teaching and training athletes, both as individuals and as a team. She has worked with a number of Division 1 NCAA teams (men’s and women’s) including: basketball, volleyball, softball, tennis, soccer, cross country, wrestling, and lacrosse.

Her specialty areas include:

• Teaching goal-setting, self-regulation, attention, and awareness skills
• Team-building and facilitating/resolving communication and relationship issues among team members
• Confidence building for individuals with anxiety, frustration, and negative emotion and for athletes recovering from injuries.
• Motivating both individuals and teams to higher levels of performance
• Assisting coaches and their assistants to observe and monitor progress

Some of the specific tools she uses are Mindfulness Acceptance Commitment (MAC) for improving human performance, Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, and HeartMath Biofeedback.

In addition to her sports psychology practice, Mary has also worked with military populations. For two years, she was a Clinical Interviewer on the Army STARRS project (study to assess risk and resilience in service members). In that role, she did clinical interviewing of active duty enlisted men and women.

Mary holds a master’s and doctorate degree in Clinical Psychology from Virginia Commonwealth University, with a concentration in Behavioral Medicine. She completed her clinical internship at the Medical College of Virginia. Her undergraduate degree is from the University of Connecticut.