Laura Dumbleton

Breathwork gave me a way back to myself. For a long time I didn't realise how much I was running on adrenaline and nervous energy, especially around performing, until breath gave me a way to feel what was underneath all of that.

I'm a Graduate Facilitator, Mentor and Teacher at Breathing Space. I'm also an Advanced Instructor with the Institute for Vocal Advancement, which underpins my one to one voice coaching, and I hold a Masters of Research in Music from the University of Edinburgh, where I specialised in performance anxiety. That's really where this whole path started for me.

My relationship with stage fright began at sixteen. I was about to start singing, the band was about to come in, and I froze completely. All I could think was that I couldn't mess this up because people were there to see me. My musical director got the band playing to cover, and I came back in two lines later. It felt like it lasted forever.

That moment stayed with me for years. It's part of why I understand stage fright as a nervous system response rather than a personal failing. I've lived it from the inside, not just studied it from the outside. Voice and breath are never really separate for me, they're two expressions of the same nervous system response, and it's the thread that ties everything I do together.

I stand for doing this work properly. That means being honest with clients, even when it's not what they want to hear, and never offering false praise to make someone feel good in the moment. I stand against guru style coaching and the "I will make you a star" promise, because that's not what this work is.

My greatest wish is that my clients get to fully step into their own potential, on stage and off it. So many of them are more capable than their nerves let them believe, and I want them to reach the point where their nervous system finally gets out of the way of everything they already know how to do.