Drewsome.

Performance yoga, mindfulness, and brainspotting for professional athletes and teams by master yoga teacher and mindfulness + mindset expert, Drew DeBiasse.

Founder

Stanford University

Yoga Teacher

YogaSource Palo Alto

HeartYoga LLC

Studio Manager / Lead Teacher Trainer

Life Time Inc.

Yoga Teacher / Teacher Trainer

Training Modern Athletes | Pro athletes and teams are stronger and healthier with my custom yoga and mindfulness programming.

Overtraining is dead. Mindful athletes are the future. 

Drew DeBiasse, affectionately known as “Drewsome,” is a trusted high-performance provider with 15 years of experience working with elite athletes and teams across the NFL, MLB, and NBA. Based in the Twin Cities, Drew specializes in cutting-edge somatic modalities such as yoga, breathwork, mindfulness, and brainspotting. Her custom performance programs are designed to elevate athletic performance, accelerate recovery, and reduce injuries and mental setbacks, making her a go-to resource for some of the most competitive names in sports.

With over 14,000 teaching hours recognized by the Yoga Alliance and advanced training that includes eight 10-day Vipassana meditation courses, Drew’s expertise is unmatched. Her holistic approach empowers athletes to cultivate clarity, confidence, and resilience, helping them thrive under the demands of elite competition. Known for her ability to connect with athletes on a personal level, Drew seamlessly bridges technical mastery with practical application to ensure sustainable growth and success.

Drew offers training blocks nationwide, traveling to meet athletes where they live and train, and is expanding her virtual practice to reach a broader audience. Whether you’re a seasoned professional or striving to reach the next level, Drew tailors her programs to meet your specific needs and goals, guiding you toward realizing your full potential—on and off the field.

The NBA has a serious problem. 67 players are already out injured—just 4 weeks in.

The schedule is too long, sure. But the real killer isn’t the calendar. It’s the way we’re building these players.

We take teenagers, turn them into 7-foot freaks who move like guards, train them to explode and land harder than any humans in history, then hand them half-billion-dollar contracts to keep doing it. 

The modern game pays the absolute premium for the exact traits that destroy bodies the fastest.

Load management was a band-aid on a wound that needed a tourniquet. It didn’t fix the problem because the problem isn’t “too many games.” The problem is we optimized for freakish athleticism and highlight velocity while completely ignoring durability, deceleration, joint health, movement integrity, and nervous system regulation. 

Teams and players chased the traits that win on Instagram and secure max contracts, and now those same traits are snapping ligaments before Thanksgiving.

Until front offices, trainers, and AAU factories start valuing longevity over ridiculous explosiveness, this injury apocalypse keeps happening, whether it’s 82 games or 58.

The league can shorten the season. It won’t matter until the entire player-development culture admits: we built supermen who can’t survive their own superpowers.

There's a better way forward for athletes. The tragedy is that it requires everyone—especially those in power—to listen. Here’s hoping the right voices will eventually be heard. 

Read more in my latest. Link in the comments.

—

P.S. I train professional athletes and teams. I write and share stories about the intersection of somatics and performance. To follow along, ring the 🔔 for all my posts at the top of my profile. I'd love for you to be part of this growing community!

Drew DeBiasse

Somatic Player Development | performance yoga, mindfulness, breathwork, and brainspotting for pro athletes and teams

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Holger Rune just tore his Achilles and is already posting “training” clips on Instagram—sitting on a box at the baseline, hobbling on one foot, hitting balls.

I get the impulse. When your entire identity is built on daily movement and competition, forced stillness feels like erasure.

But these are neither smart nor meaningful reps.

They don’t build strength.
They don’t restore coordination.
They don’t protect the healing tissue.
And they quietly reinforce a dangerous lie—that effort always equals progress.

There is a better way. And it’s backed by decades of research showing that athletes who mentally rehearse movements during immobilization experience significantly less muscle atrophy and return to full strength faster than those who try to grind through compromised physical reps.

One of the cleanest studies comes from the 1990s: subjects with a casted wrist who performed daily mental contractions of the immobilized muscle for four weeks lost almost no strength and almost no muscle volume. The control group doing nothing lost ~45% of strength and significant cross-sectional area.

Later work with ACL patients showed that adding structured mental rehearsal to standard rehab shortened return-to-play timelines by weeks to months and reduced re-injury rates.

In other words, the brain can keep neuromuscular circuitry firing at near-full capacity even when the tendon can’t yet handle load. Motor maps stay sharp. Recruitment patterns stay refined. When the tissue is finally ready, the software is already updated.

Intentional visualization isn’t “positive thinking.” It’s offline strength training with zero risk of graft stretch or re-rupture.

Right now the most elite move Holger could make is the one that looks like doing nothing:

Protect the repair. Let biology run its course without interference. Meanwhile, train the nervous system and do 20–30 focused minutes, twice a day, mentally rehearsing perfect strokes, footwork, explosiveness, and deceleration.

Get well soon, Holger—but get well smart.

Stillness is not regression. Sometimes it’s the most sophisticated form of progress.

—

P.S. I train professional athletes and teams. I write and share stories about the intersection of somatics and performance. To follow along, ring the 🔔 for all my posts at the top of my profile. I'd love for you to be part of this growing community!

Keon Coleman is a case study in the hidden cost of physical talent.

In the high-stakes world of the NFL, raw physical talent is a golden ticket. But for the Buffalo Bills wide receiver—a 2024 first-round pick out of Florida State, celebrated for his 6’4” frame and explosive playmaking—that ticket is starting to look counterfeit.

Last week, Coleman was a healthy scratch for the third time in his young career, benched not for dropped passes or route-running issues but for showing up late to a team meeting. This wasn’t an isolated lapse; it’s part of a growing pattern. Earlier today, the team announced he won’t be playing tonight either.

At 22, Coleman’s gifts scream superstar potential, but his off-field issues are turning heads for the wrong reasons. His story isn’t about immaturity—it’s a clear example of how over-reliance on physical prowess creates developmental blind spots that can derail even the most promising careers.

In an era where the NFL drafts for upside, prioritizing measurable athleticism over holistic readiness, the league is increasingly haunted by players who arrive as physical marvels but struggle in the unquantifiable dimensions of discipline and growth.

Elite performance isn’t linear; it’s a multidimensional ecosystem. When development is done right, it unfolds across four interconnected layers: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. Think of them as concentric circles—each encompassing and amplifying the last. Physical is the smallest; spiritual is the widest, shaping purpose, grounding, and identity.

These circles aren’t weighted equally. Neglect the outer rings and the inner ones erode. A physically dominant player who unravels mentally, lashes out emotionally, or loses his spiritual north can’t contribute at a high level. Coleman’s benchings expose not a lack of talent, but a developmental gap scouts failed to see.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth the NFL must confront: drafting high-ceiling athletes with glaring non-physical gaps isn’t just risky—it’s a structural liability. Scouting departments excel at evaluating tape and testing, yet “character concerns” are often treated as footnotes. When those players arrive, the responsibility falls on staffs without the background or bandwidth to address deeper issues.

The elephant in the draft room is this: without integrated support systems and a development team capable of addressing the whole athlete, these gaps don’t self-correct—they compound.

But this isn’t a eulogy for Keon Coleman. He’s not a lost cause—not even close. He’s a young athlete with real gifts who simply doesn’t have access to the holistic support his development requires. He doesn’t need more routes on air. He needs someone who understands the outer rings of performance—the mental, emotional, and spiritual scaffolding that allows talent to mature instead of fracture.

Physical talent opens the door. The other dimensions determine who stays on the field.

I’m feeling overwhelmingly grateful today.

Over the last year, this tiny but mighty community has really taken off in unexpectedly wonderful ways.

Together, we’re moving the development needle forward at every level. I hear from pro athletes and coaches, college athletes and staffs, and youth coaches and parents almost daily—each one pushing, in their own way, for something more humane, more sustainable, more whole.

What’s also been deeply encouraging is watching this message of whole-person wellness ripple beyond sport. Tech. Sales. Hedge funds. Universities. Healthcare and surgery. And more. Industries that, like athletics, have been built on pressure, performance, and burnout—now reaching out for a different way forward. 

The support, the trust, and the invitations to train, speak, teach, and lead have honestly humbled me. I’m deeply grateful for the opportunity to serve a growing audience and excited to see how these partnerships continue to evolve.

And what’s wild is that I still feel like I’m just scratching the surface of what’s possible. I have more to learn. More love and support to give. More energy to devote to dismantling outdated paradigms and building something that actually supports the human nervous system behind the resume, the stat line, and the title.

If you’re here—reading, reflecting, questioning, sharing, training, or simply paying closer attention to your inner world—please know this: you are part of that change. This work doesn’t move through likes or algorithms. It moves through real bodies, real conversations, real courage, and real care.

Thank you for trusting me with pieces of your journey. Thank you for being willing to grow in public and in private. And thank you for helping prove, every day, that performance and humanity don’t have to live at odds with each other.

Deeply grateful for you all.
Today and always.

❤️

—

P.S. I train professional athletes and teams. I write and share stories about the intersection of somatics and performance. To follow along, ring the 🔔 for all my posts at the top of my profile. I'd love for you to be part of this growing community!

The Chicago Bears are now 9–3 after their win over the Philadelphia Eagles.

If you’ve been paying attention to new head coach Ben Johnson’s attitude and messaging since Day 1, this shouldn’t be a huge surprise—despite the bleak decade leading up to his hire.

Johnson didn’t come to Chicago with empty slogans or surface-level hype. From his very first presser (below), he spoke about discomfort as the threshold of growth and asked his team to “become the best version of yourself”—not just the best player. 

The message was clear: forget flash. Devotion to growth and consistency would be the only way to right the ship.

And it’s working. The Bears went from cellar-dwellers to leading the NFC North, showing sustained improvement across multiple categories. The leap in total offense from last in the NFL in 2024 to top-10 in 2025 alone is striking. They’re also 2nd in the league in rushing offense—an identity shift away from chaos and desperation into structure and physical certainty.

They still have room to grow. But they also have rhythm now. And purpose. Those are hard things to fake.

Culture and mindset are not separate from performance—they are the engine of it. 

When you train players to meet discomfort with clarity instead of panic, you don’t just change playbooks. You change what a team believes is possible.

Bear down!

—

P.S. I train professional athletes and teams. I write and share stories about the intersection of somatics and performance. To follow along, ring the 🔔 for all my posts at the top of my profile. I'd love for you to be part of this growing community!

The hockey world is reeling after an intentional stick to the face and head.

Junior hockey player Luke Dragusica has been suspended indefinitely after the incident, which left Brady Blaseg concussed and bleeding.

Everyone sees the violence. Few understand the physiology behind it.

This wasn’t deranged intent. More often, moments like this are the result of acute dysregulation—a nervous system hijack powerful enough to upend lives, careers, and reputations in a single second.

Here’s what typically happens in moments like this:

1. The nervous system goes into a fight response before cognition can catch up.

Collision-sport athletes live with elevated arousal—adrenaline, cortisol, tunneled attention. A hard (even legal) hit spikes that activation. If the player’s system is already frayed—fatigue, stress, fear of failure, shame—one more jolt can push them into a state where instinct responds faster than thought.

2. The brain shifts from the prefrontal cortex to the amygdala.

In calm states, players can access judgment, social cues, and inhibitory control. In dysregulated states, the brain defaults to simple survival circuits: strike back, defend yourself, reassert control. The swing is still their action. It’s just not a fully conscious one.

3. Hockey culture normalizes certain forms of aggression—but not this.

When you’re conditioned to play through pain and emotion, and to “answer the bell,” you’re far more vulnerable to snapping when your internal load is high. The line between controlled aggression and losing the plot gets razor-thin.

4. Shame is an accelerant.

A hit can feel humiliating, especially if it exposes vulnerability. Shame-driven fight responses are among the most explosive because the athlete is trying to restore dominance instantly.

5. Most players don’t understand their own nervous systems.

Without somatic tools—breathwork, downshifting, awareness of activation—the impulse wins. They don’t know how to reset. They don’t even know that what’s happening is dysregulation.

This doesn’t excuse the act. Dragusica’s behavior was dangerous and deserves consequences.

But if we want to prevent this from happening again, we have to stop pretending this is about “bad apples” or “lack of character.”

Most of these players are dysregulated, overloaded, and never taught how to return to center when their bodies get hijacked.

Moments like this are exactly why leagues need emotional-regulation work built into their development systems.

Because if you don’t train the nervous system with the same seriousness you train skill and strength, the game will eventually expose the gap.

—

P.S. I train professional athletes and teams. I write and share stories about the intersection of somatics and performance. To follow along, ring the 🔔 for all my posts at the top of my profile. I'd love for you to be part of this growing community!

One of the most powerful things you can do as a person:


Be nostalgic for the moment that you’re actually in.

Gratitude holds the highest degree of significance in real time, not hindsight.

—

P.S. I train professional athletes and teams. I write and share stories about the intersection of somatics and performance. To follow along, ring the 🔔 for all my posts at the top of my profile. I'd love for you to be part of this growing community!

Nikola Jokić keeps lapping the NBA, proving once again why he's the best basketball player on the planet. 

In a league of scripted superstars and one-trick machines, Jokić remains the glorious glitch—the 7-foot poet who plays like he's still on a Serbian playground, turning every possession into improvised, nonchalant art. 

Through 17 games, he’s averaging 30 points, 13 rebounds, and 11 assists per game. He literally has a triple-double on autopilot.

His efficiency is even more absurd. He's shooting 63% from the floor (73% on true shooting, which is higher than Steph and KD) and an otherworldly 43% from three-point range. Jokić is a center!

And despite the stats above, it’s his playmaking that’s really the showstopper. 

Jokić has now notched 33 games with 15+ assists in his career. For context: all other centers in NBA history combined have just 14. 

That's not a stat; that's a statement. 

While the league obsesses over verticals and raw athleticism, Jokić threads no-look dimes through collapsing defenses like a quarterback in an ogre’s body. His Sombor Shuffle? Still unguardable. His vision? Sees angles that break physics.

I’ve written about it before, but he defies what I call the "Progression Paradox"—the way elite sports squeeze out creativity as stakes rise. Scouts entirely dismissed a doughy 19-year-old Jokić as a second-round afterthought in 2014 ("lacks explosiveness," they said). 

Yet here he is, a three-time MVP and 2023 champ, thriving because he dodged the mold. No early specialization, just water-polo passes and horse-riding humility fueling a mind that innovates where others conform. He adapts, invents, and dominates.

And you should be too. True genius refuses the box and slips through the cracks.

—

P.S. I train professional athletes and teams. I write and share stories about the intersection of somatics and performance. To follow along, ring the 🔔 for all my posts at the top of my profile. I'd love for you to be part of this growing community!

EQ > IQ.

Stanford vs. Boston College gave us a real-time masterclass in it.

Early in the match, a Stanford defender tripped, gifting BC an uncontested shot on goal. Head down. Shoulders collapsed. That moment can spiral a player—everyone who’s ever competed knows that feeling.

But then his teammate, Will Cleary, ran over, lifted his posture, and snapped him out of the self-blame loop.

No lecture. No frustration. Just presence, attunement, and a nervous system saying: We’re fine. Next play.

That’s emotional intelligence.
That’s leadership.

This quick, calm response shifts the energy of everyone—not just the teammate who needs support in the moment. 

Will went on to score two goals. Stanford won 4–2. The inflection point wasn’t tactical—it was relational.

High performance isn’t just skill, speed, or stamina.

It’s connection. Regulation. The ability to help someone come back to themselves when it matters most.

You can’t change how the rock hits the water, but you can shape how it ripples.

Emotional intelligence is undervalued in every industry. In sports, it’s often the difference between unraveling and rising.

—

P.S. I train professional athletes and teams. I write and share stories about the intersection of somatics and performance. To follow along, ring the 🔔 for all my posts at the top of my profile. I'd love for you to be part of this growing community!

“Players over plays” is a phrase almost every coach believes in, and NFL coaches say it often.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth: the language is common. The time and financial investment behind it is scarce.

Most development systems still train the player as a body-with-a-skillset, not a nervous system with a trauma history, stress patterns, fear responses, and deeply ingrained survival strategies. 

So teams build athletes who look powerful on film, but fracture under pressure, resist feedback when overwhelmed, or tighten when growth requires adaptability.

If you actually want to maximize ability, you have to train the whole person behind the performance.

That’s what somatic work actually does. It doesn’t just unlock range, resilience, and recovery—it builds real coachability. 

The capacity to self-regulate. 
To receive instruction under stress. 
To stay present instead of defensive. 
To adapt instead of resist and protect.

Players over plays only works when the player is fully supported—not just schemed around.

—

P.S. I train professional athletes and teams. I write and share stories about the intersection of somatics and performance. To follow along, ring the 🔔 for all my posts at the top of my profile. I'd love for you to be part of this growing community!

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