We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Shawn Lopez. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Shawn below.

Shawn, appreciate you joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

It started during the pandemic. There was so much fear and uncertainty and what seemed like a lack of happiness and joy in the world at the time. If I can, I always try to bring a little humor in what I’m doing or teaching. I wanted to bring some joy to the people around me so I created The Smile and Move Challenge.

The challenge was that you had to do a daily task while doing a movement like brushing your teeth while doing an elbow exercise. It was so silly that people were smiling and having fun doing the challenge. I don’t know how many people actually participated but I know it did put a smile on a few faces and that’s all that matters.

Some people in my community would come up to me in person and say how much fun they had participating in the challenge. Seeing their eyes light up when they were talking, I knew it was all worth it.

From that challenge, I created my company Minditude. It was a play on words to make lasting changes combining your mind and attitude.

Shawn, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I grew up watching my dad and brother play hockey. I started playing at 5 years old because of them. During one game in college, I was skating and my foot got stuck in a crack. My body kept moving forward, but my ankle had different plans. I ended up fracturing my ankle. I never received proper care and because of that my ankle healed improperly, causing immense pain every morning for years.

Every doctor and physical therapist I saw all said the same thing, there is nothing we can do and you will just have to deal with the pain for the rest of my life. I couldn’t accept this as my reality and thought to myself there has to be another way. Through all my research, I came across Z-Health. Z-Health takes a brain based approach in tackling chronic pain and becoming a better athlete. As a Neuroscientist, this sounded very promising. I ended up becoming a Z-Health trainer and used those techniques that I learned to heal my ankle. This was the first time in years that I was able to wake up without any ankle pain.

Shortly after my injury I became a varsity ice hockey assistant coach. There was one player that had a hard time controlling his emotions on the ice. When I joined, people told me that is just the way he is and there is nothing we can do about it. That sounded all too familiar. I took some extra time to sit with him after practice to just listen and understand him better. We worked a lot on breath work, visualizations and mindset. He started implementing those techniques during the game and he became a completely different player.

I always wanted to help people, but didn’t know how to combine my passion for ice hockey, neuroscience and laughter. In 2020, I created my company called Minditude. It was a way of bringing laughter through movement to help with chronic pain. I was just missing the ice hockey component. I ended up branching off Minditude and creating Minditude Hockey.

Minditude Hockey. brings a unique balance of mindfulness, mental preparation, laughter and movement into the ice hockey world. I am only limited to the number of players I am coaching at a time. I am very fortunate to be working with the Los Angeles Kings youth organizations in El Segundo. I work with youth goalies to improve their mental game through vision exercises, movement, mindset and mental preparation. We have also partnered with WholeSome Fuel to provide an in depth nutritional session for all the goalies.

The program has been so successful and has received incredible feedback from both the parents and goalies, we are looking to expand and bring Minditude Hockey to other youth organizations both locally and nationally. We host sessions throughout the year during the season and off season. We keep each group to a max of 4 goalies so each goalie can get the proper attention they deserve.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

After seeing all my teams and players succeed after changing their mindset, I would be doing a disservice if I couldn’t get my teachings out to all the goalies across the world. I had surveyed around 100 parents what they would like to see in an online goalie program that they couldn’t really get any where else. I created the program based off parents and goalie responses . I was very uncomfortable cold calling the parents, but you have to get comfortable being uncomfortable because that is when growth happens. I took the online program and turned it into an in-person program. When I was trying to get the pilot program off the ground, I emailed a bunch of ice rinks and I received no responses. I followed up and still didn’t hear back. Instead of getting discouraged, I kept following up. It took almost a dozen emails before I finally got some responses and made some progress.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Before the pandemic, everything was in-person. During the pandemic, I didn’t really have a social media presence. There was very little online programs for hockey. After realizing there was a big need to create something virtual. That is when I conducted the surveys to start creating an online program for goalies. I received a lot of great feedback from all the goalies that participated. But things were starting to open up again and people were getting zoom fatigue. I had to pivot again and turn the online program into an in-person program. The issue was that since I had an online program, I had goalies enrolled from all across US and Canada, but the in-person program would be local. I had to start from ground zero and reach out to local ice arenas.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.myminditude.com/hockey-overview
• Instagram: @minditude_hockey
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@mindsethockeycoach2320