Inside the Minds of the Ultra-High Performers

Named Best for Hypnotherapy by Tatler and recognised as a Savvy Entrepreneur by The Evening Standard, Anna Lancaster Hedman is an internationally respected expert in subconscious reprogramming and mental longevity. A Clinical Hypnotherapist and RTT® Practitioner, she works at the intersection of neuroscience, belief psychology, and identity, helping elite clients, from C-suite leaders and creatives to public figures, dissolve limiting patterns and create rapid, lasting change, often in as little as one session.

As the creator of The Subconscious Reset Method™, Anna developed a proprietary approach rooted in neuroplasticity and mental longevity, rewiring identity, emotional responses, and habitual behaviour to move individuals out of survival mode and into sustained confidence, clarity, and abundance. A lecturer at Oxford’s John Locke Institute on mindset and mental wellness, she is known for her belief that the subconscious drives the majority of human behaviour, and that mastering it is the foundation of long-term performance, health, and fulfilment.

Anna, you’ve built a global reputation rewiring elite minds, what sparked your own journey into hypnotherapy after years of traditional therapies failing you?

I spent years in talking therapy, turning up week after week, revisiting the same memories and emotions. I understood exactly why I felt the way I did, but each session seemed to rehearse the same stress response. The same feelings, the same cortisol spike, the same emotional hangover afterwards. Insight without change can actually reinforce the pattern.

What was missing was the ability to shift how my body felt. Hypnotherapy worked at that level. When you change the emotional imprint held in the subconscious, your responses change naturally. You stop reacting from old survival wiring and start responding from choice. That was the turning point for me, realising that lasting change doesn’t come from rehashing the story, but from updating how the nervous system experiences it.

You discovered RTT after endless talking therapy, what was the exact moment you thought, “This is what I have to bring to the world”?

It was the speed of it. I’d spent years in therapy doing the work, understanding my patterns, yet still living with the same emotional responses. In my first RTT session, shifts that I’d been circling for years happened in one sitting. The emotional charge dissolved. My reactions changed. My nervous system settled.

That contrast was impossible to ignore. What had taken years of effort moved in a single session, though for most people it’s a short series of one to three. I remember thinking, this isn’t just effective, it’s respectful of people’s time, energy, and capacity. That was the moment I knew this was what I had to bring into the world.

MentalLongevity.co reframes biohacking through the mind. Why is mental longevity the true foundation of performance, health, and optimisation?

Mental longevity is the foundation of biohacking because the mind determines how the body responds to everything else. You can optimise sleep, nutrition, hormones, and supplements, but if the subconscious is wired for stress, threat, or self-doubt, the nervous system stays activated and those interventions never fully land. You can’t biohack your way out of panic mode.

When you work on mental longevity, you’re stabilising the nervous system, updating identity, and removing the subconscious blocks that keep people stuck in survival mode. From that place, change becomes fast and organic. People naturally make better choices, show up more confidently, and embody the version of themselves they’ve always sensed they could be.

That’s where the real transformation happens. Mental longevity isn’t about fixing yourself. It’s about removing all the blocks and limiting beliefs in the way so the healthiest, most confident, successful, healthy most magnetic version of you becomes the default.

Your clients are CEOs and creatives, what surprised you most about the subconscious blocks even the most successful people carry?

How similar they are. Regardless of status or success, the core blocks are often fear of being seen, fear of failure, or fear of losing control. Many high achievers are driven by old survival identities that once protected them but now quietly limit ease, joy, and expansion. Success doesn’t erase subconscious conditioning. In many cases, it reinforces it.

Lecturing Oxford students on mindset, what’s your one key message for ambitious young minds?

Your intelligence will take you far, but your subconscious will decide how far you feel allowed to go. Learn early how to regulate your nervous system, question inherited beliefs, and build identity from intention rather than reaction. Mastering your inner world isn’t soft, it’s strategic.

Looking back on your founder journey, what’s one belief you had to release to scale Anna Lancaster Therapy?

That I had to work harder to be worthy. Releasing that belief changed everything. Growth came when I trusted my value, set clearer boundaries, and allowed expansion without burnout. Scaling wasn’t about doing more. It was about operating from safety, self-trust, and alignment.