The former head of medicine at Everton Football Club has launched a company which aims to help business people and elite athletes achieve their full potential.

Danny Donachie, who has worked closely with David Moyes, a young Wayne Rooney, Paul Gascoigne, as well as a raft of other household names, is now running Embodyism.

The 42-year-old from Manchester is the son of former Manchester City and Scotland defender Willie Donachie and now uses multiple skills picked up over the past two decades to boost people’s well-being and performance. “The underlying message behind what I do is about presence, being fully in the moment and harnessing the full capacity of each life,” said Danny, whose professional football career was cut short following two ankle breaks.

“Your body picks up so much information that we miss, because we are in our heads, and tapping into this resource creates a fundamental shift in behaviour. “The idea for Embodyism came to me towards the end of my time at Everton and it is working out well so far, due to the good variety of clients I have.”

Danny spent 15 years with Premier League side Everton and developed a close relationship with David Moyes, who left Merseyside in 2013 to take over from Sir Alex Ferguson as Manchester United manager. The Sale resident and father-of-three – who currently works with star Ana Ivanovic, the girlfriend of Manchester United and Germany midfielder Bastian Schweinsteiger, a high profile American TVsports presenter, as well as some of his old friends at Everton including Tim Howard and England defenders Leighton Baines and John Stones – says his focus is also now on helping people in business.

Danny is now hoping to grow the Embodyism brand over the next 12 months and beyond. His interest in connecting mind and body started more than 30 years ago though, way before a brief spell as Sunderland physio, and his time at Everton. “My dad used to meditate twice a day in the 1970s, which was quite unusual,” said Danny. “He did it from a young age as a way of dealing with his background. His dad was an alcoholic. And he grew up in Glasgow in a one bed apartment with his brothers and sisters after his mum had died when he was only 12.

“His experiences and way of dealing with the world had a big impact on me, as did reading Ghandi’s autobiography while I was living in Manhattan aged 24.”

He added: “Working with people in the business world and applying my experience from sport has been particularly interesting to me. “In Manchester for instance, because of the amazing growth of the city during the past decade, there are probably more high performing people working in the region than ever before. It’s an exciting time with many up and coming business people rising through the ranks.”

Danny, who also studied with Buddhist monks when he was 16, said the work he does ‘has to be practical’. “It’s not about going off and living in a cave,” he said. “Getting to a place of contentment and calmness within a high performing life isn’t easy, but it is completely possible. This is the aim of my work. To help people achieve great feats from this place of calm contentedness.

“What I find is that people who have achieved a lot in life, do start to eventually ask questions like ‘what is life about?’, because despite achieving so much, there is still a hole there that is unfulfilled, a question unanswered.” He added: “One of the most common things that comes up with people I have worked with, is self-doubt or self-hijack.

“You might expect people at the top of their profession to have this Utopian lifestyle free of doubts.But they have them, just like anyone else. In fact, they can be even greater doubts because of the increased intensity and scrutiny.”

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