There's something that happens when you sit across from someone who has genuinely been through it. Not someone who read about it. Not someone who studied it from a safe distance. Someone who has felt the weight of difficult experiences, done the hard work of moving through them, and come out the other side with something real to offer.
The Full Story
Daniel DaSilva grew up in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Like many people who eventually find their way to this work, Daniel has navigated his own challenges — his own periods of difficulty, his own process of healing. Those experiences didn't just shape him personally — they became the foundation of his entire approach. He didn't come to this work because it seemed like a good career. He came to it because he needed it. And because it worked.
Clinical Experience
Daniel holds a Master's degree in Counseling Psychology from Pace University, New York, and has spent the last 12 years in private practice working exclusively one-to-one with clients. That's over 20,000 hours of direct client work. Not hours in supervision. Not hours in academic study. Hours sitting across from real people navigating real pain, real challenges, and real barriers to living and performing at their fullest.
Daniel has served as a Primary Therapist at a leading trauma treatment clinic in Los Angeles — working at the front lines of trauma recovery with individuals navigating some of the most complex and severe presentations in the field. That experience sharpened both his clinical skills and his deep respect for the courage it takes to do this work.
Therapeutic Approach
Daniel's clinical work is integrative — meaning therapy is always adapted to the individual rather than forcing every person into a single framework. His primary therapeutic modalities include EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), one of the most extensively researched and validated treatments for trauma available, which works directly with the nervous system to process stored experiences; Brainspotting, a powerful brain-body based approach that accesses the deeper neurological levels where trauma and emotional pain are stored — often reaching experiences that other methods cannot fully address; ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy), an evidence-based approach that develops psychological flexibility; NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming); and Presence-Based Work as a certified Teacher of Presence in the Eckhart Tolle tradition.
Performance Work
Daniel's performance psychology work has taken him to some of the highest levels of competitive sport. He has served as Mental Performance Coach for the Brazilian National Basketball Team, and contributed to the psychological preparation of the Brazilian Olympic Volleyball Team ahead of the Tokyo Games.
He currently serves as a Pathways to Power Coach with Tony Robbins organization — supporting individuals through high-performance coaching, major life decisions, and the kind of deep pattern change that requires more than surface-level strategies. His coaching certification includes Robbins-Madanes Core 100 and 200 training.
He has worked with Olympic athletes, executives, and high performers from diverse professional backgrounds — helping them develop the psychological foundations that support consistent, high-level performance under real pressure.
Athletic Background
Daniel came to the United States from Rio de Janeiro on a full NCAA athletic scholarship and competed at the university level in New York. He went on to spend nearly a decade playing professional basketball overseas — competing at the highest level, in high-stakes environments, under the kind of pressure that reveals exactly what a person is made of psychologically. That experience gave him something no certification can teach — a firsthand understanding of what elite performance demands, and what gets in the way.
