Pharma Prescribed with Sam Usher, Founder of Steam Works; Unlocking the Magic of Heat: From Dance Floors to Sauna Shores

I’m Adam Walker a Biometrics consultant, and this is the Pharma Prescribed Podcast—where leaders, innovators, and hidden voices in healthcare open up. No soundbites. No spin. Just raw insight—one prescription at a time. In an industry driven by data, protocols, and pressure, we rarely pause to ask the human questions: What drives us? What breaks us? And what truths live behind the titles we wear? Today, I’m joined by Sam Usher. His career began by accident. A place at the National Youth Theatre sparked a fascination with performance that quickly evolved into choreography — the power of expression through the body, communicating emotion without words. He trained at Ballet Rambert and at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance in Leeds before moving to Brussels to perform while simultaneously creating his own work through his company, Feed. After twelve years in dance, a planned move to Montreal took an unexpected detour to Devon for the summer — where he picked up a camera and never put it down. Film replaced the stage, leading to his first ITV commission: a ski series focused not on spectacle, but on the individuals and preparation behind elite performance. That project took him to Chamonix and marked the start of a new direction. From mountain couloirs to open water, sailing introduced him to live sport — the closest thing to stage adrenaline. He built a successful production company that ran for fifteen years before the disruption of lockdown forced another reinvention. Chapter three is rooted in wellbeing: Steam Works — a community-led sauna experience designed around connection, ritual and reset, where Sam and I first met on the beach in South Devon, Bigbury-on-sea.