Presenters – All

France Singer and pianist, qualified Alexander Technique teacher, vocal, instrumental and drama coach,
Agnès de Brunhoff\\\’s dual career as both artist and trainer has earned her an international reputation.
In response to the back problems, injuries, nerves and tension which plague so many musicians and
actors, and in the light of her own experience working in film, theatre and concert, she has
developed a revolutionary approach to musical coaching, adapting the Alexander Technique tools
to the demands of instrumental and stage work, her method coming close to that of trainers in the
sports sector.
First at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the European Union Youth Orchestra,
then in her class at the Paris Conservatoire, her method of psychophysical preparation and
application to instrumental practice has proved itself time and again, and she was invited to extend
it to the Paris Opera Academy in 2018.
She launched the Alexander Technique Training Centre (CFTAlexander) in October 2008, and
has since been training teachers in order to extend the professional reach of her method. The Centre
receives visitors from all horizons – music students, people with back problems at work, etc).
The third edition of her 2012/2015 book which is available in translation as “On stage! Back to
yourself with Alexander Technique” was followed in 2017 by another, also available in English as
“Backstage mysteries of body and mind”, and a third book, “L\\\’engagement détaché” (“Detached
engagement”) appeared in 2021, all published by Delatour France

Ireland Alazne holds a Master in Exercise Physiology and its application in Therapy . She is a qualified Smart Yoga Teacher, Exercise for Health Specialist (REPS Ireland). She holds the BACPR Exercise Instructor Training certificate and Level 4 Cancer Specialist Instructor.
She is a fully qualified Alexander Technique teacher. Alazne also holds a Degree in Economics and a Master in finance from the University of the Basque Country (UPV), Bilbao, Spain. After a career in finance for high-profile companies in Madrid, Pittsburgh, Milan and Bilbao, which lasted for over ten years she began suffering from back pain and postural problems. She discovered she had two bulging disks (L4 and L5) and doctors told her she needed to undergo a risky operation. That’s what led her to train as an Alexander Technique Teacher and now she has been able to function and lead a normal, active life. which includes raising two young children, training at the gym and running.
Alazne has worked as an Alexander Technique Teacher at the training course at the Alexander Technique Centre Ireland, Galway.She continuously works as a private practitioner holding individual and group classes and therapy sessions both in Ireland and abroad.
​Alazne is working at Croí (the West of Ireland Cardiac Foundation) with a variety of participants who have suffered from cardiovascular diseases, cognitive function problems, back pain, stress, different types of injuries (knee, neck etc.). She is part of the Safefit Research as part of the Cancerehab.uk working online with Cancer Survivors through Exercise and Alexander Technique as Therapy.

USA Gathering in Community at the Intersection of DEI and AT

The AT Liberation Project, formerly ATDC, started in 2016 after the 2015 International Congress in Ireland where the lack of diversity among the attendees and on the main stage was very stark. Six Alexander Technique teachers in the New York City, USA area began meeting regularly to discuss what could be done, and how to move the work of DEI forward in the AT world. ATLP has presented at the ATI conference (2016), the AmSAT Conference (2016 and 2019) the International Congress (2018), and as the Plenary Speakers at the ATI Conference (2021).

DEI work can be complicated and difficult as well as liberating and joyous. Our listening process helps us to navigate this territory. Taking a closer look at our shared values has revealed that our AT tools are essential; we rely on pausing and observing, choice and means-whereby to be collaborative, generative and to embody a liberating process. Listening is an essential part of this group. In the fall of 2020 we undertook a four-month project to define our values, vision and mission. Listening was at the heart of our process, and continues to be as our mission grows and changes.

ATLP volunteers met with Restorative Justice, Nonviolent Communications facilitators, and gathered in Council circles. We listened and surveyed participants in affinity groups to better understand what matters most when building a sense of belonging. From these listening sessions we created mind-maps to see the big picture of the DEI work needed in the Alexander Technique community and in the work itself. We did this so that we could gather together in a way that was safer and more productive for everyone.

The ATLP has been continuously working since 2016. Coming together to learn more about DEI has deepened our commitment to the practice of AT as a process for change. The ATLP welcomes you to participate, too. Join us!

Austria At 27, I lost my voice due to a so-called spasmodic dysphonia. The voice sounded broken, vanished and reappeared like a radio signal flickering. Talking to strangers, ordering coffee from a waitress, and even casually saying “Hello” became very difficult. Not to speak of the inability to confront groups of people. Eventually, I had to give up my job in International Development.

When I encountered the Alexander-Technique I felt that here was a possibility for recovery but also an art to be learned; so I trained and have been learning and working full time as an AT teacher ever since. Several people affected by Dystonia have had lessons with me for years.

Apart from the Alexander Technique, my “Heartfulness” meditation practice has been instrumental in re-establishing my health.

Germany Andreas has been teaching the Alexander Technique continuously in his own studio in Munich since 2005. In 2009, he became Assistant Teacher with a training course in Munich, where he taught until 2015. In this time, Andreas repeatedly substituted for the Head of Training – at one point, he has been running the training course for a period of seven months.

For over 20 years, Andreas has also been a well-known radio presenter and newscaster with the Bayerischer Rundfunk (Bavarian public radio) where he regularly presents the news and can be heard in various radio features and radio plays.

He offers regular introductory AT workshops, is a visiting teacher in several German-speaking AT schools and gives Alexander Technique Workshops throughout Europe.
Combining his practical experiences in front of the microphone with AT principles, he developed a series of voice-oriented workshops. Other specialised workshop formats include “Practical Everyday Anatomy”, “The Power of Doing it Wrong”, and “AT in the Digital Age”.

Andreas is very interested in connecting teachers and exchanging experiences and ideas. He was a founding member of the Munich Alexander Cooperation and has been participating in the AT work exchange in the Munich Area whenever possible.

With a like-minded AT teacher, he co-created an easy-to-follow toolset for AT beginners called the “Alexander Basisplan” – for which he created a website and a free smartphone app that features audio narration, a diary and a reminder function (an English version “Alexander Technique Basic Steps is in the works).
Andreas was part of the Congress team for the 2011 AT Congress in Lugano, where he was in charge of designing and maintaining the website. He is also very involved with the German AT society (ATVD) where he, among other things, co-conducted the first extensive member survey form in 2018/19.

Australia B.D.Sc.(Melb), Clin.Dip.Hyp.
Adv. Dip. Alexander Studies
Founder Optimum Dental Posture

Practising as a dentist for over thirty years, Anikó suffered frequently from neck, back and shoulder pain. Doctors and physical therapists offered short-term symptom relief without identifying her condition as work related. She was declared a “hopeless case”, anti-inflammatory medications and surgery seemed her only options. Fortunately, she read about the Alexander Technique, started lessons and got well.

She undertook the training course at the Melbourne Alexander School and founded “Optimum Dental Posture” with the intention of taking the Alexander Technique to the dental profession.

Anikó has presented at Dental Congress/Conference events and CPD courses for dental associations. She teaches dentists, dental hygienists, oral health therapists and dental nurses the inner ergonomic principles of the Alexander Technique translated into dental industry specific applications in clinical settings.

Anikó was a presenter at the 10th & 11th International Alexander Technique Congress.

Australia Julia Woodman BSc, PhD, MSTAT is Head of Training at Edinburgh Alexander Training School. She is also Chair of the STAT Research Group and was a core member of the study team for the large randomised controlled clinical, trial, ATLAS. Julia is keen to foster the continued development of Alexander teaching and training to ensure its suitability for everyone – including those living with hypermobility. She teaches one-to-one, groups and organisations, mostly in Scotland, and qualified from the Manchester Alexander Technique training school in 2006. Julia has published widely for both academic and general audiences; her conference presentations include for the Ehlers-Danlos Society.

Ann Rodiger is the Founder and Director of the Balance Arts Center in New York City. She has nearly 40 years of teaching the Alexander Technique. Her teaching draws from her knowledge from teaching the BAC Teacher Training Course and private lessons in the US and abroad as well as her knowledge of Labanotation, Laban Movement Analysis, Bartenieff Fundamentals, Yoga, meditation and various dance techniques. She has developed the BAC Alexander Technique Teacher Training Program and substantial programming for performing artists. She has also adapted the Alexander principles to work for those with hypermobility and Ehlers Danlos Syndromes. Rodiger teaches internationally in Germany, Belgium, Greece, and Turkey. The Balance Arts Center is a NYC Women and Minority Owned Business and a thriving place for the community to teach, share knowledge, and perform.

Ann’s interest in the Alexander work began when she was studying dance at The Ohio State University. Through the work she was able to find a sense of balance and stability that was previously unavailable due to her hypermobility. Training with the Murrays while Ann was teaching at the U. of Illinois, Urbana allowed the AT to become a more important part of her life. She was pursuing the AT, dance performance and teaching, and meditation simultaneously.

After teaching dance at the U. of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the U. of Hawaii-Manoa Ann moved to NYC to continue her dancing and performing. She taught at the City College of NY and Labanotation at the Juilliard School. She also began a private practice in the Alexander Technique which focused on performing artists, particularly dancers and singers. She also continued to pursue meditation.

Following a 5-year break from NYC living in an ashram, she restarted her private AT practice and began the BAC AT Teacher Training program. To date she has graduated nearly 40 students from a Balance Arts Center Teacher AT Training program.

The BAC has grown from Fulton Street, through 28th St. to 30th Street in NYC to an 11 room studio space that includes small and large teaching rooms and a performance space. The BAC serves as home base to the BAC AT Teacher training program, Ann’s private practice and as a NYC community base for the AT. She produces and co-produces the AT “Freedom to” conferences in NYC as well as other workshops and classes.

Ann also travels to teach abroad in Germany, Belgium, Greece, and Turkey. She is also a Teaching Artist for the summer Juilliard program for High School singers and teaches at the Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Summer Festival. She is a member of the American Society of the Alexander Technique and served as Treasurer for AmSAT.

David Moore is the director of the School for F.M. Alexander Studies in Melbourne which he established in 1998. He is the author of “Smart Yoga: Apply the Alexander Technique to enhance your practice, prevent injury and increase body awareness.”

Besides training teachers in the technique and running a private practice in Melbourne, he has been running regular workshops and trainings in Europe, the UK, China and Taiwan, both for Alexander and yoga teachers.

Ann Rodiger
@ arodiger@balanceartscenter.com

David Moore
@ info@alexanderschool.edu.au

Julie Barber
@ barberjulies@gmail.com

Germany Ann-Kathrin dived into the world of the Alexander Technique in 2009 and completed her training with the Alexander Alliance International in 2013. Her main teachers were and are Robyn Avalon and Bruce Fertman from the USA, Midori Shinkai from Japan, Margarete Tüshaus from Germany and Célia Jurdant from France.
Since 2015, she has been teaching within her own company, where her passion for group teaching became more and more evident, as well as a deep-rooted desire to make the work known and spread throughout the world.
Since 2020, she has been training aspiring Alexander teachers and people in the process of personal development as the director of the northern branch of Alexander Alliance Europe (AAE).
In July 2022, she took over the AAE with a team of AT teachers and brings her competencies there as executive director.
In the Alexander Technique work, she is particularly interested in recognizing one\’s own imagined or self-imposed limits and in developing one\’s own potential – on a physical, mental and spiritual level.

USA Anna’s interest in the Alexander Technique began long before her official teacher training. While Alexander Technique was virtually unknown in Russia, Anna discovered one of the first ever books on the Technique translated into Russian, and was immediately deeply taken by this work.
Anna successfully graduated from the course after completing mandatory 1600 training hours. During the three-year training, she was assisting Tommy Thompson at Harvard A.R.T. classes for actors. In addition to that, she interned for four semesters at Berklee College of Music with Bob Lada.

She then also completed a two-year Post-Graduate study with Tommy Thomson at ATTC.

It was a natural progression of things, that Anna started working as Alexander Technique teacher with musicians, dancers and actors. Thanks to the opportunity to participate in artists’ professional education classes, Anna became finely attuned to the needs and challenges that artists encounter. Assisting her Alexander Technique instructors in real life teaching scenarios, Anna gained an extensive repertoire of ways in which Alexander Technique can help professional performers.

Yet professional musicians are not the only population that finds Anna’s lessons highly beneficial. Anna truly believes, that deep inside every person is an artist, and welcomes people from all walks of life to her studio.

At the same time, Anna makes the learning process much fun. She wants her students to enjoy their Alexander Technique studies and to easily transfer their newly acquired skills and insights to reaching milestones in their lives. That is why she calls her approach Interactive Alexander Technique. She keeps her students engaged with games, fun video clips, and many explorational exercises, that she specifically develops to meet her students’ challenges. Anna loves a challenge that each student brings to the lesson. In fact, the more challenges the student can come up with, the more excited she gets to explore each and everyone of them.

Her primary source of new business is referrals from her past and current students. There is a saying that “A referral is sending someone you care about to someone you trust,” – and this seems to be an unspoken agreement among Anna’s student body.

United Kingdom Anthony Kingsley has been teaching and training for 35 years. He is also a trained psychotherapist. He has been training Alexander Technique Teachers in London since 1990 and assisted in the training of over 100 teachers who are now working in the UK and throughout the world. Anthony’s school, the Alexander Teacher Training School, based in Golders Green, offers ongoing personal development as well as professional training in the Alexander Technique.

Anthony has evolved a powerful mind-body approach to the Alexander Technique. He is particularly passionate about what medics refer to as \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\”somatisation\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\”, which is when the body reveals and reflects our trauma and pain. Anthony sees the potential of the Alexander Technique not just for posture, aches and pains, but also and crucially for emotional healing.

He gives workshops and seminars on the Technique to the general public in the United Kingdom and abroad. He also consults to industry and the medical profession on stress-management, personal effectiveness and trauma healing. He offers bespoke Alexander Technique sessions in at his Studio in London and on-line.

Anthony was very honoured to have written the new introduction to the recently republished, 2019, Alexander classic: \\\”Use of the Self\\\”.

USA Antoinette Kranenburg had the good luck to be introduced to the Alexander Technique in 1978. She qualified to teach in 1988 and started her private practice. She is certified by Alexander Technique International (A.T.I.) and is an active member of A.T.I.’s Professional Development Committee.
Before moving to the United States, Antoinette earned degrees in psychology and urban planning in the Netherlands.
Antoinette teaches Alexander Technique at Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, US, is guest faculty at the South Bank Alexander Technique Centre, London, UK, and on the faculty of the longstanding Alexander event at the Sevenoaks Retreat Center, near Charlottesville, Virginia, US.
As a parent of a three-year old, Antoinette immersed herself in Adlerian parenting and then became a parenting educator certified by the Parent Encouragement Program. She values the practical and transformative approach of both the Alexander Technique and of Adlerian Psychology and teaches a workshop series that builds on both.
Antoinette works with adults of any age who want to improve their mental and physical wellbeing, while dealing with life’s challenges and opportunities. She works with organizations and individuals, with groups and one-on-one, in-person and online.
Antoinette travels with her tango shoes, and enjoys community singing, yoga, Tai Chi, and the outdoors, all of which are enhanced by the Alexander work.

www.KensingtonAlexander.com
email: ak@Kensingtonalexander.com
mobile: 01-240-762-9755

USA Ariel Weiss has nurtured a lively private practice in Philadelphia, PA in the USA since 1988 and studied extensively with Marj Barstow in the 1980’s. Active as a dancer and choreographer for most of her life, she delights in helping people learn to move freely in service of their design so they can feel and function at their full potential.
Ariel trains teachers at the Philadelphia School for the Alexander Technique and also teaches at The Curtis Institute of Music and Temple University. Previously she co-produced the Freedom to Make Music conference, presented at the 11th International Congress for Alexander Technique and was a guest teacher at training programs in Toronto, Tokyo and Osaka.
Pivoting in March 2020, Ariel presented a TEDx talk: Posture myth-busting, created two online courses and teaches five classes weekly online.

Israel Avi Granit trained with Patrick McDonald, graduating in 1983, and teaches full-time in Haifa and Tel Aviv, Israel. He was the senior teacher trainer in Rica Cohen’s AT school for many years before opening his own training course in Tel Aviv in 2006.
Avi is a popular presenter at International Congresses, and works regularly abroad in the UK, Austria and Korea. He continues to hone his skills by applying the AT to his daily life activities including running, hiking, skiing, boxing and carpentry.

USA Belinda Mello, MFA, is an Alexander Technique and movement specialist in practice since 1989. Based in New York City, she is the founder of the AT Motion Center for Actors, has served on the faculty of Brooklyn College Theater Department, SITI Conservatory, and is currently with The Barrow Group and Terry Knickerbocker Studio. She is a co-designer of the Freedom to ACT Conferences and collaboratively built the core curriculum designed for care partners of people with Parkinson’s Disease for the Poise Project. Belinda Mello is a regular member of the volunteer organizing team of the AT Liberation Project and recently completed a certificate program in Embodied Social Justice. Published in BackStage Online, Theatre, Dance and Performance Training Journal, her blogs focus on wellness, mindfulness and performance.

USA Bob Lada

Bob Lada is a Certified Teacher of the Alexander Technique having received his certificates from Tommy Thompson and from Alexander Technique International. Bob is a professor at Berklee College of Music and a member of the Effortless Mastery Institute there. He teaches at the Boston Conservatory, the Alexander Technique Center of Cambridge, Chesapeake Bay Alexander Studies as well as in private practice in Cambridge, MA. He has taught at American Repertory Theater and Harvard Extension School, conducted workshops throughout the USA, Asia, and Europe and is a charter member of Alexander Technique International. Bob has also completed Actors Secret training with Betsy Polatin which he continues to study. This training combines Alexander Technique with the trauma work of Peter Levine and the breath work of Carl Stough. Bob’s primary background is in athletics and analytics and he looks at the Technique as a tremendous aid in getting out of one’s way in performance situations so that creativity and skill can come through. His perspective on AT is one of transformation as the path to more fully participating in the present.

—–

Rachelle Tsachor

Rachelle Palnick Tsachor is Associate Professor of Movement at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is certified in Mind-Body Medicine (CMBM), Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis (CMA), Somatic Movement Therapy (RSMT-ISMETA) and is an ATI teacher of the Alexander Technique. Her research investigates body movement to bring a human, experiential understanding to how movement affects our lives. Tsachor analyzes patterns in moving bodies in diverse projects, researching movement’s effects on our brains, emotions, health, and learning. She is co-author of a series of studies: “Emotion Regulation Through Movement” and “How Do We Recognize Emotion From Movement?” (Frontiers in Psychology), “A Somatic Movement Approach to Fostering Emotional Resiliency” (Frontiers in Neuroscience), and the chapter on movement in “Integrative Rehabilitation Practice – The Foundations of Whole-Person Care for Health Professionals”. At UIC, Tsachor’s artistic contributions as movement specialist serve to support kinesthetic empathy for diverse peoples and cultures through embodied understanding. She is co-PI in NSF-Funded initiatives to bring expressive movement and drama methods into Chicago Public Schools that primarily educate students of color, supporting learning in embodied ways. Resisting the colonizing pedagogy of the mind–body divide, this work aims to create pedagogical spaces and places in classes to sustain equitable opportunities for meaning-making through whole-person engagement.

Her work with trauma emerges from the Center for Mind-Body Medicine’s mind/body skills group approach (CMBM): Tsachor is a supervisor for the CMBM, taught the model in the Global Health Studies program at the University of Iowa, The University of Haifa and Wingate College in Israel. She is currently doing what she can to share this approach with therapists working with people displaced by the war in Ukraine.

USA Caren Bayer received her certification from Patrick MacDonald in London in 1984. Since then, she has maintained a private practice in New York City as well as around the world. Caren opened Manhattan Center for the Alexander Technique, certifying teachers from 2001-2014. As a former dancer and longtime student of the martial arts, Caren brings 36 years of movement research to her teaching.

Australia Caroline Blackshaw, Smart Yoga teacher and teacher trainer from Yoga Hut in Melbourne, Australia has been teaching yoga for close to 20 years. Over time, Caroline found that there were aspects of her yoga practice, which seemed to be causing injury and she began to seek more information about how to work with the postures in the most beneficial way for each practitioner.
The key to discovering more about yoga, for her, lay in learning the Alexander Technique. Caroline studied with David Moore at the School for F M Alexander Studies, where she found that, by applying the principles of the technique to her yoga practice, she was able to start to enjoy postures she had previously found difficult, find a lightness and ease in her body that had not been available in the past, and that many of her injuries and aches and pains decreased or even went away.
Caroline teaches weekly yoga classes at Yoga Hut in Melbourne, Australia and online, and trains Smart Yoga teacher trainees with David Moore at the School for FM Alexander Studies in Melbourne, Australia and online.

Denmark Has been active teaching since he trained to become a teacher in Copenhagen 1986-89. In private practice, companies and Art Schools. In 2004 he started his own training course in Copenhagen. He has given workshops for AT teachers in Denmark, Germany and Finland.
40 years of Ki Aikido practice has been a major inspiration in his approach to teaching the AT, notably in areas of movement and mind-body integration.
The Phenomenological view is the undercurrent in his approach to the work: the experience of ‘how it is’ for the pupil, as a important resource in the learning process. With a focus on the experiential aspects, he aims to overcome the binary thinking of right or wrong, towards a more ‘what is possible’ perspective.
The last 10 years he has expanded his professional activities with different systemic therapeutic approaches:
ISP- Integral Somatic Psychotherapy, Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy and IFS- Internal Family Systems Therapy, which all are built on supporting the system/body’s own ability to heal.

USA Cassie Maloney is a teacher of the Alexander Technique as well as yoga, meditation, and slackline. With a background in music education, her passion is crafting lessons that encourage conscious control, creativity, and confidence in both play and work. She is excited to share what she loves and learn from everyone at the Congress this year.

You can find more information about her teaching on her website below. Or on instagram at @usernamecassie.

USA I studied and trained with Marj Barstow, from 1973 until the year she died, and her effect on my life and teaching has been profound. From Marj I learned that thinking is moving; that we always have a choice; and that while this work may have lasting and joyful “physical” benefits, they all stem from a clear and well-coordinated consideration of how I choose to live and be in the world. And, most importantly, it’s fun!

My goal as a teacher is to see pupils embark on a journey of self-directed and independent learning. As they discover where they want to go, I help them navigate that process.

For me, the most exciting part of this work is watching people realize how free they can be in their thinking and reaction to the world, and what profound effects that can have in all of their lives. I feel privileged to witness people discover the power, clarity and potential of well-coordinated thinking and moving.

As David Mills has said: “Habit is being ready for the one thing you expect next. Coordination is being ready for anything.” I want to be ready for anything.

And if you are interested:

–I am co-director of The Performance School, with David Mills, where we have a rather unique teacher training program (https://performanceschool.org);

— My revised study guide to the major writings of F. M. Alexander is on the Performance School website (keep scrolling!) along with a resource list;

–I assisted Marj on two European tours and have also taught in Australia and Japan and (of course) in the US, and in time compatible time zones on Zoom;

–I co-founded Alexander Technique International (www.alexandertechniqueinternational.org), have served on its Professional Development Committee since its inception (except for two years when I was Chair of ATI), and many other committees also!

–I have extensive experience in Formal Consensus decision making, which ATI uses in its meeting, and am currently chair of the Agenda Planning Committee;

–and I am an actor, a hoofer, and as Lady Allegra Germaine, a burlesque performer!

www.artofselfdirection.com

USA Sarah Barker has a passion for teaching people how to live in a conscious body, how to embody their imagination, and how develop physical intelligence. She focuses on giving her students independence and personal success by helping them discover their own inner abilities and the power to change their quality of moving and living.

She was introduced to the Alexander Technique and the Human Potential Movement during her graduate study of acting at the Southern Methodist University. From the moment she began working with Marjorie Barstow she knew she had a thread that would stitch all of her studies together into a unified approach. The idea that one could use conscious awareness and intention to change one’s whole experience of life and art was revolutionary. She dedicated her studies in the art of acting to the psycho-physical realm. Over the 48 years since that first discovery Sarah has studied more than forty somatic systems for unlocking the freedom and ability that comes with a mind/body unity. She became a Theatre Movement Specialist helping to establish the Association of Theatre Movement Educators. She is also an actress and an acting teacher. She has directed two graduate programs for actors and has developed a body of work for physical approaches to acting and other performing arts. She is now professor Emerita at the University of South Carolina. Sarah continues to teach regularly as an invited guest for Alexander Technique teacher training schools around the world.
She has been teaching the Alexander Technique since 1974 with a focus on providing tools that help people learn the technique when there is no teacher available and then for practice as they work closely with teachers to develop the mind/body connection. More recently she has investigated the scientific understanding of touch and its implications for teaching and learning. She has delivered hundreds of workshops, demonstrations and panels throughout the United States and in Japan, Germany, the UK, Canada, Portugal, and Switzerland.
Sarah writes regularly for theatre movement and Alexander Technique publications. Most recently she launched Allez-Up!, her wellness app for smart phones. In the last few years she has authored chapters in two internationally published books: in Galvanizing Performance (with Jessica Knightly) a book of essays on new developments in applications of Alexander Technique in performance and in Physical Dramaturgy (with Routledge Press) a book of essays on physical approaches to theatre performance. Her book, The Alexander Technique, has been distributed worldwide for forty years and has been translated into French, Japanese, Portuguese, Italian and German. Moving with Ease, her innovative DVD for learning the Alexander Technique, is available in English (through easyalexander.com) and in Japanese (through Being Net Press).

@sarahbarker2@mac.com

Joe Kaplan has been a teaching member of ATI since 2018. A musician with a keep technical mind, he applies the Alexander Technique to his work as a composer, pianist, and percussionist as well as many computer-related endeavors. He has scored several dance shorts that have received recognition at festivals around the world. He is also the founder of YAWP Music, an inclusive collaborative community that composes, notates, rehearses, and performs new pieces of music on the spot.

Joe approaches the Alexander Technique from the perspective that FM\’s main contribution was philosophical. Analyzing human behavior in terms of \”projecting directions\” is a novel paradigm shift in the way we understand ourselves. Joe has written several articles relating the Alexander Technique to symbolic logic and other trends in 20th-century philosophy. This technical analysis of the Technique gives his teaching rigor and clarity. His detailed, research-oriented approach has helped him demystify the Alexander Technique for new students by finding the simpler ways to express the nuances of the work.

@jkaplan55@gmail.com

Catherine Kettrick:
I studied and trained with Marj Barstow, from 1973 until the year she died, and her effect on my life and teaching has been profound. From Marj I learned that thinking is moving; that we always have a choice; and that while this work may have lasting and joyful “physical” benefits, they all stem from a clear and well-coordinated consideration of how I choose to live and be in the world. And, most importantly, it\’s fun!

My goal as a teacher is to see pupils embark on a journey of self-directed and independent learning. As they discover where they want to go, I help them navigate that process.

For me, the most exciting part of this work is watching people realize how free they can be in their thinking and reaction to the world, and what profound effects that can have in all of their lives. I feel privileged to witness people discover the power, clarity and potential of well-coordinated thinking and moving.

As David Mills has said: “Habit is being ready for the one thing you expect next. Coordination is being ready for anything.” I want to be ready for anything.

And if you are interested:

–I am co-director of The Performance School, with David Mills, where we have a rather unique teacher training program (https://performanceschool.org);

— My revised study guide to the major writings of F. M. Alexander is on the Performance School website (keep scrolling!) along with a resource list;

–I assisted Marj on two European tours and have also taught in Australia and Japan and (of course) in the US, and in time compatible time zones on Zoom;

–I co-founded Alexander Technique International (www.alexandertechniqueinternational.org), have served on its Professional Development Committee since its inception (except for two years when I was Chair of ATI), and many other committees also!

–I have extensive experience in Formal Consensus decision making, which ATI uses in its meeting, and am currently chair of the Agenda Planning Committee;

–and I am an actor, a hoofer, and as Lady Allegra Germaine, a burlesque performer!

www.artofselfdirection.com

USA Cathy Madden is a Teaching Professor for the University of Washington School of Drama, Author of Teaching the Alexander Technique: Acting Pathways to Integrative Practice (Singing Dragon, 2018) and Integrative Alexander Technique Practice for Performing Artists: Onstage Synergy (Intellect 2014), and Director of the Integrative Alexander Technique Studio of Seattle. She is a founding member of Alexander Technique International, an ATI Sponsoring Teacher, has served and has served as its chair. Her original exploration of this work began with Marjorie Barstow and she is a regular visiting teacher at training schools and performance centers around the world. Her specialty is integrative practice of this work, particularly in relationship to the performing arts and professional communication, is part of the Integrative Alexander Technique Circle, and she is also a theatre director, clown, doula and Creative Collaborator with Lucia Neare Theatrical Wonders

France As a classically trained singer, I graduated to become an alexander teacher in Cologne in 1999, with Mc Donald trained teacher Stan Hobbs. As I started teaching workshops and individuals in firms or institutions, I furthered my learning with countless colleagues and voice teachers such as Kristin Linklater, B.Fertman, N.Kevan, R.Avalon, M.Shinkai, C.Bayer, J. Wolf etc… In 2008, I became the managing director of the teacher training school The AlexanderAlliance in Germany. Since 2017, France is my home from which I lead Alexander trainings in both Strasbourg and Cologne, Germany. In my 25 years of practice, I was invited to teach in Switzerland, Japan, England and the USA. Today I support performers, voice and movement coaches, singers and public speakers in french, english and german, online and in presence, in AT trainings and at my yearly bi-lingual AT summer retreat in Alsace. “Celia’s work is magic. Her touch is wise: it teaches you to connect back to your own wisdom, your own freedom, your own power.” Sasha, writer, capoeira dancer and singer, philosopher, anthropologist

Germany I was born in Austria in 1975 and grew up in the mountains. For 25 years I have been active as a personal trainer and fitness coach and have accompanied many people on their way to feel more comfortable in their body and mind. I prefer a playful and explorative approach to movement. This is exactly why I found the Alexander Technique, because for me it is very undogmatic and can serve as a foundation for any movement.

I have always been interested in the way people move, and that is why I have borrowed a lot from children and indigenous peoples, because I think that they best embody the natural movements of human beings.

USA Clara Sandler is a classically trained singer, Voice & Alexander Technique instructor in the Boston area. An Alexander Technique International (ATI) and its International Committee member, she teaches at the New England Conservatory, Boston College Music Department and privately.
Clara has performed in opera, oratorio, zarzuela and recitals in Boston, New York, Washington DC, Uruguay and in her native Buenos Aires. She loves to dance and takes Modern dance classes in Boston and has performed with the Lynn Modell Dancers.
Clara has presented the workshop “Voice & Movement, a Flowing Integration” for ATI’s Conference in Ireland, for Freedom to Make Music in New York, at the New England Conservatory in Boston, and online for In the Company of Support summer AT retreat. She has also presented the workshop “Whispered Ah & Walking in Nature” for ATI’s 2020 Conference. Her article “Whispered AH to the Rescue!” appeared in ATI’s ExChange journal.

Brazil Clare Maxwell:

I have been teaching the Alexander Technique for 22 years and studying for over 30, and was active as a dancer, teacher, and choreographer in the experimental dance community in NYC for most of that time. I trained at ACAT/NYC, certified with Jessica Wolf in The Art of Breathing, and am engaged in a life-long study of developmental movement forms. I am the creator of Mobile Body Alignment™, a method of bringing awareness to the self in movement that harmonizes the nervous system, skeleton, and musculature. Mobile Body Alignment™ liberates the practitioner from negative self-consciousness, stiffness, and loss of ease. Inspired by my many years dancing and teaching the Alexander Technique, Mobile Body Alignment™ can be applied to any movement form or activity.

One of my main research interests in The Union is how to get new perspectives on my habitual assumptions, especially concerning the different roles of teaching and learning; a non-hierarchical, peer-to-peer work exchange structure is one way of doing this. I’m also very interested in the plasticity of our body schema, how to practice updating, refining, or changing this self image, and how that kind of practice affects our ability to organize and move ourselves in space.

Eleni Vosniadou:

I have been studying the Alexander Technique since 2006. Growing up in Greece, my first passion was classical music. I came across AT as a percussionist with chronic pain issues related to playing and after recovering through my study of AT I went on to train as an AT teacher in London. In 2012 I became certified as an AT teacher and later moved to Brazil, where I am now happily married. I am the founder and director of Consciência Corporal para Músicos®, an AT learning program for musicians and music teachers, where music makers can go deeper in the study of AT, learning to uncover the freedom and joy in their music making. I am also on the faculty of Total Vocal Freedom, an international program for singers to enhance their music performance skills through the Alexander Technique.

As a member of the Experimenters Union, my primary interest is to explore and research the inner life of the teacher; how common challenges faced by teachers are social issues within the community of education and when it comes to teaching a subject as deep and multifaceted as the Alexander Technique, those challenges can invoke a deeper understanding of AT principles and skills, when addressed without fear and self-judgement. Also, the Experimenters Union is a place where I can freely experiment with crazy teaching ideas and formats and receive a kind of feedback that provides insight different to what I get when receiving feedback from my students.

USA Corinne Cassini, a professionally trained cellist, teaches the Alexander Technique at the Hayes School of Music at Appalachian State University and privately in Boone, North Carolina, USA since 2012, guiding performing artists and many others both individually, in groups, and in workshop settings. Her first Alexander lessons were over 25 years ago and she has been practicing as a certified teacher in Boone, and abroad for over 10 years. She initially trained in the Netherlands (ATON), and continued to deepen her studies with Tommy Thompson as a post-graduate assistant. She is a Sponsoring-Member of ATI. In 2015 she founded Light in Being-Alexander Teacher Training and started training Alexander teachers at her school, in Boone, NC. Most recently and throughout the pandemic, she translated Tommy Thompson’s book “Touching Presence” with Manuelle Borgel, taught online, and followed courses with Bruce Fertman, Tommy Thompson, and Betsy Polatin. She’s an active member of the AT Liberation Project since 2020 and is passionate about making AT more accessible and inclusive.

France — Corinne Cassini —
Corinne Cassini, a professionally trained cellist, teaches the Alexander Technique at the Hayes School of Music at Appalachian State University and privately in Boone, North Carolina, USA since 2012, guiding performing artists and many others both individually, in groups, and in workshop settings. Her first Alexander lessons were over 25 years ago and she has been practicing as a certified teacher in Boone, and abroad for over 10 years. She initially trained in the Netherlands (ATON), and continued to deepen her studies with Tommy Thompson as a post-graduate assistant. She is a Sponsoring-Member of ATI. In 2015 she founded Light in Being-Alexander Teacher Training and started training Alexander teachers at her school, in Boone, NC. Most recently and throughout the pandemic, she translated Tommy Thompson\’s book \”Touching Presence\” with Manuelle Borgel, taught online, and followed courses with Bruce Fertman, Tommy Thompson, and Betsy Polatin. She\’s an active member of the AT Liberation Project since 2020 and is passionate about making AT more accessible and inclusive.
www.lightinbeing.com

— Manuelle Borgel —
Manuelle Borgel, a Choreographer-Dancer, discovered AT in 1995 and was certified by ATI in 2015. She currently teaches the Alexander Technique in Paris to artists, seniors, children, … individually and in groups. She teaches somatics to explore performances and the creative process, fields she trained in linked to Life Art Process. She continues to develop her approach in Collective Intelligence, cooperation, conflict, trauma, breath and stress management using the tools of Non-Violent Communication and Co-construction.

The Netherlands Ms. Crissman Taylor runs an integrated Alexander Technique curriculum at Utrecht Conservatorium for the past 30 years. Courses, lectures and lessons create common language, practices and experience among all students and teachers, and space for continued discovery throughout conservatory training. She has created new tactics to stimulate musicians to incorporate Alexander principles into their daily music practice, and has developed an online learning environment to support class and lesson work at conservatory level.

Ms. Taylor’s background in vocal and violin performance, combined with her AT teaching, and studies in sociology/psychology at Harvard University combine in her work life. In addition to a long career as violinist in New York and Europe, she is also a mezzo-soprano, and active as soloist in a wide range of repertoire, singing in recitals, chamber music concerts, and performances of cantatas, oratorios and other works with orchestra.

Ms. Taylor is a founding member of Artist in Balance, an interdisciplinary performance and educational collective. Her work has been informed by cross-disciplinary collaborations including Alexander-based performance research work for dancers and musicians with Tony Thatcher of the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. She conducted extensive research into the challenges of violin playing, founding the Violinist in Balance method, which combines Alexander re-education with custom made chin rest and shoulder rests, using 3-D printing technology.

www.artistinbalance.org
www.violinistinbalance.nl

——————————-

Gilles Rullmann

Gilles Rullmann is an Alexander teacher and violinist from Haarlem, the Netherlands. He has been a professional violin player for over 20 years, specialising in (Irish) traditional music, performing extensively in Western Europe. In his AT teaching he draws on years of experience teaching violin, Irish music, whitewater kayaking and Environmental Science at Utrecht University.

Gilles works as an AT teacher at the conservatorium of Amsterdam and the conservatorium of Utrecht. Together with Criss Taylor he founded Artist in Balance, where they provide a combination of teaching and making custom chinrests and shoulder rests for string players from all over the world.

Gilles was trained at ATCA by Tessa Marwick and Paul Versteeg in Amsterdam. An avid outdoor sports enthusiast himself, in his private practice he works a lot with runners, climbers, tennis players and musicians. Gilles was chairman of NeVLAT, the Dutch Society of Teachers in the Alexander Technique from 2017-2021.

www.alexandertechniekhaarlem.nl
www.artistinbalance.org

Israel Born in Jerusalem 1948. Graduated AT teacher 1978. Since 1989 I trained AT\\\’s teachers in Germany and in Israel. Studied Theater and literature. Exercised much Zen meditation and Qigong. I published some books of poetry in Hebrew. Now I am going to retired from my work in Germany and live in Tel Aviv.

USA David Anderson is the Director of the Marian Wright Edelman Institute for the Study of Children, Youth, and Families at San Francisco State University (SFSU). Formerly a Professor and Chair of the Department of Kinesiology at SFSU.

David has been engaged in a wide range of service, teaching, and research activities. His research centers on understanding how motor skills are acquired, how to promote the development of motor skills, and how motor activity influences psychological functioning. He has authored and co-authored numerous peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, presentations, an activity manual, and a popular textbook, and has received significant funding for his research from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Education.

David is an Active Fellow in the National Academy of Kinesiology and serves on several advisory and editorial boards. He is a passionate advocate for the importance of physical activity in optimal motor and psychological development and is committed to promoting efforts to improve early child care, education and health.

—Education—
B.Ed. University of Technology, Sydney: Physical Education
M.S. California State University, Long Beach: Physical Education
Ph.D. Louisiana State University: Kinesiology

Germany David Young is an Alexander Technique teacher, performance and meditation coach from Australia, now based just outside of Berlin. In his work David also draws on experience as a composer, artistic director, gymnastics coach, social entrepreneur and mental health worker. He trained with Jörg Aßhoff at the Alexander-Technik-Schule Berlin.

Australia David Moore is the director of the School for F.M. Alexander Studies in Melbourne which he established in 1998. He is the author of “Smart Yoga: Apply the Alexander Technique to enhance your practice, prevent injury and increase body awareness.”

Besides training teachers in the technique and running a private practice in Melbourne, he has been running regular workshops and trainings in Europe, the UK, China and Taiwan, both for Alexander and yoga teachers.

USA I was a graduate student in Biophysics when I first met Marjorie Barstow in 1974. When I dropped Catherine off in Lincoln, Nebraska for Marj’s summer workshop in something called The Alexander Technique, I wasn’t planning to attend that workshop myself the following summer, much less all of 20 summers after that. I recall that I found in Marj’s approach to what she liked to call “the discoveries of FM Alexander” a new kind of biophysics – a study of the workings of the whole human person, as a whole – and by that person. What in the world, I thought, could be a more fascinating field of study than ME? And what knowledge would be more useful? So I never did get that degree in Biophysics, though I did eventually get my PhD in Human Learning, and of course Alexander’s work played a central part.

Over the years of working with people engaged in all sorts of performance, I have enjoyed sharing their moments of fascination with their own “unity in action.” John Dewey claimed that this work “bears the same relation to education that education bears to all other human activities.” A strong statement. I continue to see my work with the Alexander Technique as a means of exploring what that statement might mean, and what it might be like to become educated in that way. In the meantime, I find that the secret compensation for practising the Technique is that we get to spend moments enjoying the presence of truly fascinating people – ourselves.

United Kingdom Julia Woodman BSc, PhD, MSTAT is Head of Training at Edinburgh Alexander Training School. She is also Chair of the STAT Research Group and was a core member of the study team for the large randomised controlled clinical, trial, ATLAS. Julia is keen to foster the continued development of Alexander teaching and training to ensure its suitability for everyone – including those living with hypermobility. She teaches one-to-one, groups and organisations, mostly in Scotland, and qualified from the Manchester Alexander Technique training school in 2006. Julia has published widely for both academic and general audiences; her conference presentations include for the Ehlers-Danlos Society.

Ann Rodiger is the Founder and Director of the Balance Arts Center in New York City. She has nearly 40 years of teaching the Alexander Technique. Her teaching draws from her knowledge from teaching the BAC Teacher Training Course and private lessons in the US and abroad as well as her knowledge of Labanotation, Laban Movement Analysis, Bartenieff Fundamentals, Yoga, meditation and various dance techniques. She has developed the BAC Alexander Technique Teacher Training Program and substantial programming for performing artists. She has also adapted the Alexander principles to work for those with hypermobility and Ehlers Danlos Syndromes. Rodiger teaches internationally in Germany, Belgium, Greece, and Turkey. The Balance Arts Center is a NYC Women and Minority Owned Business and a thriving place for the community to teach, share knowledge, and perform.

Ann’s interest in the Alexander work began when she was studying dance at The Ohio State University. Through the work she was able to find a sense of balance and stability that was previously unavailable due to her hypermobility. Training with the Murrays while Ann was teaching at the U. of Illinois, Urbana allowed the AT to become a more important part of her life. She was pursuing the AT, dance performance and teaching, and meditation simultaneously.

After teaching dance at the U. of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the U. of Hawaii-Manoa Ann moved to NYC to continue her dancing and performing. She taught at the City College of NY and Labanotation at the Juilliard School. She also began a private practice in the Alexander Technique which focused on performing artists, particularly dancers and singers. She also continued to pursue meditation.

Following a 5-year break from NYC living in an ashram, she restarted her private AT practice and began the BAC AT Teacher Training program. To date she has graduated nearly 40 students from a Balance Arts Center Teacher AT Training program.

The BAC has grown from Fulton Street, through 28th St. to 30th Street in NYC to an 11 room studio space that includes small and large teaching rooms and a performance space. The BAC serves as home base to the BAC AT Teacher training program, Ann’s private practice and as a NYC community base for the AT. She produces and co-produces the AT “Freedom to” conferences in NYC as well as other workshops and classes.

Ann also travels to teach abroad in Germany, Belgium, Greece, and Turkey. She is also a Teaching Artist for the summer Juilliard program for High School singers and teaches at the Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Summer Festival. She is a member of the American Society of the Alexander Technique and served as Treasurer for AmSAT.

David Moore is the director of the School for F.M. Alexander Studies in Melbourne which he established in 1998. He is the author of “Smart Yoga: Apply the Alexander Technique to enhance your practice, prevent injury and increase body awareness.”

Besides training teachers in the technique and running a private practice in Melbourne, he has been running regular workshops and trainings in Europe, the UK, China and Taiwan, both for Alexander and yoga teachers.

Ann Rodiger
@ arodiger@balanceartscenter.com

David Moore
@ info@alexanderschool.edu.au

Julia Woodman
@ alexander@julia-woodman.co.uk

USA Elizabeth completed her training at the American Center for the Alexander Technique in New York in 1993. She later earned a master’s degree in social work and practices as both a body psychotherapist and an Alexander Technique teacher. She has been Scottish country dancing for 20 years and in 2019 passed her teacher certification exams and currently teaches in the New York City area. She is delighted to have you join her for a joyful time dancing Scottish.

USA Elizabeth Johnson (MFA, M.AmSAT, RSME/T, RYT200) is a performer, choreographer, educator, Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analyst, certified Teacher of the Alexander Technique (AmSAT & ATI), and Registered Yoga Teacher (200hr). She teaches and presents nationally (US) and internationally on dance/movement pedagogies and somatics that center developmental movement, prosocial/trauma informed education, and feminist perspectives. She has co-authored/authored three book chapters featuring applied Alexander Technique and developmental movement and is an Associate Professor in the School of Theatre and Dance at the University of Florida.

The Netherlands Elke Mastwijk has been a passionate Alexander Technique teacher for over 25 years with a full-time practice in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Over the years one question became a quest for knowledge. “Why do some pupils make significantly better progress than others?”

She has been inspired by two pioneering colleagues. Firstly, by Hil Boode, who was a Dutch Alexander Technique teacher and CranioSacral therapist. Secondly, by Gitte Fjordbo, who spoke at the 2011 Alexander Technique Lugano congress about early childhood development in a special lecture titled: “when conscious control is not an option”.

After graduating as an Alexander Technique Teacher from ATON in the Netherlands in 1996 and a post graduate term with Walter and Dilys Carrington, she went on to study CranioSacral Therapy (2005) and Reflex Inhibition Therapy (2014). She is able to translate relevant knowledge from these disciplines to the Alexander Technique. She combines a special passion for understanding how fascia (connective tissue) restrictions affect use with an intense curiosity about early childhood development. How do we develop from lying on our back as babies to toddlers who can stand up and walk? How does an early childhood compromised by stress or health issues affect the adult nervous system and motoric skills?

Over the last 25 years, Elke has managed to connect the dots as to why some of her pupils make spectacular progress with the Alexander Technique and others do not. After presenting her work at workshops at previous AT Congresses in Lugano and Ireland, she has been invited to share her insights in the Alexander Technique communities of Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, Austria, and the USA.

She has a busy practice teaching’ the Alexander Technique as well as providing support through Reflex Inhibition for pupils seeking help with early childhood issues. She is a CranioSacral therapist for people as well as for horses and dogs.

USA Erik Bendix

As the parent of a budding 4 1/2 year-old violin student, I was expected to learn violin a few steps ahead of my son so I could help him practice. Halfway through Suzuki Method Book 1, Noah zoomed past me and has not needed musical help from me since.

Alexander Technique help is different story, however. Through his growth into adulthood, the process of adapting skills to ever larger instruments and an every taller body did benefit greatly from Alexander Technique support. At first I only brought him to other AT teachers for this, but eventually was able to provide that help myself. He now asks for AT lessons when he needs and wants them. The Alexander Technique has helped me as a parent to stay out of the way of his natural unfolding as a musician.

A modern classical music career can be astronomically stressful and demanding, an easy thing to tie oneself into knots over. Alexander Technique provides a profound way to untangle oneself and to recover one’s openness to fresh musical discovery. It reopens what one can hear.

—–
Noah Bendix-Bagley
First Concertmaster, Berliner Philharmoniker

Considering it his life-long pursuit, Noah Bendix-Balgley has a personal sound that connects with his audience in a meaningful way. Whether he’s leading the Berlin Philharmonic as First Concertmaster, performing chamber music or in front of the orchestra as soloist, Noah’s gift of communication through music has reached listeners all around the world.

As a soloist, Noah regularly appears with leading international orchestras and in recital at the world’s finest halls. Upcoming highlights this season include debuts with the Orchestre Symphonique de Québec, Buffalo Philharmonic, NHK Symphony Orchestra and a play-direct program with the Kammerakademie Potsdam. Recent highlights include his concerto debut with the Berlin Philharmonic (play-direct), concerto appearances with the Verbier Festival Orchestra at Schloss Elmau, debuts with the Shanghai and Guangzhou Symphony Orchestras, and extensive recital tours throughout Asia and Europe, including performances at the Berlin Philharmonie, Beethovenhaus Bonn, National Concert Hall Wroclaw and National Concert Hall in Taipei.

In 2016 Noah composed and premiered his own klezmer violin concerto Fidl-Fantazye with the Pittsburgh Symphony conducted by Manfred Honeck, a piece which he also performed with the China Philharmonic. Further performance highlights include concerts with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the Orchestre National de Belgique, the Utah Symphony, the Hong Kong Sinfonietta, the Auckland Philharmonia, the Nagoya Philharmonic, a tour with Apollo’s Fire Orchestra performing on period instruments and performing the Brahms Double Concerto with the Aspen Music Festival Orchestra and Alisa Weilerstein.

A passionate chamber musician, Noah performs in several fixed ensembles including a trio with pianist Robert Levin and cellist Peter Wiley and the multi-genre septet Philharmonix featuring members of both the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic orchestras, which just released their 2nd album on Deutsche Grammophon. Recent and upcoming chamber highlights include performances at the Seattle Music Festival, Bergen International Festival, the Sarasota Festival, ChamberFest Cleveland, Zermatt Festival, Le Pont Festival in Japan and worldwide touring with Philharmonix including a multi-year residency at Vienna’s Konzerthaus.

Noah is also a renowned performer of traditional klezmer music, a musical style which has been part of his life since an early age. He has performed with world-renowned klezmer groups such as Brave Old World and has taught at klezmer workshops throughout Europe and the United States. He performs on a Cremonese violin made in 1732 by Carlo Bergonzi.
Noah Bendix-Balgley

Czech Republic Erik Bendix

I started skiing at age 10 while attending school at the Ecole d’Humanité in Switzerland. Skiing scared me stiff at the time. I managed to reach moderate skiing competence by my 20’s, but was stuck at a plateau of skill until I began studying the Alexander Technique. Then, suddenly, my skiing began opening up and has been opening since. Every day on the slopes now brings further improvement. I have been experimenting with applying Alexander Technique to skiing for over 25 years now. In 2004, I was encouraged to go public with this work by Steven Shaw (of The Art of Swimming), and began teaching and writing about it. Movement touches all aspects of my life. I am known as a teacher of world folk dance traditions, I practice Tai Chi, I swim and I have a private practice teaching Alexander Technique and Body-Mind Centering®. I also write and translate poetry, a movement form in words. Although I have now written a book on skiing, my experience of skiing goes far beyond words, often into bliss. I teach it because I want to share that.“

—–
Christoph Bacher

I practically grew up with skiing. I stood on skis for the first time at the age of two and as a child I only wanted one thing, to become a racer. The mountains became our playground and we spent every free minute there. Then came racing and suddenly skiing wasn\’t so nice anymore. The excitement and fear of failing often paralysed me. So I stopped racing and wasn\’t on skis for 15 years. It wasn\’t until I did the Alexander Technique training that I found joy in skiing again. Luckily, I met Erik Bendix and our passion for this beautiful sport quickly bonded us. I love the ease on skis.

—–
Jana Boronova

I first learned to ski when I was about eight. I loved it and was reasonably good at it. However, in my early twenties I felt I had reached a plateau – my skiing technique was not getting any better, I worked way too hard and didn\’t have as much fun anymore. I gave up skiing and took to snowboarding instead.
Years late, at the Melbourne Alexander Technique school I came across Erik\’s article on the Art of Alpine Skiing. I was delighted to find someone applying the Technique to skiing and felt really inspired by Erik’s insights. I knew immediately this was something I wanted to explore further. Thanks to Ease on Skis my technique has improved tremendously and I fell in love with skiing again.

The Netherlands Esther Visser is a Dutch violinist, specialized in historically informed performance practice, PhD researcher and Alexander Technique teacher. Directly after gaining her Bachelor of Music Degree in the Netherlands she was invited to continue her studies with Vilmos Szabadi at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest, where she completed a 3 year Postgraduate program. Simultaneously, she followed a 2 year program ‘Formation Superieure’ with the Orchestre des Champs-Elysées in France. She was coached by the concertmaster of the orchestra, Alessandro Moccia, and performed at the ‘Spotlight on Young Artists’ concert series of the Festival de Saintes. She subsequently gained her Master of Music degree for baroque violin with Sigiswald Kuijken in Brussels.
Esther acted as a concertmaster at several orchestras and during two years she was leader in the European Philharmonic Orchestra. With modern violin she worked as a substitute a.o. at the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra and the Arnhem Philharmonic Orchestra. Esther performed as a soloist with orchestras in The Netherlands, Belgium, France and Finland. As a baroque violinist she collaborates in concerts and CD recordings a.o. with La Petite Bande, Collegium Musicum, Concerto d’ Amsterdam, Florilegium Musicum, Musica Aeterna, and the Harmonious Society of Tickle-Fiddle Gentlemen.
Esther is founder and artistic leader of ensemble La Chambre du Roi, winning the title ‘Promising Ensemble’ at the International Young Artist Presentation in Antwerp. She received prizes and study grants from the SNS REAAL Fonds, the Marti Keuning Eckhardt Stichting and the Ben Remkes Cultuurfonds. During 3 summers she participated at the Aspen Music festival, USA. Esther did practical artistic research on authentic performance practice of Romantic repertoire at Leuven University, winning the ‘Excellence Prize’ from the Roger Dillemans Foundation Belgium for this research.
Since 2013 Esther works as a guest lecturer at Codarts, Rotterdam Conservatory, as a specialist in historically informed performance practice, coaching Mmus students. Since 2017 Esther also works as a guest lecturer at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague. Esther is running a successful Alexander Technique practice in Haarlem (NL) specialized in musicians. Since 2019 Esther is doing PhD research through the Canterbury Christ Church University (UK), researching the way how violinists supported their violin between 1790-1830 and the implications of that on performance practice and health.

Esther trained as an Alexander Technique teacher with Paul and Tessa in Amsterdam, from 2012-2015.

USA Frances trained as an Alexander teacher at the Constructive Teaching Center in London with Walter and Dilys Carrington and has been teaching for forty years. She completed two years postgraduate work at the Urbana Center for the Alexander Technique, directed by Joan and Alex Murray. Prior to her Alexander training, Frances studied acting at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, Glasgow. She is a member of the faculty and Board of the Alexander Training Institute of Los Angeles. She has taught at University of Southern California and California State University at Los Angeles and currently teaches at Occidental College. She also teaches at the Shakespeare Summer Institute, the Claremont Clarinet Festival and Alexander Technique Workshops-International. She maintains a private practice in Pasadena, California. Frances gave the F M Alexander Memorial Address at the 2018 ACGM

Germany Gabriele Fahrenkamp-Brandt

As a pedagogue (MC) and AT teacher, I have dedicated my life to the work of developing people’s personalities.

For more than 40 years, I have been concerned with how the inherent need to learn in every human being can become active again. My focus in AT work is to support people in discovering their own knowing-wanting about themselves and to use it where it is needed: either in realising goals externally or in solving problems and developing new perspectives in the physical-mental realm.

I am enthusiastic about the fact that the psycho-physical method of AT makes use of the great influence of what happens in the brain in order to change something in oneself or in the outside in connection with body perception.

In 2020 I was able to realise my great dream of training in AT and now run a training centre in the south of Germany, on Lake Constance.

———————–

Christina Schober

Since my early childhood I loved horses and sometimes, I had the possibility to ride. As a young adult I started taking regular riding lessons and joined a pony team as groom. With which I gained experiences in equestrian tournaments. In addition, I took part in lessons with well-known trainers and studied various methods of carriage horse training. Nearly 10 years ago I got a driving certificate. In 2016, I bought a horse that enables me to go to several riding workshops as an active participant.

Professionally, I established myself as a human resources manager after studying education. In 2018, after years of health problems, I decided to take a break from my career because I didn’t want to being sick all time and getting sicker and sicker.

How it came about?
In 2016, I had first contact with the Alexander Technique (AT) in a riding course. Already after the first lesson, I was aware that this method was much more than a way to better riding. Since 2017, I regularly took individual lessons in the AT and in 2018 I started the training to become an AT teacher. I expect to finish the training according to the ATVD guidelines in December 2022 with Gabriele Fahrenkamp-Brandt.

Israel A teacher of the Alexander Technique, developed a unique method for working with children, youth and parents in accordance with the principles of the Alexander Technique

Education: Graduated in 1988 from the Jerusalem School for the Alexander Technique, under the direction of Schmuel Nelken

1998-2002: Established and directed the non-profit organization \”Mishal\”, founded in April 1998 by the parents of children who had been helped by the Alexander Technique.

2001-2006: Member of the professional team at a residential institution for teenagers at risk

Teacher of the Alexander Technique at various institutions: “Yedida”, for adults suffering from light or medium retardation; “HaTene”, a Jerusalem school for special education; Ilan Children’s Hospital; ‘HaSatat”, a teacher of the Alexander Technique at “Kessem” School Jerusalem municipal nursery school.
Teacher of the Alexander Technique at “Kessem” School.

2004-2006: Chairman of the Israeli Society of Teachers of the Alexander Technique (ISTAT)

2008: Chairman of the professional organization for complimentary medicine

Presently:
Director of the training course for teachers of the Alexander Technique in Jerusalem.
Associate Director of the training course for teachers of the Alexander Technique in Tel-Aviv;
maintains clinics for the Alexander Technique in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv for adults and children.

Personal: Born 1963, married with 3 children

Israel Gali Adamov, the chairperson of Istat – the Israeli Association for the Alexander Technique, was trained as an Alexander technique teacher in 1987 by Sheika Harmelin. She has been an active teacher ever since.

Australia Hi Congress people, I’m Director of Training at BodyMinded Alexander Technique in Sydney Australia. I have a dance performance background and have been teaching Alexander for 30 years. In that time I have worked with diverse populations of students including tertiary students, musicians, sports people, health practitioners and the general public but am now primarily involved in Alexander teacher training and professional development training for musicians and music teachers.

I have a Masters degree in Human Movement science from the University of Sydney. I’ve conducted collaborative university research into movement teaching methodologies (dance related), and investigated the role of motor imagery in peripheral movement reflexes as part of my degree. I’m now preparing an application and judging if my busy teaching life has room for a science oriented Phd program investigating aspects of coordination related to the Alexander technique.

USA A Florida native, Harry currently lives and teaches in Boston, Massachusetts. He moved to the area to attend Boston University’s School of Theater where he was first introduced to the Alexander Technique. He had the great fortune of studying the Alexander Technique for 4 consecutive years as an undergraduate with Betsy Polatin as his teacher.

After graduating and working as an actor, his interest in the Alexander Technique continued to grow and his desire to understand and embody the work compelled him to train to become a teacher. He became certified from The Alexander Technique Center at Cambridge headed by Tommy Thompson.

He primarily works with individuals who want to address pain and movement issues, but thoroughly enjoys working with artists of all kinds to deepen their level of performance. He has done postgraduate work with David Gorman, Betsy Polatin and Tommy Thompson. His current interests lie in using the Alexander Technique to inform spiritual practice, deepen our sense of self, and become more of who we truly are.

Canada Heather Campbell is a classically-trained pianist and accompanist who studied under Dr. Damjana Bratuz and Ronald Turini (who studied with Vladimir Horowitz), earning Bachelor and Master degrees in Piano Performance. She also has a Master of Arts (Philosophy) and a Bachelor of Arts (English Literature) from the University of Toronto and completed her three-year Alexander Technique training in Toronto.

Heather has been teaching Alexander Technique since the 1990s and piano since the 1980s with a particular interest in the application of the Technique to music performance. Her students have won national Royal Conservatory of Music exam awards, national competitions, and university entrance music scholarships. In addition to her ongoing piano and Alexander Technique studio, adjudication, and international masterclasses, she is currently writing a comprehensive book on the application of Alexander Technique at the piano.

Heather is President of Alexander Technique Canada, former chair of its Professional Conduct Committee, and its ATAS representative.

South Africa • Child- and adulthood in Germany and Southern Africa.
• Study of Arts and culture, at University of Cape Town, South Africa.
• M.A in Literature and History of Art in Munich and Tübingen, Germany.
• Teaching, writing and studying painting in Berlin.
• While teaching literature at a University in Wales ,I had my first lessons in Alexander Technique with Jean Clark and Tony Spawnforth in Bristol in 1983.
• Training as a Teacher of the AT at the International School of AT in Denmark with Karen Wentworth and Chris Stevens from 1984-1987.
• Time in Namibia, where I came into contact with the Bushmen for the first time. I realized the potential for a film when I saw how they lived and went about their lives with such amazing good use. I trained in documentary film making, to organize an expedition in order to film the Bushmen of the Kalahari.
• Since 2018, I have been, living in Cape Town, South Africa

Germany Irma Hesz absolvierte die AT-Ausbildung in Freiburg mit Dan Armon und schloss ein Postgraduate Training mit Donald L. Weed an. Weitere berufliche Hintergründe sind Musik, Pädagogik und Coaching. Sie leitet die AT-Ausbildung in Düsseldorf im Institut für Alexander-Technik und ist Dozentin an der Robert-Schumann-Musikhochschule.

Irma Hesz trained with Dan Armon in Freiburg, Germany and continued in a Postgraduate Training with Donald L. Weed in Bristol, England. From her previous trainings she got a strong background in pedagogy, music teaching and coaching. She is head of Training in the Alexander Technique Institute in Düsseldorf and teaches in Robert Schumann Music Conservatory.

United Kingdom Jamie McDowell is co-Head of Training at Cumbria Alexander Training. He is Editor of Statnews and co-Editor of The Alexander Journal, published by STAT. He originally studied Physics and Psychology and had a short career in teaching before training as an Alexander Teacher at ATA, London in 1980.

Czech Republic Jana trained at David Moore’s Melbourne school and was certified as an Alexander Technique teacher and Smart Yoga teacher in 2015. She was working at the Melbourne Alexander School before returning to Europe in 2019. Afterwards she stayed in touch with David and during lockdown helped him set up his Smart Yoga Online Teacher Training. At the same time she was working with Rosella Buono on Authors – Not Your Usual Book Club series which will be back for season five this autumn.

An avid snowboarder and skier, she has been part of the Ease on Skis project for many years. Together with Erik Bendix and Christoph Bacher she has been teaching regular EOS workshops in Austria.

During her Alexander training she came across Shaw Method which greatly improved her swimming skills. She found many links between Shaw Method and Ease on Skis and decided to train to become a certified Shaw Method teacher in 2019. She loves working with swimmers and skiers of all levels.

USA Perhaps my favorite moment, in teaching the Alexander Technique, is the look of wonder and delight on the face of a performer, when they realize that they don’t have to push or force or squeeze in order to be heard or seen. It is from this strong, centered place, that they can share their performance with an audience — and it is their openness that allows the audience to enter – there is give and take, a \”mutual love affair\” between performer and audience.
That was what happened for me 30 years ago, when I discovered the Alexander Technique. AT opened the door to unlimited creative possibilities; I discovered I could perform with greater depth and authenticity, yet with less effort. I wanted to know more!
I became certified in 1994, and since then, I’ve worked with hundreds of performers, speakers, and teachers throughout the U.S. and internationally, offering them a means whereby they can share their most authentic creative impulses with an audience. Many, many times, I have seen that look of wonder and delight as an actor or musician realizes that the music or text is moving through them, they are a coordinated whole, and all they have to do is “get out of the way.”
I have taught movement for actors in BFA and MFA programs and led workshops for musicians, choirs and performers. Most recently, and very happily, I am the coauthor (with Meade Andrews) of Your Body Knows: A Movement Guide for Actors (Routledge, 2020).
Here\’s the story of my \”moment of awe and wonder\” – my first encounter with performing \”under the influence\” of AT:
My love affair with AT began on my 32nd birthday, and it changed my life forever. It was the moment that I experienced, for the first time since childhood, a sense of freedom, openness, and balance in my body.
I had become aware of AT when a brochure came to my mailbox at the college where I was teaching acting. At the time, I was frustrated, because my students did not move well. They were stiff and habit-ridden in their physical life when playing a character, and I was powerless to help them.
The brochure read, “You Have a Choice about the Way You Move.” I stared at the statement, and I almost cried. I thought, “No, I don’t.” And then, “Because I don’t know enough to have a choice. And neither do my students.” So, I signed up for the workshop in the Alexander Technique.
My life-changing experience took place in a group performance class in which each person had brought a piece of music or a bit of text to share. The teacher, Barbara Conable, used her hands to guide me out of my restrictive patterns of tension. Patiently, she helped me to allow my body to move – into its natural, coordinated balance.
From this place of lightness and ease, I began to share my text with the class. I was surprised (and yet, a part of me was not surprised) to experience a sudden rush of emotion. I was sharing a poem by W. B. Yeats, which begins, “When you are old and grey and full of sleep, and nodding by the fire…”
Suddenly, as my body softened, my mind cleared. I was deeply aware of the poignancy of that moment in the speaker’s and the listener’s lives. My voice deepened and my eyes moistened.
I discovered that when my body was at ease, there was nothing, nothing between me and the text. No interferences blocked my delivery. My whole self – body, mind, imagination – were effortlessly connected. I felt that in that moment there were no barriers between my authentic self, my unique relationship with the text, and the audience.
It was WOW! Is this even me? And how was it happening?
I felt I was exerting next-to-no effort, but I was more connected, more alive, and more effective as a performer than I had ever been in my life. My gestures arose without effort or thought. I was 32 years old, I had been performing in plays since I was 13, I had a master’s degree in theatre. Why didn’t I know this? Why had I never encountered what it really means to act?
In that moment, I knew that I had to become a teacher of the Alexander Technique. My students at the college needed this wonderful information. And I needed it too.
Every day, I am grateful for that brochure that came across my desk, because now I do have a choice about the way I move, and so do my students.

USA Janis has been teaching the Alexander Technique in Katonah, NY (40 miles north of NYC) for over 25 years. Her private practice has included musicians and horse trainers to back pain sufferers as well as Parkinson’s patients.

Twelve years ago she became a nurse and worked in an orthopedic unit for three years, seeing patients having surgery for knee, hip and back injuries.

Nine years ago she began working as a Holistic Nurse. She worked at two NY City hospitals applying various holistic modalities, including the Alexander Technique to patients, staff, doctors, and nurses.

She provided classes on “holistic first aid for nurses”, and stress relief for doctors and other staff. These classes included self-care tips like rest-position and properly adjusting computer screens.

She provided one-on-one care for patients using the Alexander Technique when appropriate. She engaged the use of the Alexander Technique for newborns, ill patients, patients recovering from surgery as well as to para- and quadriplegics.

Four years ago Janis entered a training program to become an Anthroposophic nurse. She is currently in that program and will be attending the Medical Conference at the Goetheanum in Dornach Switzerland in September.

She left hospital work in September 2020. She continues to see Alexander students privately.

USA Jennifer Mizenko loves all things movement, and is a Professor Emerita of Dance and Movement for the Actor at the University of Mississippi, where she taught movement and dance for 30years. She has a B.A. in Psychology, and an M.A. in dance. She studied period dance with Wendy Hilton and Richard Powers, T\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\’ai Chi with Maggie Newman, the work of Growtoski with Grzegorz Bral in Poland and Anna-Helena McLean, of the Moon Fool Company, and Chekhov acting technique with MICHA. Jennifer is a teaching member of Alexander Technique International, and served as Chair of ATI. She is a Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analyst certified by LIMS, and yoga instructor from Yandara Yoga Institute. She regularly presents internationally at Laban and Alexander conferences and specializes in teaching Character Physicalization, integrating her knowledge of dance, LMA, Chekhov and the Alexander Technique. Jennifer is one of the co-authors of the The Laban Workbook for Actors, A Practical Guide with Video. Recently she has become a part of The Alexander Technique Liberation Project.

Japan Jeremy Chance, STAT cert.

Jeremy Chance has been studying Alexander’s discoveries since 1969. His book Principles of the Alexander Technique has been published and translated into 7 languages. Jeremy originally trained in London during the 1970s and continued his studies with Marjorie Barstow in the 1980s. From 1985 to 2002 he was the Publisher & Editor of DIRECTION, a Journal on the Alexander Technique. He was a founding member of AUSTAT in Australia and is currently a member of no Alexander organisations or societies. In 1999 Jeremy married and moved to Japan where he founded an Alexander Training School. Today he continues as Managing Director of BodyChance – still the world’s largest College of Alexander Technique Teacher Education, and now one of the oldest too.

*** LONGER VERSION ***

Jeremy began his three-year Alexander training in England in 1976 with Paul and Betty at the School of Alexander Studies in Highgate. After qualifying, he taught at the E15 and Rose Bruford Performing Arts schools in London before returning to Australia in 1982.

In Sydney, he taught regularly at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA), The Actors Centre and The Actors College, while also regularly visiting the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA), The Conservatorium of Music and many other leading art institutions around Australia.

During this time he founded two Alexander Technique teacher training schools in Sydney and Melbourne – Directed by other teachers. The Department of Immigration told Jeremy it had a 6-inch file full of applications for Alexander teachers to immigrate to Australia.

Next, at a residential conference where Erika Whittaker debuted her return to teaching – Jeremy established the Australian Society of Teachers of the Alexander Technique (AUSTAT). What a mistake that was. From 1988 to 1993 he travelled throughout Europe and America, leading seminars and giving presentations to performing artists, business leaders, peer groups and the general public.

From 1986 to 2003, Jeremy was the Editor and Publisher of DIRECTION, an international Journal on the Alexander Technique (http://www.directionjournal.com) which is now being managed by Jean Fischer at Mouritz Press.

In 1998 Jeremy met Jaldhara, the mother of their children Grace and Angelica, and decided to settle in Kyoto and start an Alexander Teacher Training school. He initially named it ATA in honour of Don Burton’s trendsetting school of the 1980s in London. ATA eventually evolved into BodyChance and before COVID-19 hit, had 120+ trainees in the school – making it by far the largest school in the world.

BodyChance grew to this size as a result of Jeremy making a conscious decision to save his family by building his business. At 43 he embarked on a long-term project to become a master of business technology and over the next 20 years spent a lot of money and time studying his personally designed MBA. At first, Jeremy taught his own trainees how to gather students. Alexander\\\’s Discovery flourishes in Tokyo today as a result of his trainees using business skills learnt while training at BodyChance.

Out of this experience, Jeremy formed ATSuccess and began coaching Alexander teachers and trainees the world over. During this time Jeremy conceived and developed his 12-Point Plan for becoming a successful teacher. Today, the world’s largest online Alexander Training Organisation – Peter Jacobson’s Total Vocal Freedom – grew out of Peter’s association with ATSuccess. Many of today’s most commercially successful teachers have had some kind of contact with ATSuccess.

In 2018 Jeremy embarked on an expensive and ambitious program to introduce Alexander’s Discovery to corporations in Japan. He was about to sign an annual contract with a large corporation when COVID happened and the project fell into ruin. BodyChance also diminished from a peak of 140+ trainees to 68 trainees today. However, BodyChance survived COVID.

Jeremy still lives in Japan but spends as much time as he can in Australia to be with his daughters and family. He runs the world’s largest Alexander training school – BodyChance – and is about to embark on a major new project. If successful, this will constitute an unprecedented development for Alexander’s discovery, and a gamechanger for Alexscovery Teachers (AT) in Japan. Stay tuned…

You can keep in touch with my ideas by reading my (almost never) Daily email. Read what teachers say about it and sign up by clicking on the website link below…

United Kingdom Trained in London with the Carringtons in the mid 1970s and remained for eleven years as one of their full-time assistants. Subsequently directed AT teacher training courses in Melbourne, Australia, Brighton, England, and New York, USA, training in total more than one hundred teachers. Now travels to teach in many different countries: see johnnichollsat.com for calendar, articles, videos, podcasts, and blog posts (which are actually mini essays on aspects of the Technique).

Germany Joseph Weissenberg
Hi, I am Joseph Weissenberg and I have a PhD in Music. My Dissertation was a baseline study about “Alexander Technique and Stage Presence”. I published the book Alexander Technique and Stage Presence (german language) in 2015.
After that, I started to develop different trainings to help people on stage. It turned out to be more than simple trainings for stage performances. The beginning was the movement balance training and then quickly came the movement listening training.
What did I do? To be able to train the body and awareness online you need reference points. I developed two trainings which apply 12 MAP’s (Master Awareness Points) and two active bodylines.
I also started to work with constellations and use Soul Room Meditations to become acquainted with the soul, the inner self. I use it now to build the inner chi.
I have three different training approaches to help artist with their problems – body – soul – stage presence.
And this is the latest development, to train the inner chi using movement listening and soul room meditations in a workshop, combining body and soul with the AT as knowledge base.

Short Vita
1982 – BA in French horn
1995 – MA in Music and Dance Education, Salzburg – Recorder, Voice, Piano, Drums, Percussion, Children Musical Theatre, Early Childhood Piano Lessons
2000 – Alexander Technique Certificate – Teacher first year – Joan and Alex Murray, Urbana, second and third year – Ruth Kilroy, Boston
2002 – Alexander Technique Post Graduate Program with Rivka Cohen, Boston
2013 – Systemic Coach – Dr. Renate Wirth, Berlin
2014 – PhD in Music Pedagogy, Salzburg. Topic: Baseline study “Alexander Technique and Stage Presence”.

Publications:
2015 – Alexander Technik und Bühnenpräsenz – (AT and Stage Presence)
2022 – Seelenraummeditationen, Buch und eBuch
Soul Room Meditations – ebook


Joseph Weissenberg
Hallo, ich bin Joseph Weissenberg und ich habe einen Doktortitel in Musikpädagogik. Meine Dissertation war eine Grundlagenstudie zum Thema \\\\\\\”Alexandertechnik und Bühnenpräsenz\\\\\\\”. Im Jahr 2015 habe ich das Buch \\\\\\\”Alexandertechnik und Bühnenpräsenz\\\\\\\” veröffentlicht.
Danach habe ich begonnen, verschiedene Trainings zu entwickeln, um Menschen auf der Bühne zu helfen. Es wurden mehr als ein einfaches Trainings für Bühnenauftritte. Am Anfang entwickelte ich das Bewegungsausgleichstraining und dann kam schnell das Training des Bewegungshorchens.
Was habe ich gemacht? Um den Körper und das Bewusstsein online trainieren zu können, braucht man Bezugspunkte. Ich habe zwei Trainings entwickelt, die 12 MAP\\\\\\\’s (Master Awareness Points) und zwei aktive Körperlinien verwenden.
Ich habe auch begonnen, mit Aufstellungen zu arbeiten und Seelenraum-Meditationen zu verwenden, um die Seele, das innere Selbst, kennenzulernen. Ich benutze sie jetzt, um das innere Chi aufzubauen.
Ich habe drei verschiedene Trainingsansätze, um Künstlern bei ihren Problemen zu helfen – Körper – Seele – Bühnenpräsenz.
Und dies ist die neueste Entwicklung, das innere Chi mit Hilfe von Bewegungshören und Seelenraummeditationen in einem Workshop zu trainieren, der Körper und Seele mit der AT als Wissensbasis verbindet.

Kurzer Lebenslauf
1982 – BA in Waldhorn
1995 – MA in Musik- und Tanzpädagogik, Salzburg – Blockflöte, Gesang, Klavier, Schlagzeug, Percussion, Kindermusiktheater, frühkindlicher Klavierunterricht
2000 – Alexander-Technik-Zertifikat – Lehrerin im ersten Jahr – Joan und Alex Murray, Urbana, im zweiten und dritten Jahr – Ruth Kilroy, Boston
2002 – Alexander Technik Post Graduate Programm mit Rivka Cohen, Boston
2013 – Systemischer Coach – Dr. Renate Wirth, Berlin
2014 – PhD in Musikpädagogik, Salzburg. Thema: Baseline-Studie \\\\\\\”Alexandertechnik und Bühnenpräsenz\\\\\\\”.
Veröffentlichungen:
2015 – Alexander Technik und Bühnenpräsenz – (AT und Bühnenpräsenz)
2022 – Seelenraummeditationen, Buch und eBuch
Seelenraummeditationen – ebook

United Kingdom Julia Woodman BSc, PhD, MSTAT is Head of Training at Edinburgh Alexander Training School. She is also Chair of the STAT Research Group and was a core member of the study team for the large randomised controlled clinical, trial, ATLAS. Julia is keen to foster the continued development of Alexander teaching and training to ensure its suitability for everyone – including those living with hypermobility. She teaches one-to-one, groups and organisations, mostly in Scotland, and qualified from the Manchester Alexander Technique training school in 2006. Julia has published widely for both academic and general audiences; her conference presentations include for the Ehlers-Danlos Society.

alexander@julia-woodman.co.uk

United Kingdom Kamal Thapen trained to be an Alexander Technique teacher with Walter Carrington after a long career in business. On top of his private practice of teaching Alexander Technique and Tai Chi he also the assistant to Brita Forsstrom at the City Alexander Technique School in London. He has also been working with Claire Rennie at HITE Ltd, an Alexander Technique based training and publishing company. HITE has published nine books on the Technique with a tenth due this year.

Germany Karin Heisecke combines her practice as a teacher of the Alexander Technique with her work as senior political and philanthropic advisor. After two decades of living and working in various European countries, she has been based in Berlin, Germany, since 2010.

Karin has been involved in social justice activism, with a focus on women’s human rights, for more than two decades, and the Alexander Technique has been an integral part of her life / work / activism since she took her first lesson in the mid-1990s in London.

She is particularly interested in the potential of applying the principles of the Alexander Technique in the context of political decision-making processes and for people involved in activism.

USA Kathryn Armour received an MA from the University of Chicago and then trained as a classical singer in Italy and New York.  She taught vocal technique at New York University (Tisch) for 17 years.  Kathryn also trained as an Alexander teacher and was certified by ATI in 2004.  She has been the AT and Voice teacher to the Fiasco Theater Company in NYC since 2011.  She coached the company in two Sondheim revivals produced for Broadway by Roundabout Theater Company.

The Kathryn Armour Studio is located in mid-town Manhattan.  Kathryn also teaches summer AT/Voice intensives at Lake Como, Italy.  She was a presenter at both the Limerick and Chicago Congresses.  She will be assisted in this workshop by her husband and daughter, who are both trained AT teachers.

USA Kathy Privatt welcomes the opportunity to apply Alexander Technique to any activity, and deeply appreciates the connections revealed. She graduated from Chesapeake Bay Alexander Studies with Robin Gilmore and Marsha Paludan, and was certified by Alexander Technique International in 2010. An Associate Professor of Theatre Arts, she teaches Alexander Technique Classes at Lawrence University, conducts workshops for a variety of communities, and also offers private lessons.

USA Kim Jessor teaches Alexander Technique at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts Graduate Acting Program and undergraduate New Studio on Broadway Musical Theater Program. She received her certification from The American Center for the Alexander Technique where she taught on senior faculty 1986-2018, as well as serving for 3 years as ACAT’s Director of Teacher Certification.
Kim teaches privately in Manhattan and Brooklyn. She has been collaborating with colleague Rebecca Tuffey in developing the Embodying Empathy workshops, which have been presented at ACAT, Juilliard Drama, the AmSAT ACGMs 2019 and 2021, the Freedom to Act conference, and for the AT Diversity Coalition.

———————–

Carolyn Serota has been teaching the Alexander Technique in the Drama Division at The Juilliard School since 1990. After graduating from Bryn Mawr College, she performed and taught dance before training as an Alexander teacher at ACAT, certifying in 1987. She was a member of the ACAT Teacher Training faculty 1989-92; the Chautauqua Conservatory faculty 1994-95; and The Actors Center 1997–98. Since 1990, in addition to teaching, she has joined with many directors at Juilliard to explore the integration of the AT and Acting in the rehearsal and performance process. She has an ongoing collaboration in this exploration with her husband, acting teacher and director Richard Feldman; together they have presented various workshops on the integration of acting and the Alexander Technique at the Freedom to Act conferences and at the AmSAT AGM.
During her 30 years at Juilliard, Carolyn has worked to develop Judy’s Energy Work into a process for character transformation.

United Kingdom Korina is on the Faculty at RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art), London, teaching the Alexander Technique to trainee actors, and movement and devising on the Short Course program. She also teaches at the Institute of Contemporary Theatre, Brighton and has a private practice.
She graduated from the Nicholls’ Training School in 2001 and has been a member of STAT ever since. She has served on the STAT Research Group, The Performing Self team and is currently a member of the Alexander in Education Group and the ATLP (Alexander Technique Liberation Project)
She has roots in physical theatre and has always engaged in various forms of movement improvisation. She has an MA in Dance and Somatic Well-being which gave her initial training in Authentic Movement, did further training with Jane Bacon and went on to found a regular peer group practice.

USA Kristin Mozeiko, founder of ArT of Releasing and Alexander Technique Brooklyn, is an AmSAT certified Alexander Technique teacher and a graduate of ATNYC where she completed a three-year training in New York City. Dr. Mozeiko served from 2005-2019 as a part of the full-time faculty at Queens College teaching music education courses and the Alexander Technique for musicians. Additionally, she became a certified Releasing coach and completed the training in 2019. Dr. Mozeiko holds degrees in music education (BA), French horn performance (MM) and completed her doctoral studies in music education (DMA). In her research and writing she has focused on diversity in education and has integrated the Alexander technique with music education/performance. Dr. Mozeiko serves on the Volunteer Organizing team for the AT Libration Project and is a member of the National Association for Music Education, the New York State School Music Association, AmSAT, the Women’s Band Directors Association, CBDNA, and IMTE (Instrumental Music Teacher Educator).

United Kingdom Trusted by the world\\\’s leading brands, Lee has a reputation for energetic audience engagement, thought-provoking content, and hilarious delivery. Lee\\\’s audiences learn to sell better, network better and communicate better – and they have fun while they\\\’\\\’re doing it!

Lee had his first Alexander lesson in 1991 and trained with Karen Wentworth 1997-2000 at The Alexander Technique Studio in London.

As an AT teacher, as well as a private practice, Lee has taught at several drama schools, The Actors\\\’ Centre in London and at several global organisations.

Lee was a professional magician for 20 years, is a member of the world-famous Magic Circle and was described by Prince William as ‘absolutely amazing’.

A lover of live theatre, Lee has written theatre works for The Almeida Theatre, and been a commissioned writer at The Royal Opera House. Fluent in Spanish, Lee is very good at playing the piano badly!

In a previous life, Lee was a sales director at News International, and he now combines this background in magic, theatre and sales to give presentations, keynotes, workshops and coaching to firms including Deloitte, Shell, Laing O\\\’Rourke, Roche, EY, Barclays Wealth and HSBC, helping people to become more persuasive and connected, sell more, present better and increase their ability to get their messages across confidently to colleagues and clients.

Over time, Lee was increasingly invited not just to perform magic to clients, but to speak at their events. Realising that this was his \\\’true niche\\\’, in 2010 he became a full-time conference speaker and workshop leader and since then has spoken all over the globe at hundreds of events.

In 2018, Lee\\\’s first book was published – ‘The Busy Person’s Guide To Great Presenting’. In March 2019, it was the highly-commended runner-up in the \\\’Business Book Of The Year Awards\\\’.

He calls it his ‘first’ because he has four more planned in his head. Now, he just needs to find the time to write them…

USA Luc Vanier (MFA, M.AmSAT, RSDE) is a Professor and Founding Director of the School of Dance at the University of Utah, where he spent the last six years synergizing two respected historic Dance departments (Ballet and Modern Dance into a new entity. He received his MFA from the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana and certified as an Alexander technique (AT) teacher in 2001. In 2011, as an AT training course director, he founded Alexander Technique Milwaukee (ATMKE); in 2016, he later co-founded Salt Lake City Alexander Technique (SLCityAT), where he is the current director.

As a pedagogue and integral researcher, Luc has lectured and presented his research extensively nationally and internationally and his co-authored book “Dance and the Alexander Technique” was published by University of Illinois Press in 2011. It was also translated in Spanish Fall 2021 with Pequeña Hoja Press (Buenos Aires Argentina). In 2012, he founded the Integral Movement Lab, which combines the Alexander Technique and developmental ideas within product and curriculum designs. He co-created Framework for Integration, a movement analysis system anchored in the way babies and animals move that helps all movers make new, healthier movement decisions and encourages more coordinated and integrated bodily use (look for an upcoming book soon).

SLCityAT, with Luc Vanier as Training Course Director, is a dynamic space which provides Alexander Technique Teacher training anchored in the tradition of Alexander and Joan Murray by way of the Carrington lineage. Luc also took four years of lessons with Ellen Hobbs in Cleveland who herself trained with Patrick MacDonald in the 1980s.

The course believes in physicality in the way observing the movement of babies and animals and applying the principles of the Alexander Technique will helps all movers make new, healthier movement decisions and encourages more coordinated and integrated bodily use.

Our varied Salt Lake City teachers, collectively, have decades of experience in all types of dance (ballet, modern dance, tango, pole, etc), developmental movement (Dart Procedures, Laban/Bartenieff, Body Mind Centering), martial arts, yoga and sports.

Luc is an active writer who recently co-authored:
1. The Subtle Dance of Developmental Self-Awareness with New Media Technologies, published with the Presse University du Quebec (PUQ)
2. Ballet aesthetics of trauma, development and functionality, published in the book (Re)Claiming Ballet with Intellect Press.

Luc is convinced of his responsibility to interrogate our physical practices in order to not habitually duplicate racist/sexist perspectives.

USA Luc Vanier (MFA, M.AmSAT, RSDE) is a Professor and Founding Director of the School of Dance at the University of Utah, where he spent the last six years synergizing two respected historic Dance departments (Ballet and Modern Dance into a new entity. He received his MFA from the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana and certified as an Alexander technique (AT) teacher in 2001. In 2011, as an AT training course director, he founded Alexander Technique Milwaukee (ATMKE); in 2016, he later co-founded Salt Lake City Alexander Technique (SLCityAT), where he is the current director.

As a pedagogue and integral researcher, Luc has lectured and presented his research extensively nationally and internationally and his co-authored book “Dance and the Alexander Technique” was published by University of Illinois Press in 2011. It was also translated in Spanish Fall 2021 with Pequeña Hoja Press (Buenos Aires Argentina). In 2012, he founded the Integral Movement Lab, which combines the Alexander Technique and developmental ideas within product and curriculum designs. He co-created Framework for Integration, a movement analysis system anchored in the way babies and animals move that helps all movers make new, healthier movement decisions and encourages more coordinated and integrated bodily use (look for an upcoming book soon).

SLCityAT, with Luc Vanier as Training Course Director, is a dynamic space which provides Alexander Technique Teacher training anchored in the tradition of Alexander and Joan Murray by way of the Carrington lineage. Luc also took four years of lessons with Ellen Hobbs in Cleveland who herself trained with Patrick MacDonald in the 1980s.

The course believes in physicality in the way observing the movement of babies and animals and applying the principles of the Alexander Technique will helps all movers make new, healthier movement decisions and encourages more coordinated and integrated bodily use.

Our varied Salt Lake City teachers, collectively, have decades of experience in all types of dance (ballet, modern dance, tango, pole, etc), developmental movement (Dart Procedures, Laban/Bartenieff, Body Mind Centering), martial arts, yoga and sports.

Luc is an active writer who recently co-authored:
1. The Subtle Dance of Developmental Self-Awareness with New Media Technologies, published with the Presse University du Quebec (PUQ)
2. Ballet aesthetics of trauma, development and functionality, published in the book (Re)Claiming Ballet with Intellect Press.

Luc is convinced of his responsibility to interrogate our physical practices in order to not habitually duplicate racist/sexist perspectives.

Elizabeth Johnson (MFA, M.AmSAT, RSME/T, RYT200) is a performer, choreographer, educator, Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analyst, certified Teacher of the Alexander Technique (AmSAT & ATI), and Registered Yoga Teacher (200hr). She teaches and presents nationally (US) and internationally on dance/movement pedagogies and somatics that center developmental movement, prosocial/trauma informed education, and feminist perspectives. She has co-authored/authored three book chapters featuring applied Alexander Technique and developmental movement and is an Associate Professor in the School of Theatre and Dance at the University of Florida.

The Netherlands My name is Maaike Aarts and my passions in life are music, Alexander Technique, self-development, and learning/discovering new things. I graduated at the Alexander Technique Centre Amsterdam in 2002 (Paul Versteeg and Tessa Marwick). I am always eager to learn more and had private lessons with Missy Vineyard and John Nicholls. I followed extra training on pregnancy and childbirth with Ilana Machover, had AT lessons on swimming and running and have obviously attended all international congresses on the Alexander Technique!

I teach the Alexander Technique full time in my private practice, teach the students of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Academy and teach at the Conservatory of Amsterdam.
I also teach my annual course ‘Freedom and Flow for musicians’, give audition training, give workshops for orchestra members, teach during summer courses and I organise my own Alexander Technique retreats.

I was a first violinist in the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra from 2004-2010, I was associate concertmaster of the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra from 2014-2018. I resigned from my positions to have more time for my Alexander technique private practice.
Currently I play violin as a freelancer and in chamber music groups.

In 2021 I released my Alexander Technique App called Think Up Alexander Technique.
This app will
– help your students to practise ‘monkey’, ‘whispered ah’, ‘going up on toes’ etc between lessons,
– open their eyes to the countless opportunities to apply Alexander Technique to their daily lives,
– help them continue on their own once they have stopped taking lessons.

The app contains over 95 audioguides, divided into 10 categories.
Activities include music making, sitting, walking, running, driving, breathing, speaking, lying down in active rest, carrying a backpack, bending, reading, writing, speaking, breathing, sleeping and many more.

The app is available in the App Store (iPhone) and in the Google Play store (Android) and is rated 5 stars.

For iOS: https://apps.apple.com/nl/app/think-up/id1522422093

For Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nl.thinkup.android&hl=en_US&gl=US

Poland Magdalena (Dorota) Kędzior trained with Walter and Dilys Carrington at The Constructive Teaching Centre (CTC) in London and graduated in 1991. She was the first AT teacher to introduce the Alexander Technique in Poland and teaches it in Warsaw since then.

As her main reason to train was the help she was getting from the Alexander Technique in coping with and finally overcoming anorexia, she used to help young people in Poland to overcome eating disorders. Her book „Jeść? Nie jeść? Żyć” („To Eat or not to Eat? To Live”) was published in Warsaw in 1997.

Over the last 30 years she has introduced the Alexander Technique to various music and drama schools in Poland. For over 20 years, until 2022 she has thought the Alexander Technique in The National Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw. And she still teaches the Alexander Technique at the Postgraduate Studies of Voice and Speech Training at the SWPS University in Warsaw.

She runs her private practice in Warsaw teaching private lessons and running introductory courses for general public, musicians, voice people and riders. Her interest goes also to the help the AT gives when dealing with emotional problems.

Germany Maike startet her Training 1998 in New York at ACAT and finished it 2001 in Freiburg, Germany. She’s a member of ATVD.
As a former dancer she produced a dvd with the title “Alexander-Technik & Tanz” in 2006, which was presented at the first congress in Lugano.
She worked with many different people, with all kinds of backgrounds, in private lessons in Frankfurt, Marburg, Gießen and Darmstadt.
From the beginning on Maike taught group lessons specificly for dancers and for a wider audience with specific topics like stressmanagement, presentation, work-life-balance, performance-enhancement, flow and focus. She also loves to teach in companies “painfree at the workplace”, “working with ease in the office” and “a cool head in digital times”
Maike teaches online, live and hybrid.
She’s also a focusing trainer (DAF) a coach and consultant of hypnosystemic concepts (meihei) and an aroma-practitioner.

Canada Trained by Macdonald and qualified in 1984. Author of the Art of Running and the Art of Working Out. Founder of The Art of Running applying AT to running. Developed an A of R teacher certification course in 2016. Current provincial holder of 4 age group indoor track records at 400m. 800m, 1500m and 3k.

Germany First I came into contact with the Alexander Technique in 2002 at the beginning of my art school studies. I had an accident at that time and was looking for a gentle way to recover and support the healing process. I still remember my first AT classes pretty vividly. Since then, AT has never left me. In all the places I have lived, I have looked for teachers and opportunities to further deepen the technique.
It was clear to me that I would eventually do the three-year training course, but other things seemed to kept getting in the way. In 2020 I finally made the move and started teacher training with Dan Armon, which I finish this year.
This change of sides, being in both, the pupil and teacher role, was a defining moment for me, where a lot of what I had previously accumulated came together.
My work is informed by a comprehensive knowledge of AT and its various styles. Many years of Zen practice, regular retreats and exchanges, and my background as a visual artist further shape my spirit, understanding and style.

France Manuelle Borgel, a Choreographer-Dancer, discovered AT in 1995 and was certified by ATI in 2015. She currently teaches the Alexander Technique in Paris to artists, seniors, children, … individually and in groups. She teaches somatics to explore performances and the creative process, fields she trained in linked to Life Art Process. She continues to develop her approach in Collective Intelligence, cooperation, conflict, trauma, breath and stress management using the tools of Non-Violent Communication and Co-construction.

Germany Margarete Tüshaus

intensely teaches the Alexander-Technique since about 25 years frequently in the context of dance, music and horseback riding.

Her wide-ranged background includes a master degree in agricultural biology as well as trainings in dance, zen meditation and music.

Margaretes work is influenced by classical and contemporary teachers, she keeps on bridging many styles, perspectives and all sorts of human niches.

Her special interest these days is the redirecting of humankind towards the needs and the principles in nature. Joyfully and regularly she enters the animal kingdom on her farm, where she lives with about 50 horses, conducting a seminar centre, giving workshops, postgraduates and teacher-trainings.

She contributes as a senior teacher to the Alexander Alliance International.
Most recently she started to codirect the Alexander Alliance Europe as part of a very gifted and powerful Team.

Germany Margarete Tüshaus
www.hof-tueshaus.de

Ann-Kathrin Fliege
www.leichtigkeiterleben.de

Janine Stenkbruck
www.alexandertechnik-haltern.de

Robyn Avalon
https://www.contemporaryalexander.com

USA About Marilyn Carpenter

Marilyn lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and is a graduate of the Alexander Alliance Japan/America/Germany. She has been a teaching member of Alexander Technique International since 2006. She is also a Reiki practitioner, a Seimei practitioner, and has studied T’ai Chi Ch’un since 1996. She is fortunate to be able to attend continuing education classes in subjects including Alexander Technique, Reiki, Seimei, and T’ai Chi Ch’un. Her long-term interests in holistic wellness, healing, and personal development have led down a variety of paths, some by foot and others through self-exploration and learning from others.

Marilyn is recently retired after being in service with Westinghouse and Emerson Power & Water Solutions in Pittsburgh since 1979. Starting as a Field Engineer with a BSEE from The Ohio State University, she began commissioning data acquisition and control systems in the USA. Whether a troubleshooting assignment or project execution with time and budget constraints in the USA or at international sites, these assignments present opportunities to learn and meet people from different backgrounds.

Marilyn currently supports organizations with interests to promote personal development and education for all ages and youth STEM programs.

Germany Michael Clausnizer Curriculum vitae:
1986 Graduation with diploma as music teacher and an artistic degree in piano at the Music Academy of Trossingen.
1999-2001 training as a teacher of the F.M. Alexander technique in Heidelberg.
Followed by a private training as a singer ( tenor ) with instructors of the Music Academy of Stuttgart.
Workshops for students of the Music Academy of Stuttgart playing string, wind, percussion, and keyboard instruments, and singing.
Since 1983 piano teacher at the Filderstadt Music School.
He performs concerts at home and abroad as piano soloist and chamber musician and since 2007 also as vocal soloist
Head of the counseling center for musicians’ health at the Filderstadt Music School.

USA — Michael D. Frederick —
Michael D. Frederick is an internationally recognized teacher in the field of psycho-physical re-education. He trained as an Alexander Teacher in England with Walter & Dilys Carrington and in America with Marjorie Barstow (all master teachers trained by F.M. Alexander in the 1930s).

He studied in the U.S. and Israel as a Feldenkrais Practitioner with Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais and has extensive training in the Yoga tradition of T.K.V. Desikachar from Madras, India. Michael also trained as an actor at The Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, Bristol, England.

As founding director of the first three International Congresses on the Alexander Technique, he has organized and taught over 250 workshops in the U.S. and Europe since 1978.

Michael worked for two years at the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute and taught for over a decade in The Old Globe Theatre’s MFA Acting Program at the University of San Diego.

From 1994 to 2000 Michael organized Alexander Technique Master Classes with Marjory Barlow (F.M. Alexander’s niece) and Elisabeth Walker in San Francisco, Basel and Paris.

He has conducted presentation skills seminars for upper-level corporate management in such companies as Du Pont Corporation, Merck Pharmaceuticals, and AMOCO.

He is former Chairman of the American Society for the Alexander Technique (AmSAT) and is now Co-Director and on the Board of Directors of the Alexander Training Institute, LA. Currently, Michael teaches in Los Angeles, Ojai, and Santa Barbara, California.

Michael attended the International Acadamy of Continuous Education near Oxford, England from 1972-1974 under the direction of J.G. Bennett. He studied in the mid-1970s with Suleyman Hayati Dede, Sheikh Muzaffer Özak, Hasan Shushud in Turkey and with Sheikh Muhammad Nazim in London. From 1976 to 1978 he taught theatre at the Brockwood Park School in Hampshire, England founded by educator philosopher, Jiddu Krishnamurti. From 1986 to 1992, Michael was the Co-Director of the David Bohm Dialogues series that took place annually in Ojai, California.

Michael was voted best Alexander Teacher in Los Angeles Magazine’s “Best of LA.”
michaelfrederick123@gmail.com

— Carol P. Prentice —
Carol P. Prentice is a senior teacher of the Alexander Technique specializing in somatic education and health for 30 years. Carol trained with master teachers Frank Ottiwell and Rome Robert Earle at the Alexander Training Institute in San Francisco. She graduated in 1986. Since graduating, Carol has furthered her training with first generation Alexander Teachers here in the U.S. and in Europe.

Carol graduated from the California College of Ayurveda as a Clinical Ayurvedic Specialist (CAS) and a Pancha Karma Specialist (PKS), She was the Internship Director from 2008 to 2017. Carol is also a certified 500-RYT Yoga Teacher in the tradition of Sri T. Krishnamacharya from the Healing Yoga Foundation in San Francisco.

She has created Hands-On Retreats, a 5-day retreat where she combines her training of Alexander, Ayurveda, and Yoga empowering people to take responsibility for their own health and healing.

Carol currently lives in Ojai, CA where she has a private practice. She is an AmSTAT certified teacher and was the a Co-Director of the 11th International AT Congress in Chicago.
@ carolpprentice@gmail.com

Canada Michael Mah

Michael Mah was elected to the Council of Alexander Technique Canada, in 2018 as the Treasurer. A year later, he took on expanded duties as Secretary-Treasurer and has been instrumental in steering the professional body throughout the challenges of the pandemic. Most recently, he was appointed the chair of the Marketing Committee and is the project manager for its new comprehensive AT website coming soon.

As a passionate educator, Michael has presented masterclasses and workshops internationally on the Alexander Technique with a focus on interdisciplinary applications and functionality. He has an ongoing collaborative partnership with the University of British Columbia School of Music and has presented at the Vancouver College of Dental Hygiene. In his private practice, Michael enjoys guiding his students to using AT for the benefit of their unique talents and interests.

Michael completed his Alexander Technique Training at the Vancouver School of the Alexander Technique and continues his professional development at the International AT Congresses. Previously, he received a Bachelor of Music in Performance from the Eastman School of Music under the tutelage of Jon Manasse (Principal Clarinet, Soloist – Metropolitan Opera, New York Ballet)

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Heather Campbell

Heather Campbell is a classically-trained pianist, accompanist and Alexander Technique teacher. She earned a Bachelor and Master of Music in Piano Performance, as well as a Master of Arts in Philosophy, and a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature at the University of Toronto.

Heather has been teaching Alexander Technique since the 1990s and piano since the 1980s with a particular interest in the application of the Technique to music performance. In addition to her ongoing piano and Alexander Technique studio, international workshops and masterclasses, she is currently writing a comprehensive book on Alexander Technique at the piano.

Heather has worked and volunteered in the non-profit sector, mostly in a leadership capacity since the 1980s, including the National Ballet of Canada and the Canadian Opera Company. She co-founded and was President of The Healing Cycle Foundation for ten years, raising millions for palliative care in Ontario, Canada.

She is President of Alexander Technique Canada, former chair of its Professional Conduct Committee, has been an ATAS (Alexander Technique Affiliated Societies) representative for Canada since 2018 and recently was elected to the Secretariat of ATAS.

Heather’s 35 years of volunteerism has been recognized with local and national awards, including the Sovereign’s Medal for Volunteers from the Governor General of Canada in 2018.

USA Morgan Rysdon is a nationally certified Alexander Technique teacher and founder of Center Studio. She has a private practice in Atlanta, NYC, and online where she helps individuals elevate their performances on stage, at work, and in life.

Her teaching is focused on improving the overall function of an individual’s mind, body, breath, and voice—as well as helping those struggling with chronic pain, injury, stress, and/or anxiety.

Morgan has a BA in Theatre with a focus on Acting and Performance. In 2011, she gained her teaching certification from The American Center for the Alexander Technique in NYC. Since then, she’s gone on to teach her work both nationally and internationally—teaching private lessons, group classes, and workshops that improve others’ self-awareness, self-confidence, and poise.

In 2019 she started her YouTube channel to help share this work with a larger audience. In 2020 she completed the Alliance Theatre’s Allyship Training program designed to educate teaching artists to better acknowledge and embrace differences in identity and how to establish a culture of equity, inclusion, and justice in all areas of their lives. Since then, Morgan has been implementing—and expanding on—what she learned from this training.

Germany I have been teaching the AT since 1989; I was qualified by Yehuda Kuperman. I have a company called \\\’SPEEK\\\’ which used to focus on teaching stressed executives. Then I changed realms and went off in 2017 to the University of Hull, England, to do an Alexander Technique PhD. The doctorate was called \\\”Exploring how women use the Alexander Technique: psycho-physical re-education in the postpartum.\\\”
I completed it in 2021. I learnt a lot 🙂 I\\\’ve trained in Carl Roger\\\’s person-centred counselling. I\\\’m a mother to three grown-up children. I\\\’m English but I live in Freiburg in southwest Germany.

Germany The “Choir-Hour-Now” is led by Nina Rotner, a certified Alexander Technique teacher, professional singer and vocal coach. She has years of experience teaching singing/choir (jazz and world music) to beginners and ongoing professionals. She is a real bundle of energy and her contagious enthusiasm when singing, toning, grimacing, clapping and stomping together brings lightness to your visit to Berlin.
www.ninarotner.com

Switzerland I came to the Alexander Technique through a chronic sport injury in 1982. I became so fascinated by the AT-work that I took a teacher training with the wonderful teacher Jacqueline Webster. I received the Alexander diploma in 1986 and have been teaching the Alexander Technique without interruption ever since. I have been very fortunate to work with a number of first generation teachers: Margaret Goldie, Patrick McDonald, Walter Carrington, Marjorie Barlow. My great interest in physical health then led me to study osteopathy. I have been working as an osteopath since 1998 and I can proudly say that my most important tool in my practice is the Alexander Technique. Over the years my yearning grew for what is usually called personal growth: understanding one’s self, moving past old emotional pain, and accessing one’s greater potential. I began learning about mindfulness and meditating. I found that this supported me incredibly as a person and I discovered many new insights about the mind-body connection and the Alexander Technique. I then went on to train as a mindfulness teacher (MBSR, MSC, IMP). Since 2009 I have been offering mindfulness training and meditation courses. At the congress in Lugano I led mindfulness workshops and I was happy to see how much this was appreciated by the many participants.

Italy Paolo Frigoli trained as an Alexander Technique teacher from 1989 to 1992. In subsequent years he spent long periods of professional development in UK at the Brighton Alexander Training Centre directed by John and Carolyn Nicholls, while he could also take regular lessons from Walter Carrington and Peggy Williams. Since then he has kept working regularly with John Nicholls who has become his mentor. Paolo has taught the Technique for 29 years individually and in groups, both in his private studio and in public institutions, and has been invited to teach in various Alexander schools. In 2008 he was on the Continuos Learning faculty at the International Congress in Lugano. In 2015 he started his own STAT approved teacher training course in Italy. Paolo qualified as a physiotherapist in 1989, then trained in the Mézierès method with Dr. Laura Bertelé and in the Cranio-Sacral Therapy of Dr. John Upledger, which is still part of his daily practice.

The Netherlands I trained at ATCA in Amsterdam with Paul Versteeg and Tessa Marwick, graduating in 2010. Since then I\\\’ve teaching Alexander Technique and running a Pilates studio at our space in Amsterdam with my wife. (www.smartbody.nl) I have also had a career as a physicist, working in labs in both the US and the Netherlands between 1995 and 2013. Currently I give online workshops in Alexander technique science with Tim Cacciatore, and run the website www.AlexanderTechniqueScience.com with Tim, Rajal Cohen, and Andrew McCann. I\\\’ve been dancing and teaching contact improvisation dance since 1995 and am also interested in other sports and movement practices – running, Pilates, and squash to name a few. I live in Amsterdam NL, with my wife Jelena and two crazy kids Owen (15) and Milan (12).

Ireland Penelope was born in Wales, and studied Zoology at Cambridge University, England. She left a PhD there to train at the North London Alexander School, qualifying in 1989. She then worked with Miss Goldie for four years, who, it felt, stripped away everything she had learnt, and rebuilt it as she saw the technique should be –a scary process!

Since then, she has worked extensively with other teachers who had known her, including Erika Whittaker, to understand the essence of the difference of her understanding. During two separate years, Penelope was unable to walk with chronic fatigue syndrome. These years of illness became times of quiet retreat, deepening her work.

With the illness now gone completely, she has regained resilience, strength, and fitness, particularly through using the Initial Alexander technique, which she studied with Jeando Masoero, along with The Embodied Present Process with Philip Shepherd. The Miss Goldie workshops started as a 90-min workshop at the International Congress in 2004 (Oxford), and was then followed with workshops in the UK, Ireland, Germany, and New York, including the Limerick International Congress in 2015.

Her book: The Alexander Technique: the Twelve Fundamentals of Integrated Movement, based around Miss Goldie’s work, was published in March 2021.

Since COVID-19, she has run trainings for AT teachers on teaching online, based on the material from her book. She now lives and works in the beautiful West of Ireland, teaching locally and online. Her work facilitates the pupil to discover the technique for themselves, to find natural breathing, poise, quiet awareness, integration, true fitness and strength. 
In her free time, she enjoys making discoveries about the technique through singing and reciting, piano playing, yoga and fitness work, gardening, running, dancing, and walking her dog. 

United Kingdom Penny Spawforth, daughter of the late Anthony Spawforth who trained with FM Alexander in the early 1950s has been teaching the AT since 1990.
At the Oxford (UK) AT congress in 2006 she heard the keynote address from Bridget Belgrave on Nonviolent Communication (NVC) and that set her on a parallel path of discovering what it means to listen and speak and live from an internal place of nonviolence (originally translated from the Sanskrit word Ahimsa). Certifying to be an NVC trainer in 2012, she now offers NVC mediation and training alongside her AT teaching as well as setting up and becoming one of the Directors of a not-for-profit company in 2020 – called NVC Matters – to support NVC being discovered in the UK.
Having trained with Walter and Dilys Carrington in London, she was also greatly influenced by her lessons with Margaret Goldie.
She lives and works in Wales, UK

United Kingdom Peter Nobes has been teaching the Alexander Technique since 1993. He is based in central London and has taught the Alexander work in thirteen countries on three continents.

Peter has been training teachers since 2013. He delivered the Keynote Speech at the ATI conference in 2016.

His book ‘Mindfulness in 3D – the Alexander Technique for the 21st Century’ was published in 2018. He is currently writing another book about how to make sense of FM\\\’s writings, provisionally titled \\\’Illusion or Reality – Are We Teaching What FM Was Teaching?\\\’

When he isn’t teaching, Peter builds wooden boats and then rows, paddles and sails them.

New Zealand Peter wore glasses for 27 years for myopia and astigmatism. His glasses became stronger year by year. Addressing this declining situation seriously and committedly he discovered in the early 1990’s how to apply FM’s principles to the process of seeing. It took him eighteen months until he was absolutely free of his – 10.5 diopter glasses.

At that time, Peter discovered that within the visual system an entire map of the human body resides and that the eyes themselves link to corresponding structures in the brain that govern the body, the emotions and the ability to think and reason.

Peter discovered the primary control mechanism within the higher visual region of the brain connected with our Souls blue print. Deviations from this blue print let us glide into dysfunctions of brain, eye, body and environmental nature.

Peter trained between 1984 and 1987 at the Sydney Alexander Training School. Over five years he studied with Marjory Barstow in Australia. The combined trainings gave Peter the foundation in hands-on work as well as the creative approach of applying the process to a new frontier. From there on he developed the inner understanding of the synapses and pathways of the brain to the improvement of the eye’s ability to re-integrate its functions, structure and response to cell memories and spiritual attributes.

His latest book Soulful Seeing – Conscious Living or The Art of Embodying Soul is based on Inhibition and Directions with Peters extensive experience including emotional and spiritual attributes integrating brain, eyes and body.

Peter brings humor to complex circumstances. While at home overlooking Wyuna Bay beach, Coromandel Peninsular in New Zealand, he spends his time enjoying nightly sunsets across the ocean, dancing, walking, hiking, biking, gardening, meditating, enjoying belonging to community of friends and deep family bonds – and loving spending time with his children and wild grandchildren.

Some of his published writings are available at the Congress in English, German, Italian, Spanish and Japanese.

Private Sessions available: Peter is available from 20-22 August for a series of sessions in Berlin. This is prior to the congress and a great opportunity to work individually with Peter. For bookings contact info@eyebody.com

For a full teaching program on workshops, 6 –day practice retreats around the world as well as a 3-week intensive only held in NZ visit www.eyebody.com

NB: If your interest is hosting a program with Peter or with some of his teaching staff, or are interested in translating a published Eyebody book into your native language, please contact Peter directly at info@eyebody.com or connect with him during the congress.

United Kingdom Dr. Philip Bull is a Consultant Rheumatologist, joint hypermobility specialist, mindfulness champion and bass guitar player. Since retiring full time from the NHS (National Health Service) in 2014 he runs two private clinics and is involved in medical education. Current positions: Consultant Rheumatologist, The Chaucer Hospital, Canterbury & The One Hospital, Ashford Medical Advisor and Trustee, HMSA (Hypermobility Syndromes Association).

He is also involved in Education for Medical Students from Guy’s, King’s and St Thomas’ Medical School, Junior Doctors and GP’s at East Kent Hospitals University Foundation NHS Trust. He is the Education lead for the East Kent Community Rheumatology Nursing service.

Special interests: his main specialty interest is in the Joint Hypermobility Syndromes. He is the instigator of the Kent Hypermobility Network, working with the HMSA charitable trust to improve services for hypermobile patients through education using existing resources. Other interests include gout, soft tissue rheumatism, fibromyalgia and chronic pain.He has experience in medical leadership and works as a mentor on the IQ leadership program for Rheumatologists.
He has a particular interest in mindfulness and how it applies to the wellbeing of health service employees, working in association with the government’s Mindful Initiative leadership team.He has an ongoing interest in the Alexander Technique and has written educational articles and organized events with the Society of Teachers of the Alexander Technique.

Switzerland Priska Gauger-Schelbert attended the Performance School in Seattle in 1991. From 1992-1995 she was trained by Jaqueline Webster in Zurich. Since 1995 she has her own Alexander Technique studio in central Switzerland.

Between 2001 and 2003 she developed the pioneering adaptable concept balance-time® based on the Alexander Technique, at the world-famous company Victorinox AG. Since then, this concept has successfully been introduced in numerous institutions and companies throughout Switzerland. Priska Gauger-Schelbert has developed a competent team around balance-time®.

It is central for Priska, mother of four, that everyone is responsible for his or her own health. Alexander Technique is a method which sees this personal responsibility not as a duty, a task or a job, but as an innate potential for lightness, freedom, naturalness and awareness in dealing with oneself, daily work and activitites. To support unfolding this potential in oneself and one’s clients has always been the passionate motivation for her work.

United Kingdom Rachael has 20 years’ experience, combing her love for marketing brands, human psychology, and order. With a BSc in Marketing and a Master of Science in Coaching Psychology, Rachael integrates creativity with human psychology to create purpose driven marketing that has a positive impact on business health and society. In addition to leading the STAT rebrand in 2018, she has a proven record of creating integrated marketing strategies for Life Fitness, Bupa, Vodafone, British Airways, Qantas, Ernst & Young, NEC, adidas, Reebok, NSPCC, Now Pensions and News Corporation to name a few.

She’s passionate about helping clients engender positive behaviour change for the betterment of society. Her skills focus on simplifying complex messaging by listening to, and balancing the needs of customers and the businesses owners that serve them. Furthermore, Rachael understands the joy, passion, pressures, and struggles, of being self-employed and running a small business first-hand. In 2015 Rachael left the corporate world and set up Scaffold Coaching, a leadership development consultancy which saw her become self-employed on a part-time basis. In 2020, she reignited her passion for marketing, launching Theodore Communication – a marketing consultancy that helps small businesses and agencies find the ‘aha’ insights, to better connect with their customers.

Brazil Raquel Cavalcanti is a Brazilian dancer, improviser, dance instructor, and AT teacher. In 1999, she graduated from the Matthews school (IRDEAT) in New York (USA). After living and working in NYC for over 15 years, she returned to Brazil to teach dance and the AT at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG).
She is currently working on her PhD at State University of Campinas (UNICAMP) in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where she is investigating the relationships between AT principles, dance, and teaching in an inventive, non-traditional, and non-hierarchical way. In that sense, the works of Paulo Freire, Virginia Kastrup, bell hooks, and Jacques Rancière have been invaluable.
Raquel, the mother of two beautiful young women, loves baking long-fermented bread and taking care of her plants. It is her hope that Lula will be their next president this year.

from Everywhere Raquel Cavalcanti is a Brazilian dancer, improviser, dance instructor, and AT teacher. In 1999, she graduated from the Matthews school (IRDEAT) in New York (USA). After living and working in NYC for over 15 years, she returned to Brazil to teach dance and the AT at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) in a tenure-track position.
She is currently working on her PhD at State University of Campinas (UNICAMP) in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where she is investigating the possible relationships between AT principles, dance, and teaching in an inventive, non-traditional, and non-hierarchical way. In that sense, the works of Paulo Freire, Virginia Kastrup, bell hooks, and Jacques Rancière have been invaluable.
Raquel, the mother of two beautiful young women, loves baking long-fermented bread and taking care of her plants. It is her hope that Lula will be their next president this year.

Korina is on the Faculty at RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art), London, teaching the Alexander Technique to trainee actors, and movement and devising on the Short Course program. She also teaches at the Institute of Contemporary Theatre, Brighton and has a private practice.
She graduated from the Nicholls’ Training School in 2001 and has been a member of STAT ever since. She has served on the STAT Research Group, The Performing Self team and is currently a member of the Alexander in Education Group and the ATLP (Alexander Technique Liberation Project)
She has roots in physical theatre and has always engaged in various forms of movement improvisation. She has an MA in Dance and Somatic Well-being which gave her initial training in Authentic Movement, did further training with Jane Bacon and went on to found a regular peer group practice.

Ainesh Madan (he/him) is a dance artist currently based in Bangalore, India. He is a co-founder of the 206 Dance Collective. Ainesh attended Bard College (USA) on a full-tuition scholarship, receiving a Bachelor of Arts in Dance and Economics. He has since choreographed numerous works, while also collaborating with, and/or performing for, various notable choreographers. Experimentation is foundational to Ainesh’s work. All his choreographic endeavours are distinct in form and content, and serve as reflections of his learnings at the time they were each created. Ainesh’s choreographic choices are informed by his daily attempts to enhance his capacities as a dancer; for him, choreography is a tool that highlights the potency of dance as a medium for honest, unfettered communication. He premiered his first evening-length solo, Phantasies, as part of the University Settlement Guest Artist Series programme in New York City, for which he received the Emergency Grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Ainesh was one of the 2021 residents for Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan’s bangaloREsidency-Expanded at Weltkunstzimmer in Düsseldorf. He recently received the ThinkArts Grant to develop a new work for kids inspired by the character of Smeagol/ Gollum from the Lord of the Rings saga. Ainesh is currently working towards becoming a certified teacher in the Alexander Technique. He is also an experienced, multilingual dance teacher. Ainesh’s writing was published in Imagining – A Gibney Dance Journal in November, 2021. Given the opportunity, Ainesh would willingly spend all his time reading, journaling, meditating, playing an instrument, and most importantly, hanging out with his companion.

Austria Regina trained with Karen Wentworth in London and has been running her own Alexander Technique teaching practice ever since. In January 2022 Regina started teaching at Jean Fischer’s teacher training course at the Alexander Technique Studio in Graz, Austria. Regina is a long-time practitioner of Aikido.
For several years she assisted the manager at the Walter Carrington Educational Trust and was working at the Walter Carrington Archives. During her work at the archives she came across material by Irene Tasker which sparked her interest in the history of the Alexander Technique. Regina has researched the life and work of Irene Tasker (1887-1977), an influential early assistant of F. M. Alexander and a pioneering teacher of the Alexander Technique. Regina’s biography – “Irene Tasker – Her Life and Work with the Alexander Technique” – was first published by Mouritz in September 2020; in 2022 a paperback edition was published.

United Kingdom I have been teaching Alexander’s technique for 28 years to a diverse group of people with different needs and interests in developing constructive conscious control for themselves. I also work as a constructivist psychotherapist after training in Personal Construct Psychology.
The interface between Alexander\\\’s work and psychotherapy within the inter-personal field is a primary interest. I set up the STAT Special Interest Group on the Alexander Technique and the inter-personal, who meet regularly throughout each year.
This year I will give the F.M. Alexander Memorial Lecture for STAT, which will focus on the development of embodied mind and the importance of inhibition as its primary skill.
Helping people learn through constructive conscious control to develop an embodied mind and articulate their possibilities from within this is what makes this work interesting for me.
When I am not working, I like to be out walking on the hills or beaches of Scotland or in a gallery or opera house somewhere in Europe.

USA Richard Brennan

Richard Brennan has studied the Alexander Technique since 1983 and has teaching individual and group sessions since 1989 having undergone a three-year teacher training course approved by STAT (UK); he travels internationally giving talks and courses on the Technique. He has taught the Technique at many educational centres including Galway University, Limerick University, DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama (Dublin), Dartington College of Arts (Devon), and Middlesex University (London). Temple University (USA). He regularly teaches on holiday courses in Spain, Germany, Greece, Croatia and Slovenia. He was a director of the 2015 Alexander Congress in Limerick as well as the 2013 and 2017 Alexander Teacher’s Conventions in Ireland.

He has written eight books on the Alexander Technique, which are translated into 22 languages and are on sale world-wide – the titles including The Alexander Technique Workbook, Change your Posture – Change your Life and How to Breathe

Richard has been the director of the only Alexander Teacher Training College in Ireland for the last 22 years, Ireland which is STAT and ISATT approved and is also a past president and the co-founder of the Irish Society of Alexander Technique Teachers. (ISATT). He strongly believes that the technique is in essence very simple and easy to understand, but often it is made far too complicated and uses this believe as the basis of all his workshops.

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Kecia Chin

Kecia Chin qualified as a Teacher of the Alexander Technique in 1999 from ACAT New York and has been working in private and small groups ever since. She is also a certified Yoga Teacher with specialty in Hatha, Vinyasa, and Bikram yoga and uses both disciplines to help people with scoliosis and other postural issues.

As a yoga instructor she specializes in the Schroth Yoga method. Kecia uses the principles of Alexander method alongside yoga breathe therapy and designs specific Yoga Asanas for people with scoliosis. This helps to elevate back (upper, middle, lower) pain, or discomforts in shoulder, ribs and hip-as a result of scoliotic curvatures of the spine pain. She uses knowledge of anatomical alignment issues due to postural/spinal issues in her yoga practice specifically addressing form and function.

She helps clients to find ease and freedom during daily physical activities ranging from still postures (standing, sitting, sleeping). More importantly, how to practice pain prevention in more physically demanding postures and or asana practices in the many styles of yoga – – to simplify the everyday repetitive activities- working at a computer, playing sports, and exercises that compounded over time may cause long-term pain and/or discomfort.

Ireland — Richard Brennan —
Richard Brennan has studied the Alexander Technique since 1983 and has teaching individual and group sessions since 1989 having undergone a three-year teacher training course approved by STAT (UK); he travels internationally giving talks and courses on the Technique. He has taught the Technique at many educational centres including Galway University, Limerick University, DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama (Dublin), Dartington College of Arts (Devon), and Middlesex University (London). Temple University (USA). He regularly teaches on holiday courses in Spain, Germany, Greece, Croatia and Slovenia. He was a director of the 2015 Alexander Congress in Limerick as well as the 2013 and 2017 Alexander Teacher’s Conventions in Ireland.

He has written eight books on the Alexander Technique, which are translated into 22 languages and are on sale world-wide – the titles including The Alexander Technique Workbook, Change your Posture – Change your Life and How to Breathe

Richard has been the director of the only Alexander Teacher Training College in Ireland for the last 22 years, Ireland which is STAT and ISATT approved and is also a past president and the co-founder of the Irish Society of Alexander Technique Teachers. (ISATT). He strongly believes that the technique is in essence very simple and easy to understand, but often it is made far too complicated and uses this believe as the basis of all his workshops.

— Annedore Kleist —
Annedore Kleist is a professional actor and experienced teacher of the Alexander Technique. She studied acting at the School of Music and Theatre Hamburg and since her diploma in 1991 she has played in many theatres including Theater Basel, Theater Wuppertal, Théâtre de Vidy Lausanne, Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen and Wiener Festwochen. Since 2002 she has travelled to festivals all over Europe with the Berlin based theatre company Nico and the Navigators. Annedore also plays in Film and Television.

In 2004 she finished her training at the School for Alexander Technique in Berlin with Dan Armon and ever since then she has specialized on working with actors and performers. She is also very experienced in breath and voice work. In 2018 she became a regular guest teacher at the Alexander Technique Teaching Training program in Galway, Ireland and now she is the permanent assistant of the course.

USA Robert Britton had his first lessons in the Alexander Technique with Frank Ottiwell in 1974.
He began training to be an Alexander Technique Teacher with Frank Ottiwell and Giora Pinkas in 1975 at the American Center for the Alexander Technique – San Francisco, and graduated in 1978. In addition to his private practice in San Francisco, he has been a professor of the Alexander Technique at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music since 1984.

He has helped train Alexander Technique Teachers since 1989. He regularly teaches at Alexander Technique teacher training schools in Berlin and Hamburg.

He served as chairman of the American Society for the Alexander Technique from 1997 to 1999, and he also was a long-time faculty member of the Bay Area Summer Opera Training Institute. Bob was one of the directors of the 2011 9th International Congress of the Alexander Technique in Lugano Switzerland, and continues to serve on the Board of the Alexander Technique Congress Association.

He was awarded the George S. Sarlo award for Excellence in Teaching in Colleges and Universities in Northern California in 2012, and served as the Department Chairman of “The Complete Musician” Department at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

Switzerland I trained with the Carringtons (1969-71). Since then I have been continuously giving individual lessons. Simultaneously I was privately studying T’ai Chi. In 1982 I began training AT teachers. Since I learnt the Dart Procedures from Walter Carrington when training with him, I have been continuously working with them and incorporate aspects of what Dart discovered in almost every Alexander lesson I give. I have also written a complete set of summaries of Alexander’s four books (The Gold Dust in the Writings of F.M. Alexander) which has been well received. In 2018, Mouritz published my book The Evolution of Movement which not only shows how to practice the Dart Procedures but also how the Procedures are grounded in the Alexander Technique.

USA Robyn has been studying Alexander’s Work since 1975, being first introduced to it as a young professional performing artist. She is the Founding Director of the Contemporary Alexander School, offering self-paced, non-residential teacher training programs in Santa Fe, NM, Portland, OR, & NYC, and in satellite cities throughout North America; as well as Co-Director of the Alexander Alliance International, offering workshops, teacher training, and post-graduate studies throughout Europe and Asia. Robyn is also the Creator of Living in a BodyTM, a Professional Body Mapping Certification Course translated into 6 languages and taught worldwide.
Robyn’s primary studies were with Marjorie Barstow, Bruce Fertman, and the Alexander Alliance, and she now continues Marj’s lineage in her own training programs. In addition, Robyn has also had the pleasure of being mentored by numerous first and second generation teachers over the past 45 years, and enjoys exploring ways to bridge all styles.
At this point in her teaching career, Robyn’s main interests include training Alexander Teachers in Group Teaching/Crafting of Alexander Games; teaching in real life Situations and Activities; incorporating Body Mapping (LIABTM), Bridging Classical and Contemporary styles of the Work; and helping bring more awareness to Equity and Diversity issues within our profession.
Robyn lives in New Mexico & New York City, USA, shares her life with her wife of 30+ years, 2 adult sons, and 4 cats, and loves to tap dance.
www.contemporaryalexander.com

Switzerland Rosa Luisa Rossi has been teaching the Alexander Technique since 1986, extensively applying the Technique working on herself and in activity.
She has a unique perspective on the Technique in the working world and has taught many different strata of workers, from labourers to corporate executives.

In the past she has worked for prestigious clients in Switzerland such as the Swiss National Bank, Zurich Insurance, Thomy Nestlé and Straumann SA.

As an AT freelancer she worked for Priska Gauger-Schelbert, Schwyz, Switzerland offering \”Health management at the working place\” for companies such as Victorinox SA & Siemens SA and more. With their work the value of the Technique is beginning to spread out to other companies and sectors in Switzerland.

Since 2014 Rosa Luisa has been hired as an Alexander Technique coach at IMD International Institute for Management Development in Lausanne, Switzerland, working with several professors in different programs. These professors are experts in developing global leaders through high-impact executive education.

Rosa Luisa Rossi was one of the 2008 Int. AT Congress Directors in Lugano.
She helped create the Alexander Technique Congress Association ATCA in 2008 and has since been a member.

She is committed to helping to develop the Alexander Technique worldwide and teaches this work in G/E/F/I.

United Kingdom Rossella, born in Italy in 1975, lives and works between her adoptive home in the UK, Italy, and Australia, where she trained with David Moore in Melbourne.

As well as running a successful practice as an Alexander Technique teacher in Canterbury, UK, and online, Rossella also teaches the technique at the School for FM Alexander Studies in Australia.

Rossella is the author of For the Love of Games with Anne Mallen, with beautiful illustrations by Melbourne artist Isobel Knowles. This collection of games and activities, part original and part collected over the years, offers a resource for AT teachers to begin working with groups, or add depth and variety to an existing group-based practice.

Rossella is also the co-creator and co-curator of Authors – not your Usual Book Club with Jana Boronova, and assistant to David Moore’s Smart Yoga and AT training courses in Melbourne. A keen proponent of collaboration, she has worked with Luke Hockley to offer the workshop Learning How to Learn, Jeremy Chance’s AT Success course and many more.

Her interest in training courses has taken her to New York, Germany, Ireland and all over the UK, to share work and present on the topics of marketing, activities, anatomy, working with groups and social media.

Rossella has a gift for organising, a dynamic personality and a down to earth approach to things, allowing her to join the dots leading to new content and collaborative projects. She sees the Alexander Technique as an effective and sustainable model of personal and social development. Bringing an inclusive and practical spirit to all her activities, Rossella aims to realise the Technique’s value as a resource to as many people as possible.

USA Sandra Dager
Sandra Dager is an Alexander Technique teacher (AmSAT), certified leadership coach/consultant in kinesthetic energy patterns (Focus Leadership), Lutheran pastor and musician. She uses her unique background and training to facilitate transformation in individuals and organizations from a variety of backgrounds: music, technology, the military, religious organizations, and educational institutions.

Inspired by the saying, “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts,” Sandra places a high value on cross-disciplinary collaboration with experts from diverse backgrounds. In 2021 she and professional drummer Dave Elitch co-led four workshops on the Alexander Technique (“Move Well. Play Well.”) for drummers on the British zoom platform “Drum Hangs.” 416 drummers from 28 countries attended the workshops; most had never heard of the Alexander Technique. Currently, Sandra is collaborating with one of her students on a leadership/communication workshop for women of color, where she will utilize the Alexander Technique and kinesthetic energy patterns to enhance the quality and effectiveness of participants\’ movement, presence, and communication.

A trained classical singer, Sandra has been a soloist in oratorios and given classical song recitals in England and the United States. While her musical tastes are broad, she has a special place in her heart for the classical songs of Nordic composers.

EDUCATION

D.Min. GRADUATE THEOLOGICAL UNION, Berkeley, CA.
Thesis: The Embodied Liturgist: Contributions of the Alexander Technique and the Primal Patterns Theory to the Development of a Holistic, Embodied Pedagogy for Liturgical Presiding.
M.Div. YALE DIVINITY SCHOOL, New Haven, CT. Theology/Pastoral Ministry
B.A. ST. OLAF COLLEGE, Northfield, MN. Sociology.

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David Anderson
David Anderson is the Director of the Marian Wright Edelman Institute for the Study of Children, Youth, and Families at San Francisco State University (SFSU). Formerly a Professor and Chair of the Department of Kinesiology at SFSU.

David has been engaged in a wide range of service, teaching, and research activities. His research centers on understanding how motor skills are acquired, how to promote the development of motor skills, and how motor activity influences psychological functioning. He has authored and co-authored numerous peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, presentations, an activity manual, and a popular textbook, and has received significant funding for his research from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Education.

David is an Active Fellow in the National Academy of Kinesiology and serves on several advisory and editorial boards. He is a passionate advocate for the importance of physical activity in optimal motor and psychological development and is committed to promoting efforts to improve early child care, education and health.

—Education—
B.Ed. University of Technology, Sydney: Physical Education
M.S. California State University, Long Beach: Physical Education
Ph.D. Louisiana State University: Kinesiology

United Kingdom I came to the Technique over 40 years ago as a young, rather anxious flute player while studying music at Southampton University. Jaw problems – literal lock-jaw at times – stopped me playing, and singing, and I moved into classical music administration eventually working as a freelance tour manager for baroque orchestras. During that time I had Alexander lessons with Carmen Burton (now Tarnowski) and I trained as a teacher in my mid-thirties with Robin Simmons, Jean Clark and Elisabeth Waterhouse.

A happy meeting on a train station led me to Edinburgh in 1999 to take over a colleague’s flute and Alexander teaching practice while she travelled and I’ve lived here ever since. Here in Edinburgh I’ve been able to quieten my over-stretched nervous system and give myself time to explore my love of improvised voice and dance (5 Rhythms), the internal Chinese martial arts and the beautiful poetry and practices from the Sufi tradition. I play frame-drums and during (and since) lockdown I’ve been learning the Persian Daf with an Iranian teacher in Toronto – the blessings of Zoom!

I have a private teaching practice and I teach Alexander teachers-to-be at the Edinburgh Alexander Training School in Portobello, Edinburgh’s seaside…

USA Sarah Barker has a passion for teaching people how to live in a conscious body, how to embody their imagination, and how develop physical intelligence. She focuses on giving her students independence and personal success by helping them discover their own inner abilities and the power to change their quality of moving and living.

She was introduced to the Alexander Technique and the Human Potential Movement during her graduate study of acting at the Southern Methodist University. From the moment she began working with Marjorie Barstow she knew she had a thread that would stitch all of her studies together into a unified approach. The idea that one could use conscious awareness and intention to change one’s whole experience of life and art was revolutionary. She dedicated her studies in the art of acting to the psycho-physical realm. Over the 48 years since that first discovery Sarah has studied more than forty somatic systems for unlocking the freedom and ability that comes with a mind/body unity. She became a Theatre Movement Specialist helping to establish the Association of Theatre Movement Educators. She is also an actress and an acting teacher. She has directed two graduate programs for actors and has developed a body of work for physical approaches to acting and other performing arts. She is now professor Emerita at the University of South Carolina. Sarah continues to teach regularly as an invited guest for Alexander Technique teacher training schools around the world.
She has been teaching the Alexander Technique since 1974 with a focus on providing tools that help people learn the technique when there is no teacher available and then for practice as they work closely with teachers to develop the mind/body connection. More recently she has investigated the scientific understanding of touch and its implications for teaching and learning. She has delivered hundreds of workshops, demonstrations and panels throughout the United States and in Japan, Germany, the UK, Canada, Portugal, and Switzerland.
Sarah writes regularly for theatre movement and Alexander Technique publications. Most recently she launched Allez-Up!, her wellness app for smart phones. In the last few years she has authored chapters in two internationally published books: in Galvanizing Performance (with Jessica Knightly) a book of essays on new developments in applications of Alexander Technique in performance and in Physical Dramaturgy (with Routledge Press) a book of essays on physical approaches to theatre performance. Her book, The Alexander Technique, has been distributed worldwide for forty years and has been translated into French, Japanese, Portuguese, Italian and German. Moving with Ease, her innovative DVD for learning the Alexander Technique, is available in English (through easyalexander.com) and in Japanese (through Being Net Press).

Germany Constance Clare-Newman
https://www.constanceclare.com/
Peter Nobes
https://www.alexandercentre.co.uk/
Lee Warren
https://leewarrenspeaker.com/
Sharyn West
Karin Heisecke

USA Sheila Bandyopadhyay

Sheila Bandyopadhyay is a New York City based theater artist and Director of Training at Shakespeare & Company’s Center for Actor Training in Lenox, Massachusetts. Sheila’s career spans acting, directing, movement coaching, choreography, teaching and devising original theater. As a theatre maker, Sheila is committed to non-traditional performance that is physical, music-driven, and inclusive. In New York, Sheila has directed shows at the Brick, the United Solo Festival (Theater Row), the Tank, the Women in Theater Festival (the Gural), the West End Theater, and the 72nd St Theater Lab. For eight years Sheila served as Head of the Movement Department at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Manhattan where she regularly directed and coached productions in the 2nd year of training and for the Academy Company. In 2021-22, Sheila was Head of the Professional Training Program and Core Movement Faculty at Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theater. An AmSAT certified teacher of the Alexander Technique, Sheila is intrigued by and actively investigating the overlap between physical training, creativity, mindful movement and Eastern meditation practices. Additional teaching and coaching with: California State University Summer Arts, Brandeis University, the Balance Arts Center (NYC), FSU/Asolo Conservatory for Actor Training, NYU Gallatin, the Linklater Center, the Upright Citizen’s Brigade, and Emerson College. Sheila is a proud member of the Humanist Project and a sponsored artist with Leviathan Lab, both companies based in New York City. Sheila is an alumna of Brandeis University (class of 1999), and NYU Gallatin (MA, 2010). www.sheilabnyc.com IG: @sheilabnyc

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Kristin Mozeiko

Kristin Mozeiko D.M.A., is the founder of Alexander Technique Brooklyn and Art of Releasing. She is an AmSAT-certified Alexander technique specialist and a proud volunteer organizing member of the Alexander Technique Liberation Project (ATLP). In 2008, she completed a three year 1,600-hour, teacher training program. In 2018, she completed a yearlong training to become a certified Releasing coach. For 14 years, Dr. Mozeiko served on the faculty at Queens College, where she conducted the wind ensemble and taught music education courses and Alexander Technique to musicians. Dr. Mozeiko holds a B.A. from Ithaca College in music education, a M.M. from the University of Hartford in French horn performance, and a doctorate in music education from Boston University. Her doctoral work, writing, research and national and international presentations have focused on integrating Alexander technique with musician health and wellness while centering DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion). She is an active clinician and a member of IM4US, the National Association for Music Education, the New York State School Music Association, AmSAT, the Women’s Band Directors Association, CBDNA, and IMTE (Instrumental Music Teacher Educator).

Israel My name is Shoulamit Tchaikovsky, a teacher of the Alexander method. Lives and teaches in Nes Ziona. I started my professional development in my life as a fashion designer and producer. At the same time, I worked in the field of drawing and painting, interior design and architecture, alongside the establishment and management of a successful private company.

The dynamic life full of challenges and stimuli, and the rapid development in the age we live in, led me to search for an answer to the chronic pains I developed in the muscles of my neck, shoulder, arm and right hand. Pains that resulted from the stress and overdoing. I searched, asked, studied and experimented with a number of alternative treatment methods that provided a specific and temporary solution. The pain always returned and the symptoms increased.

When I met the Alexander method, I knew that this is the field in which I am interested in continuing my personal and professional development in my life.

Although I arrived quite skeptical, after a few individual classes, I noticed the \\\”magic\\\” that was done and it felt like a big \\\”miracle\\\” to me. It happened when I met my first teacher Judd Vankert and from then until today my curiosity is insatiable.

Curiosity that led me to continue discovering and developing, and out of a desire to pass this unique discovery on, I joined a teacher training course in Israel. In 2006, I was certified as a teacher of the Alexander method, in practice, after 4 years of intensive study held 4 days a week in a teacher training course directed by Meir Amit. Since then I continue to study and teach the Alexander method, in Nes Ziona, in teacher training courses, and in any other suitable variation.

Finland Soile Lahdenperä has Doctorate in Dance (2014) from the Theatre Academy in Helsinki, Finland. She is University Lecturer in Dance program at Theatre Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki since 2013. Soile is also assistant teacher at the Alexander Technique Institute of Estonia and moderator in FINSTAT.
Soile did her AT teacher training with John and Carolyn Nicholls from 1992 to 1995 in Brighton, UK. She has been teaching the Technique from then on in the Sibelius Academy and in the Theatre Academy amongst other institutions, as well as having a private practice. She is deeply involved in the Finnish dance scene and received five-year government dance grant from 2010 to 2014.

United Kingdom As a child, Steven’s love of being in the water led him naturally to join his local swimming club where he took up competitive swimming. At the age of seventeen, he quit – burnt out from the long hours of hard training and suffering from a severely sprained neck and upper back. At this point in his life, he vowed never to return to swimming.

While at University he was introduced to the Alexander Technique™as a means of relieving his pain and became enthused by the ideas of F.M Alexander. In 1990 he started the three-year Alexander Technique™ teacher-training course in Israel.
During this time he began to re-explore his relationship with the water and by applying principles of the Alexander Technique™ in that element rediscovered his passion for swimming. He developed a new approach to teaching swimming – the Shaw Method.

Using his unique approach he has over the years helped thousands of people to find freedom and ease in the water. Steven enjoys working with swimmers and non-swimmers of all levels ranging from those who are fearful of putting their faces in the water to competitive swimmers looking for a healthier approach. He teaches groups and individuals throughout the UK and has introduced the Shaw Method to Japan, Australia

“Steven Shaw is the horse whisperer of swimming. Just as riding does not to be about breaking the horse, swimming does not have to be about fighting the water. Steven Shaw teaches you how to join with the water.\\\\\\\”

Steven is the Course Director of the Middlesex University accredited Diploma course in the Shaw Method and has trained more than 100 teachers. He is the co-author with a former pupil Armand D’Angour of the 1997 ‘Art of Swimming in a new direction with the Alexander Technique™ and has produced four DVDs. His second book on learning to swim with the Shaw Method, ’Master the Art of Swimming’ was published in 2006.

Germany Susanne got introduced to the Alexander Technique during the time she studied singing at the Konservatorium Wien Privatuniversität. Afterwards she trained to become a teacher of the Alexander Technique at the ATAZ Munich with Mary Holland and Alexander Hermann. In 2017 Susanne opened her Alexander practice in Munich. As an activist she held empowerment and awareness workshops and she was involved into various feminist projects. Since 2020 Susanne is a board member of the EineWeltHaus e.V., a place for intercultural and political education in Munich.
It is her special concern to communicate about racism and its effects on the whole psycho-physical being.
Susanne loves to support individuals discovering new perspectives that enhance freedom and diversity.

USA Ted Dimon, Ed.D., is Director of The Dimon Institute, where he is developing Sensorimotor Awareness (SMA), a new program in kinesthetic education and the mindful study of the self in action. An internationally renowned teacher and lecturer in the study of mind and body, he received both his masters and doctoral degrees in education from Harvard University. Ted has written ten books, including Anatomy in Action; Anatomy of the Moving Body; The Body in Motion; Anatomy of the Voice; Your Body, Your Voice; The Elements of Skill; The Undivided Self; A New Model of Man’s Conscious Development; and Neurodynamics: The Art of Mindfulness in Action.

Germany We are a collaboration of four Alexander teachers working to promote the Alexander Technique and its application in a wide social context.

We offer seminars, lectures and workshops designed to introduce and inform educational establishments, health and social institutions, businesses and the general public of the scope and comprehensive insight of this Technique.

This workshop, unique in as much as we are offering it for colleagues, is an exploration into an urgent subject, one, which is highly relevant to the times we live in, and rarely regarded as matter for the Alexander Technique.

Thomas Hoppe
@ th_hoppe@hotmail.com
Berlin – Germany
Born in Berlin. Professional musician. Double bass and electric bass. First Alexander Technique lessons in 1993, graduated in 2005 with Dan Armon in Berlin. Has been teaching continuously since then. Works as an assistant at two schools. With Dan Armon in the “School for Alexander Technique Berlin” and with Matthias Graefen “Alexander Technique Training Berlin”. Since 2018 member of the Alexander Technique Initiative Berlin, where we deal with the social relevance of the technique.

Susanne Middendorf
@ susanne.middendorf@gmx.de
Dipl Musikpädagogin
Dipl Lehrerin der Alexander-Technik
Körperorientierte Stimmbildung
Energetisches Heilen

Kontinuierliche Unterrichtserfahrung seit 2001
Einzelunterricht, Gruppen und Workshops

Assistenz in der Schule für Alexander-Technik, Berlin, Dan Armon

Vorträge über die Anwendbarkeit der Alexander-Technik im Kontext von Gesundheit, Musik, Stimmarbeit, Persönlichkeitsentwicklung und Spiritualität

„Der Weg zur AT hat sich mir über die Musik erschlossen. Als Sängerin bin ich auf einen funktionalen Körpergebrauch, eine gute Koordination, Flexibilität, Durchlässigkeit und ein hohes Niveau von Körperenergie angewiesen. Die AT ist wie ein fein justierender Kompass, der mit einem Gefühl für Stimmigkeit und für die Entfaltung des Wesentlichen den Weg weist. In der Tiefe aber führt uns die AT zu einem heilsameren Umgang mit Leben und zu den heileren Ressourcen in uns selbst. In den vergangenen Jahren habe ich begonnen, die Prinzipien der AT mit Ansätzen aus der Körperheilarbeit und dem energetischen Heilen zu verbinden.“

www.alexandertechnik-berlin.com
www.susanne-middendorf.de

Beate v. Hahn
beatevonhahn@gmx.de
I first came into contact with the Alexander Technique while studying to be a classical singer.
Having spent a number of years in an opera house ensemble, I decided to “ride the horse backwards” and explore the essence of voice and expression.
The subsequent training in the Alexander Technique laid the foundation for a vibrant inquiry into a natural, free flowing authenticity and presence within vocalisation.
I am living and working in Berlin.

Jonathan Sheratte
artwork3@web.de
I discovered the technique while at art college in 1986. It released a creativity and authenticity in my work, which was indescribable and unexplainable.
36 years later, as a co-director of a training course in Berlin, I discribe it and explain it.
And still the mystery remains.

United Kingdom Alan Philps, Director of Training
Alan trained with Walter and Dilys Carrington at The Constructive teaching Centre (CTC), Holland Park, London. Upon graduation Alan was invited to join the training course staff at CTC where he has taught ever since. Alan became co-director of CTC in 2015 and assumed the role of Head of Training in 2021.

As a voice teacher, Alan has taught and coached presentation skills in the executive world. Prior to coming to London Alan enjoyed a stage and television career as an actor and singer.

Alan supported Walter and Dilys Carrington as a teacher at the international congresses in Englebierg (1991), Jerusalem (1996) and Oxford (2004). He also taught at Lugano (2007 & 2011) Limerick (2015) and Chicago (2018). He is delighted to be leading the CTC team at the congress in Berlin.

Duncan Knowles, Assistant Director of Training
Duncan trained under Walter and Dilys Carrington, graduating from the Constructive Teaching Centre (CTC) in 2001. In addition to his role as Assistant Director at CTC, Duncan has taught on Alexander Teacher Training Course in Madrid and NYC.

Duncan is an experienced voice teacher and coach, having trained extensively with Michael McCallion, author of ‘The Voice Book’ (a seminal text on voice and the Alexander Technique).

As an actor, Duncan has performed in theatre, radio and on television and taught the Alexander Technique and Voice at a leading theatre training school in London for fifteen years from 2001.

Alice Olsher
Alice Olsher moved from California , where she grew up studying acting and singing . In 1971 she moved to London where she attended the Drama Studio and met the Technique and her first teacher Mary Holland. After working in the theatre she trained at The constructive teaching Centre with Walter and Dilys Carrington. After the training Alice stayed to teach with the Carrington’s , Ruth Murray , Alan Philps and many other teachers.
In 2005 Alice returned to California and became a teacher trainer there still visiting CTC when she could. Alice is now teaching post graduate classes online and is pleased to join the CTC team once again to contribute in the CL in Berlin. It was Ruth’s plan to be there sadly she will not except of course in spirit.

Marta Barón
I trained at the Constructive Teaching Centre, graduating in 1999. I have been involved in training teachers from 2008 and I opened my own training course, Centro de Enseñanza Constructiva, in 2016. Within the Alexander world I love meeting new pupils and finding the way to help them to help themselves. In 2017 I published Man´s Supreme Inheritance translation into Spanish. I love hiking, cycling, dancing and being in nature. I am a keen reader and love going to new places and eating well.

Claire Butler
After a career in Events Management and years of chronic back pain, Claire trained to become an Alexander Technique teacher at CityATS with Brita Forstrom. After graduation Claire became the Administrator for The Constructive Teaching Centre and the Walter Carrington Educational Trust. Claire has completed four terms of postgraduate training at CTC with Alan Philps and is now teaching on the training course one day a week.

Germany Nachdem ich nach einer Schauspielausbildung einige Zeit als Schauspieler gearbeitet hatte, bekam ich immer größere Probleme mit meinem Körper. Die Halswirbelsäule musste in immer kürzeren Abständen eingerenkt werden, weil ich sonst meinen Kopf nicht mehr drehen konnte. Die Schultern und das rechte Knie taten mir ständig weh und nachdem ich einen leichten Bandscheibenvorfall in der Lendenwirbelsäule hatte und einige Wochen nur noch gebückt gehen konnte, suchte ich endgültig nach Alternativen. Etwa in der Zeit kam Danny McGowan von London nach Berlin, um in Berlin Alexander-Technik zu unterrichten.Sobald ich davon hörte, nahm ich eine erste Probestunde und war vollkommen überrascht. Als ich den Raum wieder verließ, dachte ich, mein Körper fliegt. Schon ewig hatte ich mich nicht mehr so leicht gefühlt – hatte ich mich überhaupt schon mal so leicht gefühlt?

Ein paar Monate und ca. 25 Einzelsitzungen später beschloss ich, mich bei Danny McGowan zum Lehrer für Alexander-Technik ausbilden zu lassen. Ich begann nicht mit der Absicht selber irgendwann als Lehrer zu arbeiten, sondern um mich drei Jahre intensiv mit meinem Körper zu beschäftigen. Ich wollte einen Weg aus den so tief sitzenden Bewegungsmustern finden, die mich so sehr einschränkten und mir solche körperlichen Schmerzen bereiteten. Im dritten Ausbildungsjahr unterrichteten wir dann unter Aufsicht unserer Ausbilder die Alexander-Technik an der Hochschule der Künste in Berlin. Schon da fiel mir auf, wie viele Studenten immer wieder zu mir wollten. Am Ende dieses Jahres fragten mich dann einige, ob ich ihnen weiterhin Alexander-Technikstunden geben würde. Da ich mich beim Unterrichten sehr, sehr wohl fühle (glücklich würde sehr pathetisch klingen – würde es aber treffen) sagte ich sofort ja.

1996 hatte ich dann meine 3-jährige Ausbildung zum Lehrer der Alexander-Technik in Berlin abgeschlossen, suchte mir Unterrichtsräume und begann zu unterrichten. Da ich anfänglich viele Studenten von der Hochschule der Künste hatte, verband ich die Alexander-Technik mit Sprechtechnik oder Gesangstechnik oder Rollenstudium. Mit der Zeit stellte ich allerdings fest, dass hinter den körperlichen Mustern noch Geisteshaltungen, Denkmuster, Gefühlsmuster lauerten, die mich ebenso einschränkten wie die körperlichen Muster. In dieser Zeit begann ich zu Meditieren. Bis dahin kannte ich nur aus meiner Schauspielausbildung die dynamische Meditation von Osho, einfach „nur“ sitzen kannte ich gar nicht. Aber ich stellte sehr schnell fest, wie gut mir das tat und wie viel leichter mir das fiel, weil ich durch die Alexander-Technik sehr lange sitzen konnte, ohne dass mir etwas weh tat.

Etwa drei Jahre meditierte ich regelmäßig in Berlin und danach begann dann meine „spirituelle Reise“: Avatar mit Harry Palmer, Steps to Enlightenment mit Monika Redl-Janßen und Psychology of Vision mit Chuck Spezzano waren meine ersten längeren Stationen. Es folgten QLB, klassisches Zazen, Maitri Breath Work und Schamanische Heilrituale mit Pablo Russell. Zuletzt war ich bei Guruji Mohan, einem Heiler aus Rajasthan (Indien).

Bei allem was ich tat blieb die Alexander-Technik immer meine Basis. Mein detailliertes Wissen über meinen Körper und mein Gefühl für meinen Körper, zeigten mir immer ganz genau, hier bin ich richtig oder nicht.

Die ganze Zeit habe ich immer sowohl als Schauspieler, als auch als Alexander-Techniklehrer gearbeitet. Beides tue sehr gerne und mit ganzem Herzen. Mittlerweile lasse ich natürlich alle anderen Techniken in meine Arbeit als Alexander-Techniklehrer mit einfließen, genauso wie in meine Arbeit als Schauspieler.

After working as an actor for a while, I started getting bigger and bigger problems with my body. The cervical spine had to be set at shorter and shorter intervals because otherwise I could no longer turn my head. My shoulders and right knee hurt me all the time and after I had a slight herniated disc in my lumbar spine and was only able to walk slightly bent over for a few weeks, I finally looked for alternatives.

Around the same time, Danny McGowan came to Berlin from London to teach the Alexander Technique in Berlin. As soon as I heard about it, I took a first trial lesson and was completely surprised. When I left the room, I thought my body was flying. I hadn’t felt this light in ages – had I ever felt this light? A few months and about 25 individual sessions later, I decided to train as an Alexander Technique teacher with Danny McGowan. I didn’t start out with the intention of working as a teacher myself at some point, but to deal intensively with my body for three years. I wanted to find a way out of the ingrained movement patterns that were so limiting and causing me such physical pain. In the third year of training, we taught the Alexander Technique at the University of Arts in Berlin under the supervision of our trainers. There I noticed how many students wanted to come to me again and again. At the end of that year, a few asked me if I would continue to give them Alexander Technique lessons. Since I feel very, very comfortable teaching (happy would sound very pathetic – but it would be right) I immediately said yes.

In 1996 I had completed my 3-year training as a teacher of the Alexander Technique in Berlin, looked for classrooms and began to teach. Over time, however, I realized that mental attitudes, thought patterns, and emotional patterns lurked behind the physical patterns, which restricted me just as much as the physical patterns. During this time I started meditating. Until then, I only knew Osho’s dynamic meditation from my acting training, I didn’t know “just” sitting. But I quickly realized how good it was for me and how much easier it was because the Alexander Technique allowed me to sit for a long time without hurting anything.

I meditated regularly in Berlin for about three years. And then my “spiritual journey” began: Avatar with Harry Palmer, Steps to Enlightenment with Monika Redl-Janßen and Psychology of Vision with Chuck Spezzano were my first longer stations. This was followed by QLB, classical zazen, Maitri Breath Work and shamanic healing rituals with Pablo Russell. Most recently I was with Guruji Mohan, a healer from Rajasthan (India).

In everything I did, the Alexander Technique always remained my basis. My detailed knowledge of my body and my feeling for my body always showed me exactly whether I was right or not.

All the time I have always worked as an actor and as an Alexander Technique teacher. I do both with great pleasure and with all my heart. In the meantime, of course, I have incorporated all other techniques into my work as an Alexander Technique teacher and also in my work as an actor.

USA For the past 47 years Tommy has taught and applied the Alexander principles and concepts and has guided thousands towards a life well lived more to their satisfaction. This list includes Alexander teachers and trainees, professional and Olympic athletes, dressage riders, scientists, physicians, corporate and university professionals, musicians, dancers, actors, children, trauma victims, the sexually abused, and those with life threatening disease and the disabled to a more fulfilling and meaningfully satisfying life. He currently has an active in-person and online teaching practice and taught on 30 teacher training courses in the USA, Europe, the UK, Netherlands ,and Asia. He has given well over 1000 workshops internationally for Alexander teachers, teacher trainees and the general public in 16 countries including Ireland, France, Israel. Germany, Austria, Italy, Holland, Hungary, Spain, England, the USA, Japan, Korea, Switzerland, Canada, and served as special assistant to the 1976 Olympic USA Heavyweight Rowing Crew. Tommy served on the faculty at Harvard University for 12 years where he taught the Technique to graduate students enrolled in the Institute for Advanced Theater Training, Harvard University/Moscow Art Theater and the American Repertory Theater. He is founder and Director of the Alexander Technique Center at Cambridge, where he has been training Alexander teachers since 1983. The Center was awarded The Best of Cambridge in Alternative and Holistic Health, by the City of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

A former Assistant Professor of Drama and Managing Director of Tufts Arena Theater at Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts, Tommy has acted and directed over 200 theater productions, working, acting or directing with such notable artists as Tennessee Williams in a revival of Eccentricities of a Nightingale (1977), and Michael Douglas, actor/producer and two time Academy Award Oscar winner.

Tommy is co-founder, charter member, and was inaugural Chair of Alexander Technique International (ATI). His contributions to ATI earned him the ATI Lifetime Membership Award. He is also an Honorary Member of ATI France (ATIF), the Irish Society of Alexander Technique Teachers (ISATT), a teaching member of the Japan Alexander Technique Association (JATA), and is Associate Director of Body Chance’s Japanese Alexander Teacher Education Program in Tokyo and Osaka.

Along with Richard A. Brown and Helen Rumsey Jones, wife of Frank Pierce Jones, Tommy co-founded the Alexander Technique Association of New England (ATA) in 1982 and the Frank Pierce Jones Archives and the F. Matthias Alexander Archives, initially housed in the Wessell Library at Tufts University. He was ATA’s director for six years. He is author of Touching Presence (with Rachel Prabhakar) and co-author of Scientific and Humanistic Contributions of Frank Pierce Jones. He has contributed numerous papers on the Alexander Technique, Tai Chi, and theater to Alexander and theater journals, periodicals, martial arts journals and newsletters. Tommy is currently writing another book, ‘An Awakened Life: Evolution of an Alexander Teacher and a revised edition of Touching Presence, translated recently in Japanese and French, with Korean and Spanish translations in-progress.

No newcomer to the Alexander Congresses, Tommy presented papers on his teacher, Dr Frank Pierce Jones at both the first and second International Congresses at Stoney Brook, NY and in Brighton, England and was one of the Second Generation teachers invited to give master classes at the Third International Congress in Engelberg, Switzerland, and has consistently given Continuous Learning classes at the Congresses since their inception. In 2016, along with Debi Adams and Bob Lada, he co-founded ‘In the Company of Support’ an annual Summer Retreat for advanced study in the Alexander work for teachers, trainees and the invited public. Each summer teachers and guest presenters from the Alexander community and in the Arts , Humanities and Science worldwide are invited to teach and participate.

At the onset of the Pandemic, Tommy launched ‘The Gift Of Our Understanding’ a series of online Zoom classes based on his then recently published book ‘Touching Presence,’ granting to those participants who completed the course a ‘Career and Life Enhancement Advanced Study Certificate’ from the Alexander Technique Center at Cambridge. The course continues and now extends beyond the scope of his book into an in depth exploration of how to apply the Alexander principles and concepts to the ever evolving and delightfully surprising evolution of your life. Tommy continues to teach privately in Cambridge, Massachusetts, both in person and online. And, post pandemic he continues to travel and teach in numerous countries.

Email: tommy@easeofbeing.com Website: www.easeofbeing.com Summer Retreat: www.easeofbeingretreat.com

About Tommy’s approach to teaching from a review of his book ‘Touchng Beauty’ by Bruce Fertman and Penny Oconner:

Tommy uses the Alexander Technique as his vehicle through which he guides his students into living more compassionately conscious and self-embodied lives. Use is too narrow an arena for Tommy. He is interested in personal transformation.

In our profession, thankfully, we have many gifted teachers doing research into different aspects of Alexander’s work. Some of us are reductionists. Some of us are more physiologically oriented and want to zero in on the precise physiological mechanisms involved in bringing about improved use. This is exciting. At the same time, some of us, like Tommy, are what I would call expansionists. Tommy wants to expand Alexander’s work beyond the workings of the body into the workings of the heart and soul. That is where Tommy’s work lives. This too is exciting. For Tommy, Alexander’s work is a spiritual path, a way of life. I think this is true for many of us. Tommy is as much a healer and secular rabbi/sheik/priest as he is a teacher.

I am fine with this because when reading, Touching Presence, I feel in the presence of a person who is entirely himself, who teaches through who he is. He’s not imitating anyone. He teaches through his own personal ethical framework, expressing his own truth. He teaches through his own language. He teaches out of his own experience, sometimes painful experience. He’s real. He’s authentic.

Tommy often, like a Hasidic rabbi or Sufi sheik, teaches through story. He’s a good storyteller. He shares deeply moving stories with us of his birth, of growing up in the segregated south, of the love for and death of his wife, Julie. These are not just stories. The key concepts which Tommy holds dear about the Alexander Technique are clearly elucidated within these stories.

What are some of these key concepts? Here I will not go into detail; for that I suggest reading Touching Presence and if possible, studying with Tommy.

1.) Perhaps the deepest and most far reaching of all of Tommy’s key concepts is that of “withholding definition”. This is his way of talking about Alexandrian Inhibition, of a radical sort, one that allows a persons’ fixed sense of identity to become unfixed, fluid, changeable. Tommy’s work revolves around the issue of identity, how we define ourselves and by doing so, how we limit ourselves from experiencing who we are and what we might become. In the words of James Baldwin, “Identity would seem to be the garment with which one covers the nakedness of the self: in which case, it is best that the garment be loose, a little like the robes of the desert, through which one’s nakedness can always be felt, and, sometimes, discerned.” Tommy work seems to be about loosening the garment.

2.) Seeing a students’ beauty. Appreciating a student for how and who they are and letting your lessons unfold from there. Tommy’s work is profoundly non-corrective.

3.) Restoring a supportive sense of being as we do what we are doing. Remaining a human being rather than turning into a human doing. Our culture judgmentally demands: “Don’t just stand there, do something!” Tommy’s advice might be: “Don’t just do something, stand there.” First get a sense of where you are, what you are in relation with, how you are being, what you are experiencing and then let your doing arise out of this fullness of being.

4.) What most influences our students and allows them to change depends not so much on what we do but on who we are when we are with them. Ram Dass says, “The only thing you have to offer another human being, ever, is your own state of being.” Maybe Ram Dass heard that from Tommy! Sounds like Tommy.

Touching Presence does not read like a novel, or a textbook, certainly not a manual. Reading Tommy requires some work and some time. I found myself reading just a paragraph or two and then having to stop, become still, quiet, and just think, reflect, meditate before reading on. Touching Presence reads more like a Buddhist Sutra, or like the Cloud of Unknowing, where something important is said over and over again. Humility…is nothing else but a true knowledge and experience of yourself as you are. (Cloud of Unknowing). Or, The word is not the thing. (The Diamond Sutra). Or, Form is emptiness, and emptiness, form. (The Heart Sutra). Ideas not for thinking once and then forgetting, but rather ideas you sit on, like a mother hen, until one day, CRACK, your mind opens, your heart opens, and new possibilities you never could have imagined, present themselves.

If you are training to become an Alexander teacher, or if you are an Alexander teacher and if you are interested not only in The Use of the Body, but are really interested in The Use of the Whole Self, if you wish to go beyond teaching about the body and about movement, if you are interested in your physio-spiritual life, then this book may help you along your way.

– Bruce Fertman
STAT Teaching Member
Alexander Technique Teacher and Trainer
Denmark

“At this time when the world is falling out of touch, ‘Touching Presence is an antidote and reminder of its importance.”
‘Touching Presence’ is a gift.

PennyO’Conner
AlexanderTeacher
STAT Teaching Member
UK

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Germany Torsten Konrad is a performing and visual artist, a movement teacher and coach as well as a Psychology of Vision Trainer. Self-realization, the link that connects his approach and content the driving force, in all he does, be it research, teaching or creating. He has been a teacher of the F. M. Alexander-Technique supporting health, coordination and inspiration to the dance students of Folkwang University Of The Arts for the last 25 years and for the last 15 years he has been doing the same for the music, drama and design students. He has been assisting in Cologne’s Alexander-Technique Teacher Training courses for a decade. He teaches relationship and self-realization seminars in Germany and Internationally both as a coach for Psychosynthesis and as trainer for Psychology of Vision. His research is connecting and introducing the beauty of self-experience into the areas of: body awareness, relationships, leadership, spirituality and the performing and visual arts.
In his workshops he supports people in accessing freedom and joy, happiness and love. His private sessions (via phone, through video calls or live face to face) invite the unconditional freedom of miracle mindedness, grace and beauty into his clients’ bodies, hearts and minds as well as into their relationships and work life in order to help them to achieve their purpose and live their destiny.

Germany Ulli’s educational path began in 1974 with studies in art and led to training as a dance pedagogue and Gestalt therapist and then to the Alexander Technique. 1985 Opening of the Studio FREIRAUM. Birth of her son Nikolai in 1995. She completed her training with Chris Stevens and Nadia Kevan in 1994. She owns her own Trainingsschool, Alexander-Technik-Schule Hamburg since 2005. Robert Britton and Giora Pinkas taught there regularly, in addition to many guest teachers. To continue her education and for international exchange she enjoys to go to AMMAS-Meetings.

Due to her mother’s Alzheimer’s dementia, she developed a work with Alexander Technique, dance and voice, which she taught for 12 years in a retirement home. During this time the film was made: “F.M.Alexander-Technik bei Alzheimer-Demenz” Mechthild Rickheit/Ulli Pawlas 2004/2008. This film is available on DVD as well,including a small booklet.
For 37 years, the Alexander Technique has permeated her life, every day and always. “A technique for life,” F.M. Alexander once said. To serve this work makes her happy and grateful.

She is as well very grateful for the many years of guidance of her Zen teacher Kurt KyuSei Österle in meditation and in his own developed practice of Archery.

Currently, she published the booklet: F.M.says:”Always have something to look forward to…” Quotes of the week. A collection of Alexander-Quotes sent out to colleagues, during the Pandemic from March 2020 to March 2021. To buy in the bookshop or under https://www.verlag-iris-foerster.de/p/f-m-says-always-have-something-to-look-forward-to

Sweden Wolfgang Weiser, Balance educator & artist trained as an AT teacher in England and Germany between 1993-97 and became over the last 15 years an internationally recognised AT teacher, with qualified educations as well in theatre, circus, ergonomics and pedagogics. He is a member of ATVD, STAT & ATME, has taught the AT at the Theatre University in Stockholm and worked with actors, dancers and musicians all over Sweden. Prior experience includes working as a performer, actor, dancer and juggler since 1984. Now, based on the island Gotland, Sweden he is together with Anna E Weiser running a residential summer project and building an educational art centre for sound and balance. When not standing on his hands or teaching, Wolfgang is doing research about sustainable movement education, where he recently started his PhD studies.

Sweden Wolfgang Weiser, Balance educator & artist trained as an AT teacher in England and Germany between 1993-97 and became over the last 15 years an internationally recognised AT teacher, with qualified educations as well in theatre, circus, ergonomics and pedagogics. He is a member of ATVD, STAT & ATME, has taught the AT at the Theatre University in Stockholm and worked with actors, dancers and musicians all over Sweden. Prior experience includes working as a performer, actor, dancer and juggler since 1984. Now, based on the island Gotland, Sweden he is together with Anna E Weiser running a residential summer project and building an educational art centre for sound and balance. When not standing on his hands or teaching, Wolfgang is doing research about sustainable movement education, where he recently started his PhD studies.