Watch this promotional Video about Tommy and his work
Tommy Thompson
Tommy Thompson has been teaching since 1966, first teaching theater at the University of California Santa Barbara, when enrolled in the Masters and Doctoral programs in modern European dramatic criticism Later, when on the faculty of Tufts University as an Assistant Professor and Managing Director of Tufts Arena Theater, Tommy met Dr Frank Pierce Jones, a colleague at Tufts University who in his generation was the world’s foremost scientific authority on Mr. Alexander’s discoveries. As a Classics Professor at Tufts University Dr Jones also held a faculty position in the Applied Experimental Psychology Department conducting scientific research in the Alexander Technique. Dr Jones had trained to teach the Alexander work with the originator, F. Matthias Alexander and in addition with his bother A.R. Alexander. Through Dr Jones, Tommy was introduced to the Alexander Technique. In the spring of 1975, Dr Jones encouraged Tommy to pursue teaching the Alexander work and sent him to Princeton University to assist the world champion heavyweight rowing crew in defending their title, the majority of whom later became the 1976 Olympic heavyweight rowing crew. With this experience behind him and with Dr Jones’ blessing, Tommy resigned from university life in 1975 and began to teach the Alexander work.
For the past 48 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 has enjoyed an active in-person and online teaching practice in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, and has taught on 30 teacher training courses worldwide. He has given well over 1,000 workshops internationally for Alexander teachers, teacher trainees and the general public in 15 countries including Ireland, France, Israel. Germany, Austria, Italy, Holland, Hungary, Spain, England, the USA, Japan, Korea, Switzerland, Canada…
Founder and Director of the Alexander Technique Center at Cambridge, the center was awarded The Best of Cambridge, Massachusetts in Alternative and Holistic Health by the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts. At the center, Tommy has been training Alexander teachers since 1983.
Tommy was on the faculty at Harvard University for 12 years where he taught the Alexander Technique to graduate students enrolled in the Institute for Advanced Theater Training, Harvard University/Moscow Art Theater and the American Repertory Theater. A former Assistant Professor of Drama and professional actor and director, Tommy has acted and directed over 200 theater productions with such notable artists as Tennessee Williams in a revival of Eccentricities of a Nightingale (1977), and Michael Douglas, actor/producer and two time Oscar award winner for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Wall Street.
Tommy is founder, charter member, and was first 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), and 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 founded the Alexander Technique Association of New England (ATA) in 1982 and the Frank Pierce Jones Archives and the F. Matthias Alexander Archives. He served as Director of ATA for 6 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 work, Tai Chi, and theater to Alexander and theater journals, periodicals, martial arts journals, and newsletters. Tommy is currently at work on a new book, An Awakened Life: Evolution of a Teacher and a revised edition of Touching Presence, currently translated in Japanese and French with Spanish and Korean translations in-progress.
In 2016, along with Debi Adams and Bob Lada, his two principal teaching assistants in his teacher training course in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Tommy founded In the Company of Support, an Annual Summer Retreat for advanced study in the Alexander work for teachers, trainees and the general public. Each summer, teachers and guest presenters from the Alexander community and in the Arts, Humanities and Science, world-wide are invited to teach and participate.
At the onset of the Covid Pandemic, Tommy launched The Gift Of Our Understanding a series of online Zoom classes based on this 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 for recovering the person you actually are, or might be, rather than the person you think you need to be or should be. Tommy continues to teach privately, and in person one-on-one, and he continues traveling and teaching in a variety of countries.
