resident Faculty

Tommy Thompson – Founder, Director, Principle Teacher (ATI Sponsor)
Debi Adams – Senior Faculty ( ATI Sponsor)
Bob Lada – Senior Faculty (ATI Sponsor)
Jamee Culbertson – Senior Faculty (ATI Sponsor)
Andrea Matthews – Adjunct Faculty of Anatomy
Rosa-Luisa Rossi – Adjunct Faculty (ATI Sponsor)
David Gorman – Guest Teacher of Functional Anatomy (ATI Sponsor)
Aline Newton – Guest Teacher of Anatomy
David Griesemer – Guest Speaker and Consultant of Neurology

Debi Adams, Co-Director, Principal Teacher

Debi is a Certified Teacher of the Alexander Technique having received her certificates from Tommy Thompson and from Alexander Technique International. She is also a Nationally Certified Teacher of Piano.

Debi holds a Master of Music Degree in Piano Performance from Boston University. She currently teaches the Technique at The Boston Conservatory and the Alexander Technique Center at Cambridge, maintains a private practice in piano and the Alexander Technique and performs in the Boston area. She has taught workshops throughout the USA and in the Czech Republic. See her workshop website www.thewelltemperedpianist.com .

Her latest project is the Alexander Technique Teacher-Training Course at The Boston Conservatorywhich begin in September 2012. This is a new Alexander Technique Teacher Certificate Program. Participants who complete this program have the option of joining Alexander Technique International(ATI) as a Teaching Member and becoming eligible to receive ATI’s professional certification.

Debi’s interest in the work stems from her own experience recovering from hand injury. The Alexander work was last in a long line of investigations toward healing. It was the only discipline that sufficiently addressed her needs. She feels a responsibility to share this important work with others.

For more info about Debi, visit: http://debiadamsat.com/

Bob Lada, Co-Director, Principal Teacher

Bob is a Certified Teacher of the Alexander Technique having received his certificates from Tommy Thompson and from Alexander Technique International.

Bob teaches at Berklee College of Music, the Alexander Technique Center of Cambridge, Chesapeake Bay Alexander Studies in Greensboro, NC, American Repertory Theater and Harvard Extension School as well as in private practice in Cambridge for regular students and teacher-trainees.. He has taught workshops throughout the USA and Europe and is a charter member of Alexander Technique International.

Bob’s background is in athletics and analytics and he looks as the Technique as a tremendous aid in getting out of one’s way in performance situations so that creativity and skill can come through.

For more info about Bob, visit: http://www.rllalex.com/

Jamee Culbertson, Adjunct Faculty

Jamee Culbertson received her Certificate of Training at the Alexander Technique Center at Cambridge, MA, USA, in 1992 with Tommy Thompson, Director. Jamee is internationally certified with ATI, (Alexander Technique International). She has served as Chair on the Board of ATI from 1998 to 2002 and other committees since.

Jamee is also a Certified Universal Healing Tao Instructor teaching Tai Chi, Chi Kung and Meditation techniques. She is a senior instructor at the Boston Healing Tao. Jamee’s popular workshop entitled ‘The Posture of Consciousness’ merges Alexander Technique principles with Iron Shirt Chi Kung standing postures as a means whereby event for expanding awareness. Jamee teaches the Alexander Technique in the United States, Canada and in Southeast Asia.

For more info about Jamee, visit: http://www.jameec.com/

David Gorman, Guest Teacher

David Gorman has a background as an artist and a fascination with exploring human structure and function. In the mid-70s he spent many nights dissecting in the lab and drawing furiously. In 1980 he published an illustrated 600-page work, The Body Moveable and a collection of articles and essays, Looking at Ourselves in 1996.

He studied the Alexander Technique since 1972 and taught that work from 1980-1997 becoming well-known worldwide for his innovations to the work. He has been invited to teach all over the world in universities, conservatories and training colleges, at conferences and symposia, and with performance groups and health professionals.

In 1982, his teaching was revolutionized by his discovery of a new model of human organization with its profound implications of our in-built and natural tendency toward balance, ease and wholeness. He extended these insights into a new way of training teachers of the Alexander Technique and from 1988 to 1997 in London, UK he trained 45 teachers, assisted by Ann Penistan.

However, further explorations in his own and other training groups made it clear that a great part of our problems lay not in the ‘body’ but in our consciousness and way of seeing things — our underlying belief systems and how we misinterpret our daily experiences and then react to these misunderstandings. Recognizing the need for a new approach to help people uncover and liberate themselves from these circular traps, David developed the LearningMethods work to teach people how to gain command of their exquisite in-built clarity of perception and powerful tools of intelligence so they can successfully navigate their lives.

Since the beginning of the work in 1997, David has completed the training of a growing number of LearningMethods Teachers, many of whom are now teaching the LM work in universities and conservatories, and continues to evolve the Apprenticeship Teacher Training Program. He continues to give workshops in Europe, North America and Asia including at various Alexander Technique training courses as well as writing about the work and raising another young son.

For more info about David, visit: http://www.learningmethods.com/

Aline Newton, Rolfer and Anatomy Faculty

Aline Newton is an Advanced Certified Rolfer, in private practice in Cambridge, Massachusetts for over 20 years. She served for many years as Chair of the Board of Directors of the International Rolf Institute. She has also been on the faculty of the Foundations Program of the Rolf Institute. She holds her BA from Johns Hopkins University and her MA in Education from the University of Toronto.

In addition to her Rolfing studies, Aline has many years of experience with body-oriented approaches to psychotherapy as well as meditation. She also has studied cranio-sacral manipulation, visceral manipulation and energetic osteopathic techniques.

Aline integrates the insights of yoga, Tai Chi and Pilates into her approach to Rolfing, bringing movement principles to structural manipulation. Her interest in movement has led her to explore various paths from yoga to tango to basketball. Since 1990 she has studied extensively with Hubert Godard, dancer, Rolfer and movement educator, and assisted him in many workshops.

She has written and published many articles on aspects of movement, biomechanics and psychodynamics. In 2005, Aline developed the Physical Intelligence Program at MIT with the coach of MIT’s gymnastics team. More recently she has been invited to consult with companies such as IDEO and to teach experiential anatomy workshops at Boston Conservatory and for yoga teacher training programs. Aline’s research and writing interests span the range from the effect of touch on the brain to the parallels between Buddhist thought and the perspective of Rolfing.

In her free time she studies music, and has recently co-authored Knowing the Trees of Cambridge.

http://alinenewton.com/

David Griesemer, MD 

David Griesemer is a Board-certified pediatric neurologist at Levine Children's Hospital in Charlotte, NC. A 1976 graduate of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, he did further training in Pediatrics at Johns Hopkins and in Neurology at the University of Michigan. He has served in clinical, teaching, research, and leadership positions at the University of Arizona, the Medical University of South Carolina, Tufts University / Floating Hospital for Children, and now the Carolinas Healthcare System. Dr. Griesemer has published extensively in the medical literature, especially concerning epilepsy and neurologic disorders affecting the developing child. Active areas of interest include concussion and brain injury, seizures and movement disorders, as well as disorders of cognition and behavior. He also has an interest in functional medicine and in healing strategies beyond pharmaceuticals and surgery. David joins us this summer and will share his experiences in neuroscience as they relate to free will.