Tommy Thompson
Practicing and Teaching the Alexander Work
I appreciate the opportunity to share my approach to teaching the work with all of you. The following description is what I will offer as part of the Continuous Learning workshops:
PRACTICING AND TEACHING THE ALEXANDER WORK
WITHOUT LOSING TOUCH WITH THE WORLD AROUND YOU
Alexander's teaching is predicated upon self referral and self monitoring without narrowing one's field of attention, to include not just what you do, but how you use yourself to do what you do.
Throughout my 32 years of teaching, I have looked for what has always been organic to our design and I have found "self referring" to be a natural, indispensable and organic sensibility that is inherent to our design. We do not have to work hard at restoring optimal primary control to augment our experience of life-- we need only acknowledge it. However, without conscious monitoring of our response in both mundane and extreme circumstances, we often tend to react to having an experience, and neglect the experience that we're actually having. Thus, we know what we feel and think in reaction, but we might not really know what we actually feel and think, having not allowed the experience to inform us. but instead letting the reaction to our experience inform us.
As part of the Continuous Learning workshops at the congress, I would like to explore habitual and non-habitual aspects of 'self referring.' In doing so, we will apply practical, organic ways of using key components of Alexander's teaching, including kinesthesia, inhibition, and direction, use of our hands, specific aspects of table work, and working with people in situational activities.
When 'self referring' is viewed as organic to the system, and the 'self' referred to is inclusive of the larger, ever changing landscape of experience, apart from personal desire, then it is a mysterious delight to have deeper aspects of ones self unveiled and available in all relationships.
Thus, this workshop will focus on using the principles and concepts which form the basis for the Alexander teaching, to foster and enhance meaningful relationships -- with everything and everyone. The participants will work individually, in pairs and in groups to explore this theme.
Prior to the workshop each participant is encouraged to think about relationships in their life, about those that have proved to be unsatisfying and complicated, and those, which have always been easy and engaging. This kind of thinking, prior to participation in the workshop will increase the possibilities and scope of each participants learning experience.
Tommy Thompson is Co-founder, charter member and past Chair of Alexander Technique International (ATI), and a former Assistant Professor of Drama and Managing Director of Tufts Arena Theatre at Tufts University. Tommy has lectured and given over three hundred workshops for Alexander teachers and students in the United States, England, France, Switzerland, Germany, Canada, and Italy on the Alexander Technique.
Tommy has taught on teacher-training courses for over twenty trainings world-wide. He presented papers at both the First and Second International Congresses for Alexander Teachers and was one of the Second Generation Teachers invited to give master classes at the Third International Congress in Switzerland in August of 1991.
Co-author of Scientific and Humanistic Contributions of Frank Pierce Jones, Tommy has contributed numerous papers on the Alexander Technique, theatre, and the martial arts to Alexander journals, periodicals and newsletters.
In 1982, Tommy co-founded Alexander Technique Association of New England, the Frank Pierce Jones Archives, and the F. Matthias Alexander Archives, housed in the Wessell Library at Tufts University. He was the organization's director for six years.
Prior to teaching the Alexander Technique beginning in 1961, Tommy was involved in over two hundred theatre productions as a professional and university actor and director, working with notable theatre artists including film actor/producer Michael Douglas, playwright Tennessee Williams, Polish director Jerzi Grotowski, and Yugoslavian director Georgi Paro.
For the past thirty-two years, Tommy has taught the Technique on a weekly basis to professional and Olympic athletes, dressage riders, scientists, educators, physicians, musicians, dancers, actors, and children. Since 1983, Tommy has directed an Alexander Teacher Training School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, co-founded by Tommy and his late wife Julie Ince Thompson. He is now assisted in teaching by Debi Adams and Bob Lada, with adjunct faculty Andrea Matthews, Jamee Culbertson, and Rosa Luisa Rossi.
Details about Tommy's training course can be found on his website: easeofbeing.com and he can be contacted through his training website Tommy @atcambridge.com.
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