Lawrence Young

I am an AmSat certified teacher, completing my training in 1992. The American Society for the Alexander Technique (AmSAT) is the largest professional organization of teachers of the Alexander Technique in the United States. The requirements for teacher certification include the completion of 1, 600 hours of training over three years at an AmSAT-approved teacher training course. AmSAT teacher training courses maintain a five-to-one student/teacher ratio. Continuing education is a requirement for ongoing AmSAT membership. I came to study this technique thirty years ago to help improve my violin playing and singing, but much to my surprise, I quickly discovered that using it also greatly improved my mental attitude as well. After a lesson I found that my mind was clearer and that little things that had been bothering me no longer seemed important. After a lesson I felt like the person I really was had somehow emerged from underneath layers of my habitual muscular tensions. I wanted to feel like that more often and to share this extraordinary experience with others, so I trained to become a teacher. I have been fortunate to have studied with the late Marjorie Barstow, who was the first person to graduate from F.M. Alexander’s first teacher training program in 1933 as well as with numerous second generation teachers including Nelly Ben-Or, Mara Sokolsky, Bruce Fertman, Betsy Polatin, Jessica Wolf, Barbara Conable, and David Gorman. I hold a music degree from Dartmouth College and spent five years training to teach the Technique, studying at the Alexander Technique School of Philadelphia, with Tommy Thompson in Cambridge, and at the Alexander Institute of Boston. I am also a professional musician and have performed on violin and voice from Portland, Maine to San Francisco as well as on television and Public Radio International.