about elizabth

certification and commitment to teaching

I'm Elizabeth Hurwitt. I'm telling you about myself because choosing the right person as your teacher will shape how you experience AT. You need a teacher who is right for you.

My teaching practice, betterATbeing, is certified by the American Society for Alexander Technique (AmSAT). My AmSAT teaching certification is a license and obligation to practice expert care, which begins with taking care of myself.

born to care

I was born into a family of doctors. My mother was a public health pediatrician, and my father was a psychiatrist.

I grew up believing that paying close attention to people, to understand and help them, was the most important and interesting thing in the world. I still believe this.

my training

I completed the AmSAT-approved 3-year training (1600 hours) led by Tom Vasiliades, Director of Alexander Technique for Performance and Development.

I am currently pursuing post-graduate studies with Tom. 2019-20 was my fourth year assisting Tom in his in-person course at The Juilliard School Evening Division. My practice of AT is informed by Tom's post-graduate training with John Nicholls and Walter Carrington.

Walter Carrington's way

Walter Carrington is revered for preserving and communicating AT's principles, formed by its founder F.M. Alexander. Carrington's teaching reveals the postural muscles' engagement with the whole body's web of elastic, opposing pulls. It promotes a widening as well as a lengthening back, freeing the rib cage for deep and natural breathing. The teacher's inquiring, guiding touch speaks to the entire individual with each placement of the hands.

betteratbeing is dedicated to carrying on this approach, conveyed from teacher to trainee, through John Nichols' and Tom Vasiliades' work with Walter Carrington, and Elizabeth's work with Tom, to give students the benefit of this potent approach to AT.

hands and words work together

My very first job was teaching creative writing to high-school students, and I have been working with words ever since. Although my hands are paramount in teaching Alexander Technique—and Tom has trained me to use my hands with great care—my ability to conjure up the right words to describe our work is very helpful to my students. Every lesson is a new conversation between two nervous systems—my own and my pupil's. Together, hands and words can say more than either can communicate separately.

OTHER BACKGROUND

I come from the San Francisco Bay Area, and earned a BA in English Literature from UC Santa Cruz. I moved to NYC's Upper West Side, and joined a church choir full of trained singers and actors. As singing grew more important to me, I took voice lessons and studied AT with Pamela Anderson, while working in publishing, legal management and music journalism, until I became a performing arts executive. I have enjoyed helping to shape and sustain a few of the small but brilliant companies that add their own sparkle to New York's great concert-giving scene, especially New York Festival of Song. Today, in addition to teaching AT, I serve as Development Director of Copland House, a unique creative center for American music based in Aaron Copland's historic home in Cortlandt Manor, NY. I live in lower Manhattan with my husband Elliott Hurwitt, a music historian.