about elizabeth
Qualified and committed to teaching
- I'm Elizabeth Hurwitt. If you decide to pursue AT lessons with betterATbeing, I'll be your teacher.
- I completed my teacher training in a rigorous program certified by the American Society for Alexander Technique (AmSAT). I have been teaching since 2017 and took my first AT lessons in 1982.
- My teaching certification is a license and obligation to practice expert care, which begins with taking care of myself.
- I hope you'll read on, to learn a bit more about me. Because choosing the right person as your teacher will shape your experience of AT. You need a teacher who is right for you.
Born to care
- My parents were both physicians. Like them, I believe that our health, well-being and behavior are intricately connected. And improving other people's lives matters deeply to me, as it did to them.
- My parents taught me that listening closely was vitally important. In my AT work I listen to people with my hands as well as my ears.
My training
- I successfully completed the AmSAT-approved three-year teacher training (1600 hours of hands-on work) led by Tom Vasiliades, Director of Alexander Technique for Performance and Development.
- I have been pursuing post-graduate studies with Tom for the past 2 years and spent 4 years 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.
My work at betteratbeing is dedicated to carrying on this approach, conveyed from teacher to trainee, through John Nicholls' and Tom Vasiliades' work with Walter Carrington, and my years of study with Tom. I want to give students the benefit of this potent approach to AT.
Hands and words work together
My hands are what matter most in teaching Alexander Technique—and Tom has trained me to use my hands with great care. Every lesson is a new conversation between two nervous systems—my own and my pupil's. It has also proved useful that I have had a long professional life working with words. My first paying job was teaching creative writing to high-school students and I have been writing and editing ever since. My knack for coming up with the right words to describe our Alexander work is very helpful to my students. Together, hands and words can say more than either can communicate separately.
OTHER BACKGROUND
Like so many East-Coast dwellers, I'm originally from the West Coast, and grew up the San Francisco Bay Area. Orphaned at 16, I was fostered by kind neighbors, and soon went off to college at the University of California. From there I moved to NYC's Upper West Side, where I joined a church choir of trained singers and actors, who provided a new community and perspective on life. With beginner's enthusiasm and modest talent, I studied voice and Alexander Technique, while working in publishing houses and law firms, and writing for music magazines. I ultimately established a career as a performing arts administrator, helping to shape and sustain a few small but brilliant companies on New York's concert-giving scene. 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.