Who Are We?
We are all qualified teachers of the Alexander Technique, each of us having completed a three-year, full-time training in this discipline. Nica, Joe & Colin trained in London (at slightly different times) with Walter & Dilys Carrington. Belen and Nuria trained in Amsterdam with Paul Versteeg & Tessa Marwick. Between us we have over 120 years of teaching experience!
Over the last seven years we have also all trained with New York-based teacher Jessica Wolf in her “Art of Breathing”. We continue to work with Jessica whenever possible – ideally face to face, but in 2020 and 2021 that work has, by necessity, been online via Zoom.
Colin Beattie
Colin has been teaching Alexander Technique, specialising in its application to swimming, since 2001 in London and Belfast. Jessica’s work has given him new vitality, confidence, postural support and freedom and pleasure in movement and he’s been delighted to discover that these benefits are also being passed on to his students.
Belén Cobos
I fell in love with Jessica’s work in 2011 when I joined her workshop at the Alexander Congress in Lugano, Switzerland. One of the “love-at-first-sight” signs was Jessica’s coherence: what she was teaching was perfectly integrated in the way she used herself and her voice: her breathing seemed so fully present and yet effortless. After all these years of exploration and deepening in the Art of Breathing, I have finally understood that the less one interferes with the innate wisdom of the diaphragm, the fuller and freer the movement of your breathing becomes. Because breathing is movement and movement is life!
Belén lives and works in Granada, Spain
Nica Gimeno
When I met Jessica I had been teaching full time for 24 years and running the first teacher training school in Spain for 10 years.
My interest in breathing is crucial to my health and well-being, due to a respiratory deficiency that I acquired in early childhood due to my bronchial sensitivity.
I read a book that named Jessica Wolf and her work “The Art of Breathing”.
I was very interested in what I read about her and I was encouraged to contact her. She agreed to come to Barcelona to work with me and my students in training and I found a ‘teacher’ in capital letters, a kind human being and a friend for life. This is where my second wave of somatic change begins, greater integration of my breathing and AT. Since then, and with the continued work with Jessica, my breathing capacity has improved a lot and this makes my life fuller, safer and more enjoyable.
My interest in breathing is crucial to my health and well-being, due to a respiratory deficiency that I acquired in early childhood due to my bronchial sensitivity.
I read a book that named Jessica Wolf and her work “The Art of Breathing”.
I was very interested in what I read about her and I was encouraged to contact her. She agreed to come to Barcelona to work with me and my students in training and I found a ‘teacher’ in capital letters, a kind human being and a friend for life. This is where my second wave of somatic change begins, greater integration of my breathing and AT. Since then, and with the continued work with Jessica, my breathing capacity has improved a lot and this makes my life fuller, safer and more enjoyable.
Nica lives and works in Barcelona
Joe Searby
I had been teaching the Alexander Technique for over 20 years when I discovered Jessica’s work. For me it is the missing piece of the jigsaw. All through our lessons, our training and our teaching as Alexander teachers we talk about breathing, we read about breathing, we study the anatomy of breathing. We learn ‘how to breathe’ and we practice breathing games and ‘exercises’. But, when I finally came across Jessica’s Art of Breathing I realised I had never really understood or practised full, unhindered breathing the way Alexander talked about it and the way breathing is meant to be.
I find this work as exciting as I found the Alexander Technique when I first had lessons in 1983. It is truly life-changing in the most profound way.
Joe lives in Oxfordshire and works there and in London
Nuria Vera
I feel very fortunate that my wish to understand more about human functioning has brought me to Jessica Wolf and her Art of Breathing. Her work has given me a new kinaesthetic awareness of my breathing system and it is very comforting to feel the continuous and harmonious movement of my whole torso as the air flows in and out.
I completed Jessica’s postgraduate training in 2018. Since then I have been applying her method in my classes and I consider free and full breathing to be essential in helping people to improve their well-being.
I want to continue exploring, learning and growing. My passion is to help those who wish to do the same.
Nuria lives and works in Murcia
Jessica Wolf’s Art of Breathing is the most profound and effective breath work we have found. It is of fundamental importance to future human well-being.
Combining two disciplines
The Alexander Technique and Jessica Wolf’s Art of Breathing are not mutually exclusive, but more like two sides of the same coin. It is not possible to teach Jessica’s work without already being a properly-qualified Alexander teacher, and we would say that a thorough knowledge of Jessica’s Art of Breathing has enabled us to become much better and more effective Alexander teachers.
Breath is life
and if you breathe well you will live long on Earth