About Lisa Clarke
Lisa Clarke came to Alexander Technique early in life, well before qualifying in the field as a teacher over 12 years ago. She first had lessons as a teenager, and loved the feeling of lightness the lessons gave her. She also saw how being better coordinated would improve the balance and coordination of the horses she rode.
When she moved to Bristol and began working as a Dance Movement Therapist with people with severe learning difficulties, she was amazed to discover that practising the Alexander Technique helped her to deal with the stress and emotional challenges of the job as well as the more physical side of it.
She joined BATTSA (Bristol Alexander Technique Training School Association) in September 1996, qualifying as an Alexander Technique teacher in July 2000. She has been teaching Alexander Technique to individuals, groups and in private schools ever since. She is a full teaching member of STAT (The Society of Teachers of the Alexander Technique).
Lisa was one of the teachers who taught on the highly successful trial run by the Universities of Bristol and Southampton, looking into whether the Alexander Technique could help people with chronic long term back pain. The results were published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) in 2008. It showed that participants who had suffered on average 21 days pain per month saw that reduce to just 3 after 24 Alexander Technique lessons. Benefits were maintained a year after finishing the trial. To read the whole paper click here.
She finds that practising the Alexander Technique brings an added level of awareness, pleasure, poise, space and equilibrium to all she does, as well as an ongoing sense of curiosity as it both poses and helps answer many questions. She has personally carried it with her through pregnancy, childbirth and parenting, to running, skiing, yoga, singing and presentation skills, and this is in turn helps the people she teaches as the process comes full circle. Looking forward, her own practice of Alexander Technique helps improve and expand her own teaching skills in fulfilment of a holistic and beneficial cycle.
"I love the Alexander Technique. It has corrected my posture, improved my health and changed my life."
Alec McCowen CBE,
actor