For the past 42 years, Tommy Thompson has taught the Alexander Technique to professional and Olympic athletes, dressage riders, scientists, physicians, corporate and university professionals, musicians, dancers, actors, children and the disabled. He has an active private teaching practice and has given well over 400 workshops for Alexander teachers, teacher trainees and the general public in 15 countries, and has served as special assistant to the 1976 Olympic USA Heavyweight Rowing Crew.
Tommy is founder and Director of the Alexander Technique Center at Cambridge, which in 2015, 2016 and 2017 was awarded
The Best of Cambridge in Alternative and Holistic Health. At the center, Tommy has been training Alexander teachers since 1983.
Tommy is also on the faculty at Harvard University where he teaches the Technique to graduate students enrolled in the Institute for Advanced Theater Training, Harvard University/Moscow Art Theater and the American Repertory Theater. A former Assistant Professor of Drama and Managing Director of Tufts Arena Theater at Tufts University, and Lecturer at Harvard University, Tommy has acted and directed over 200 theater productions, working, acting or directing with such notable artists as Jerzy Grotowski, actor/producer and two time Oscar winner, Michael Douglas, Jerry Turner (of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival), Georgi Paro (Dubrovnik), Robert E. Lee (Inherit the Wind) and with Tennessee Williams in a revival of Eccentricities of a Nightingale (1977). Tommy is co-founder, charter member, and was first Chair of Alexander Technique International (ATI). His contributions to ATI earned him the ATI Life Time Membership Award. He is also an Honorary Member of ATI France (ATIF), the Irish Society of Alexander Technique Teachers (ISATT), and a teaching member of the Japan Alexander Technique Association (JATA).
Tommy co-founded the Alexander Technique Association of New England (ATA) in 1982 and the Frank Pierce Jones Archives and the F. Matthias Alexander Archives, initially housed in the Wessell Library at Tufts University. He was ATA’s director for six years.
Tommy is co-author of Scientific and Humanistic Contributions of Frank Pierce Jones and has contributed numerous papers on the Alexander work, Tai Chi, and theater to Alexander and theater journals, periodicals, martial arts journals, and newsletters. Tommy has taught in over twenty teacher-training courses around the world, presented papers at both the First and Second International Congresses for Alexander Teachers, was one of the Second Generation Teachers invited to give master classes at the Third International Congress and has consistently given Continuous Learning classes at the congresses since their inception.
Tommy is currently completing a novel Just Like Always –in progress, while beginning a book on the Alexander work, Ease of Being: Perspectives on The Alexander Technique. Tommy along with co directors Debi Adams and Bob Lada both of whom have assisted Tommy in his teacher training course for 26 years, have inaugurated a new annual residential Alexander course In the Company of Support at Essex Woods in Essex, Massachusetts.