About Me

Meet SARAH BARKER

Sarah Barker has a passion for teaching people how to develop and practice the mind/body connection: to listen to one’s body, live fully with awareness and sensitivity in one’s body and to respond to life and its challenges with creativity and freedom. For 45 years she has been doing just that, all over the world.

Author

Sarah is an internationally known expert in the Alexander Technique. Her book, The Alexander Technique, translated into French, Japanese, Portuguese, Italian, and German, has sold world-wide for forty years. She has delivered hundreds of workshops, demonstrations and panels on the Alexander Technique throughout the United States and in Japan, Germany, the UK, Canada, Portugal, and Switzerland.

Professor

Since 1974 Sarah has been a professor of acting, a theatre movement specialist and an Alexander Technique teacher. She studied more than forty somatic systems for unlocking the freedom and ability that comes with mind/body unity. She was Director for two graduate degree programs for actors where she applied her special system of psycho-physical approaches to acting and other performing arts.

Her Life’s Work

When she began to study acting at Southern Methodist University Sarah Barker was introduced to the Alexander Technique and the Human Potential Movement. Working with Marjorie Barstow, she knew she had discovered a thread that would stitch all of her studies together into a unified approach. The revolutionary idea that one could use conscious awareness and intention to change one’s whole experience of life and art became the basis of her career. Her life’s work has been to help others realize their potential through these techniques.

Traumatic Brain Injury

In September 2015 Sarah suffered traumatic brain injury, a subdural hematoma and a subsequent craniotomy. She credits her years of somatic education with her miraculous recovery. Through patience and persistence, day by day, month by month, she drew on the tools of mind/body transformation to recover far beyond what was reasonably expected. The process of recovery illuminated her understanding of the power of the Alexander Technique and other psycho-physical techniques to heal the nervous system, recover physical coordination, and relieve post-traumatic stress.

Her Teaching

She understands the inner obstacles one encounters with traumatic injury and how to work with the impulses, reflexes and patterns beyond direct conscious awareness and control, deep in the nervous system. With this knowledge, Sarah helps her students discover their own inner abilities and the power to change their quality of moving and living.

Coaching Available

Columbia, SC: Private Coaching sessions with Alexander Technique and Gyrotonic Expansion System are available. Please use the contact form to request a time.