The Sapientia Initiative

The Sapientia Initiative

Breathing and moving well is a birthright, not a luxury; nor is it an activity of the body alone. All our thoughts, feelings, intentions and responses play a crucial role in the ongoing dynamics of upright support—dynamics upon which every breath and movement depend. Learn more about the Alexander Technique >

All are welcome.

Read our welcome salvo >

Sapientia Initiative is a 501c3 organization, dedicated to lifetime learning in the Alexander Technique. We are committed to the ongoing process of deepening, understanding, and enacting inclusion. All are welcome. Our main center, based in the Flatiron district of New York City, is a place of community-building, growth and learning.

RIAT Teacher Training

The flagship program of Sapientia Initiative— the Riverside Initiative for the Alexander Technique, is dedicated to intensive personal study of the technique in a group setting. It offers a high teacher student ratio (at least 1:5) and a path to teacher certification through the American Society for the Alexander Technique.

We currently offer:
• Matriculation: in an AmSAT-certified, 1600-hour Teacher Certification Program, ideally completed in a minimum of 3 years.
• Non-matriculation: daily, weekly, or monthly periods of intensive study as a participant on the course.

The Alexander Technique 

The Alexander Technique effectively undoes fixed habits that interfere with how we breathe, move, and support ourselves. To be increasingly freed from fixed habits, is to be simultaneously freed from nonconstructive physical, mental, and emotional reactions to stimuli. Simply and practically, the Technique helps us breathe more easily, discover our innate capacity for efficiency in the activities of living, and become more of who we are and who we yet might be in the world.

To learn the Technique is to learn how to participate effectively in our natural processes of support, well-being, and becoming. With practice, reliable sensory perceptions are regained, unhelpful thoughts and intentions are re-educated, misdirected energies are made more coherent, and the ability to realize our innate potential becomes a reality.

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Photography by Alexander Sargent, Nanette Walsh & others.
Used with permission.
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