About Tara Sullivan Alexander Technique Teacher NZ NYC NJ

About Tara Sullivan

Tara Sullivan has recently relocated to Berkeley, California from New York City via three years in New Zealand. Tara was an Adjunct Professor of Music (Voice) at Long Island University’s C.W. Post Campus, a position she was fortunate enough to be able to create, where she taught the Alexander Technique as an integrated part of the Music curriculum. In addition to her university teaching, she has maintained a busy private teaching practice in midtown Manhattan made up primarily of musicians and performers – a diverse group including many opera singers, Broadway cast members, and even circus performers – but also the other habitués of Midtown Manhattan – lawyers, doctors, bankers and office workers of all sorts.

Tara is a soprano and prior to her Alexander teaching life she sang professionally in and around New York City, performing opera, oratorio, art song and sacred music. Her introduction to the Alexander Technique as a singing student revealed the extent to which her habits were interfering with the ability to express herself freely through music - it became clear that learning not to ‘do’ but to ‘undo’ was necessary, a pursuit which she is both happily continuing and delightedly sharing with her students. She has also studied Trumpet with Peter Holsberg in New York and has recently been learning to play the 10-button accordion she inherited from her grandfather.

She received her professional certification from The American Center for the Alexander Technique (ACAT) in New York, the oldest such institution in North America, and also holds a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York. Tara is Associate Editor of the ACAT News, the organization's semi-annual publication, and serves on The American Society for the Alexander Technique’s Professional Conduct Committee. Since 2002 she has been the U.S. workshop coordinator for Peter Grunwald, with whom she has worked extensively and whose work first brought her to New Zealand. Tara has assisted Peter Grunwald in many writing endeavours including both editions of his book, Eyebody: The Art of Integrating Eye, Brain and Body, the second edition of which was recently published (2008).

Tara has been a guest teacher at various institutions and organizations including Columbia University, the Eastman School of Music, Auckland Philharmonia Summer School, and the 19^th Ward Community Association.

A Yoga enthusiast, Tara is a certified Jivamukti Yoga teacher as well as a graduate of the teacher training at Samadhi Yoga in Sydney. She has taught Yoga at The Yoga Ground in Auckland and at Common Circle Education in Berkeley. In 2008 and 2009 she travelled to Woodstock, NY, to attend the month-long Wild Woodstock Intensive with Jivamukti Yoga co-founders Sharon Gannon and David Life. She integrates the Alexander Technique principles into her Yoga teaching and enjoys the synergy doing so creates.

Her work overall, both personally and professionally, centers around creative, expressive and intentional processes. She has a private teaching practice in Berkeley and continues to teach in New York when time and travel permit.