Venue: Balam Balam Place
15 Phoenix Street,
Brunswick, Victoria 3056
AUSTAT Conference 2026:
Day 1: Friday 16 October (5pm – 9pm)
Day 2: Saturday 17 October (9am – 5pm)
Conference Dinner (optional): Saturday 17 October (6.30pm – 10pm)
Day 3: Sunday October 18 (9am – 5pm)
Date: Saturday 17 October, 2026
Time: 1:30pm to 5pm
Price: $80
Session 1: Come & Try the Alexander Technique
with Cathy Dowden
1:30pm to 3:00pm
This gentle, hands-on workshop offers an introduction to a practical method for improving comfort, coordination and wellbeing in everyday life.
Through simple guided activities, you’ll discover how reducing unnecessary tension can help you move more freely, breathe more easily, and feel steadier and more balanced. You’ll explore practical skills that can be applied to sitting, standing, walking, lifting and other daily activities, and leave with a simple strategy to continue using at home.
Suitable for all ages, mobility levels and experience, this workshop is ideal for anyone new to the Alexander Technique or wanting a refresher.
Tea Break: Afternoon tea (included in price)
Session 2: Exploring Alexander Technique & Vision
with Michael Avery
3:30pm to 5:00pm
We welcome the General Public to participate with us!
Full Conference Ticket price includes a light dinner on Friday night and lunch on Saturday and Sunday.
The Saturday night dinner is an extra option which we encourage all conference participants to attend. This year it will be held at the Edinburgh Castle Hotel. Have a look at their website to get a feel for this fun venue with excellent food and wine.
Lynne Conway
Begin the day by stepping into movement. This gentle tai chi class explores the shared territory between tai chi and the Alexander Technique: natural coordination, effortless balance, and movement initiated from a deep, responsive centre. Through a sequence of simple, accessible tai chi forms, we will cultivate an alert, calm state of presence, allowing the body to organise itself with greater coordination and flow. Rather than focusing on perfect form, we will emphasise the experience of moving from a more integrated whole.
No previous tai chi experience is necessary. Come as you are, and leave feeling ready to engage with the learning, conversations, and discoveries ahead.
Anne Carroll
Using a slow, mindful movement exploration, Functional Anatomy and discussion you will be guided to explore the spiralling connections of fascial and muscular pathways, which connect the body to its natural, fluid movement potential.
From infancy these patterns are central to organising progress from turning, rolling, crawling, sitting and eventually walking and running. Over a lifetime this capacity may become diminished or lost, reducing ease and freedom in everyday life. This workshop seeks to illuminate and improve this vital capacity.
Anne Carroll is currently in the final year of Feldenkrais Practitioner training and is an authorised teacher of Awareness Through Movement. This workshop will draw on this training as well as her Alexander Technique training to provide a space for inquiry and exploration.
Karen Anderson
This workshop offers a playful and practical window into Karen's group teaching process — including the discoveries that continue to emerge from her ongoing work with performing artists.
Karen Anderson maintains an active Alexander Technique practice across performing arts institutions, group classes, intensive workshops, and private teaching.
Bronwyn Munro
Active inference is an evolving neuroscientific framework that provides a unified theory of the mind, brain and behaviour. It states that we use prediction to perceive the world and to guide action – we are prediction machines. In this workshop I will provide an overview of active inference along with an opportunity to actively explore its relationship to teaching the Alexander Technique.
Penny McDonald
We are 4 footed animals and the power comes from our haunches. In this workshop we will look at how are arms are our front legs, and our hands are our front feet. We will explore using our arms in relation to our powerful back legs. It helps take the end-gaining out of what ever we are doing. Animals are always listening, freely breathing, present and spatially aware. Thinking of an animal as you work, garden, drive etc helps you function from a grounded and connected place.
Attending this workshop will require some homework beforehand, you need to have studied an animal, taking note of its rhythm, weight, breath, how it moves, if it is a pack animal, and how it stays tuned into the vibrations of the universe.
David Moore, Elke Rudolph and Caroline Blackshaw
The conference will also feature a panel discussion exploring the benefits and potential pitfalls of working with weights and weight training. The panel brings together a range of perspectives and experience: David Moore, who has extensive experience in Alexander Technique education and teacher training and is currently completing his Certificate 4 in Personal Training; Elke Rudolph, who integrates physiotherapy and Alexander work in her clinical practice; and Caroline Blackshaw, who combines Alexander Technique with strength training, yoga and movement-based fitness approaches. Together, the panel will discuss different perspectives and approaches to weight training and explore how Alexander Technique teachers can enhance a client’s experience of working with weights, making the process safer, more efficient, and more comfortable. The panel will also address common areas of conflict between Alexander Technique and historical methods of weight training.
Cathy Dowden
Curious about the Alexander Technique? This gentle, hands-on workshop offers an
introduction to a practical method for improving comfort, coordination and wellbeing in everyday life.
Through simple guided activities, you'll discover how reducing unnecessary tension can help you move more freely, breathe more easily, and feel steadier and more balanced. You'll explore practical skills that can be applied to sitting, standing, walking, lifting and other daily activities, and leave with a simple strategy to continue using at home.
Suitable for all ages, mobility levels and experience, this workshop is ideal for anyone new to the Alexander Technique or wanting a refresher.
Helene Goldberg and Penny McDonald
You know the Alexander Technique changes lives. This energising workshop is an invitation to explore how we share that with the people who would love to find it.Together, we'll look at the marketing habits that shape a teaching practice, appreciating what already serves us well and finding where there is room to refine. At the heart of it is something every teacher already has: genuine enthusiasm. We'll return to what the Technique first offered you (what changed, what clicked, what felt like a small miracle) and find the words to share that story with warmth and confidence.The Alexander Technique is one of the most profound methods available for living well, and it deserves to be spoken about with pride. When we do, more people discover it.We believe every Alexander Technique teacher can build a full-time practice. This workshop is our way of supporting you to make that happen.
Riccardo Pellizzeri
This workshop is a playful exploration of ‘mind blowing’ modern scientific facts and perspectives and how they can be applied to the Alexander Technique. Topics such as guided imagination, atomic mass, empty space and baseballs, three hundred theories of consciousness (and counting), cognitive updating, mindreading and the occasional challenge, such as, ‘How many AT teachers does it take to change a lightbulb? One to change the lightbulb and the rest thinking they wouldn’t do it that way.
Jenny Thirtle
Explorations of common problems in the Singer's world, with a light on "the whole system vs specific instruction".
Julianne Eveleigh
Breath is where Alexander Technique thinking meets doing — yet it's often gestured at rather than actually worked. This dynamic, experiential session gets teachers into the muscular reality of breath: what's really happening in the ribs, diaphragm, and deep postural muscles when breath is free rather than merely permitted.
Michael Stenning
What are Traditional Procedures about?
How can we start to approach the deep skills which a past generation of teachers had?
Supporting a vibrant community of teachers since 1985.
Promoting the benefits of the transformative Alexander Technique in Australia and Taiwan.
Can’t log into the Members’ Area? Click here for support.
