Who is Thérèse Bertherat ?

Physiotherapist Thérèse Bertherat is the creator of anti-gymnastique^® and the author of the best-seller The Body Has Its Reasons. Dissatisfied by the dryness and inflexibility of her physiotherapy studies, about which she writes, “we were studying the body one muscle at a time, one bone at the time, but never the body as a whole, always in separate pieces, and it was the same approach for the treatments”, she became interested in other therapeutic modalities. Her meeting with physiotherapist Françoise Mézières was pivotal. Françoise Mézières developed a revolutionary concept of human anatomy and viewed the body as a whole, with interacting parts. Thérèse Bertherat trained as a Mézières physiotherapist and then went beyond, conducting her own research. She investigated other body therapies, including bioenergy, Eutonia, Rolfing, Gestalt therapy, acupuncture, and the concepts of Chinese medicine, which complemented her knowledge of psychoanalysis masters such as Freund, Jung and Wilhelm Reich. But more importantly, she worked with her patients, slowly refining her anti-gymnastique^® method and making it available worldwide by training practitioners.