Who is Thérèse Bertherat ?

Thérèse Bertherat, the creator of Anti-gymnastique^®, was born in Lyon, France in 1931. After a difficult childhood, she was widowed at 36 years old with two children aged 4 and 6 years old. Her husband, a bright and intelligent man destined to a brilliant career in psychiatry, was murdered by one of his patients at the age of 35.
« Events like these generate a huge discharge of adrenalin. One must decide whether to live or to die » relates Thérèse Bertherat. She chose to live. Soon after, she met Suze L. who was teaching a form of exercise using balls. Gentle, simple, and original movements. Enthused by this discovery, she decided to pursue a degree in physiotherapy but the dryness of the teaching was very disappointing. “ We were studying the body one muscle at a time, one bone at the time, but never as a whole. Always in separate pieces, and the same thing with the treatments. ” It was then that she met Françoise Mézières, a physiotherapist who had developed a revolutionary vision of human anatomy. Mézières viewed the body as a whole, each part interacting with the other parts. Thérèse Bertherat became trained as a Mézières physiotherapist but went beyond Mézières’ work with own research. She investigated other bodywork methods such as bioenergy healing, Eutony, rolfing, gestalt, acupuncture, and the principles of Chinese medicine; these methods complemented her knowledge of the major psychoanalysts, from Freud to Jung and Wilhelm Reich. But more importantly, she worked with her patients and slowly developed her method, Anti-gymnastique^®. Today Thérèse Bertherat devotes herself to the training of new practitioners worldwide.