Junko Nakashiro

Junko Nakashiro is a certified Alexander Technique teacher (ATI) and ATI Sponsor based in Japan, with a practice spanning Tokyo, Nara, and Osaka. Her path to the Technique is inseparable from her life as a dancer — and from a back injury that threatened to end it.

Nakashiro began studying dance in 1980. By the mid-1980s, chronic back pain had made it impossible to continue. In 1987, she began studying bodywork with Eiji Tanimura, exploring movement awareness and body use as a path back to health. In 1989, she encountered the Alexander Technique and began private lessons. The Technique resolved her back pain and allowed her to return to dance — but more than that, it ignited a deep curiosity about its underlying principles.

In 1991, she began formal Alexander Technique teacher training under Ezekiel Einschein, graduating in 1997 and receiving her teaching certification. She has since participated in the International Alexander Technique Congress from 1994 to 2011, where she built lasting connections with teachers worldwide. At the Congress, she met Rika Cohen, with whom she began studying in 2005.

Today, Nakashiro teaches private lessons in Tokyo, Osaka, and Nara, and serves as a training course teacher at the Japan Alexander Technique Research Institute, directed by Eiji Tanimura. Her teaching is rooted in the lived experience of injury, recovery, and the rediscovery of ease — making her an especially resonant guide for performing artists navigating their own physical challenges.