Alexandra Hamer, LMBT

Alex has been practising Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork in Durham, NC since 1995 and was on staff as a Massage Therapist at SAS Institute, Cary, NC working primarily with employees referred for massage by prescription from their physicians from 1996 until the 2020 pandemic.

She is licensed in North Carolina as a Massage and Bodywork Therapist (NC #83), is Board Certified by the National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork, and is an active professional member of the Associated Bodywork and Massage Professionals.

Alex is a graduate of the Carolina School of Massage Therapy. She developed the Sports Massage program and was the lead Sports Massage instructor for the Medical Arts Massage School in Raleigh, NC from 1996 through 1999. She was an assistant instructor for the Orthopedic Massage Education and Research Institute (OMERI) national Orthopedic Massage Certification program from 1999 through 2003, and has assisted Tom Myers in a few Anatomy Trains classes.

Training & Certifications

Alex has advanced training in clinical Sports Massage for the treatment of pain and soft-tissue complaints, and is certified in Orthopedic Massage by OMERI. She has trained in the Travell and Simons' method of Trigger Point Therapy, completing the Advanced Myofascial Pain courses with Dr. Robert Gerwin and Dr. Jan Dommerholt at the Pain and Rehabilitation Medicine Clinic in Bethesda, MD. She has also trained in NMT (neuromuscular therapy) with Judith Walker Delaney; CORE myofascial therapy with George Kousaleos; Esoteric Healing with Dr. Tom Shaver, D.O.; Reflexology with Claire Marie Miller; CranioSacral Therapy with the Upledger Institute; Reiki with Ann Ehringhaus; Anatomy Trains with Tom Myers; and in 2008 she completed a 550-hour certification training in KMI Structural Integration (now ATSI) with Tom Myers.

More recent studies include: Scarwork with Sharon Wheeler; Nerve Mobilization classes with Kirstin Schumaker and Jon Martine; Structural-Visceral work with Bruce Schonfeld; Visceral Manipulation with the Barral Institute; osteopathic approaches to ribs, diaphragm, pelvis, and knees with Ron Murray D.O.; and Anatomy Trains myofascial gait work with James Earls.

Editing for Massage & Bodywork publications

Alex edited publications for Orthopedic Massage Education and Research Institute, including the Orthopedic & Sports Massage Reviews and Whitney Lowe's second book, Orthopedic Assessment in Massage Therapy. She was editorial assistant for Lowe's previous book, Orthopedic Massage Theory and Technique. She designed curricula and wrote comprehensive Sports Massage manuals for students and instructors in the Sports Massage program at the Medical Arts Massage School. She provided specialized editorial reviews for the American Massage Therapy Association's continuing education courses both online and in Massage Therapy Journal. She also edited Deep: Massage Therapy Review for Bob King, former owner of the Chicago School of Massage Therapy, at the Cortiva Institute; provided consulting on articles for Massage Magazine; and reviewed manuscript proposals on the subject of massage and bodywork for Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins and Elsevier publishers. Alex also delivered in-depth editing of numerous articles for the International Association of Structural Integrators (IASI) 2014 and 2015 yearbooks.

Other Interests

Alex has an MA in Social Anthropology from Cambridge University, England. She is fascinated with anatomy and loves to draw, paint and study human beings. After graduation she worked in the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and then as a motorcycle mechanic in Cambridge, helping a friend who raced Norton Commandos, and spent a few years riding Triumphs and Ducatis around the English countryside. She did a foundation year at art school in south Wales and then came stateside and ran her own sign-painting business for eight years in Durham, NC in the '80s. She worked for a year at SAS Institute doing set design for the video department, and was then employed for five years in Research Triangle Park, NC and Los Gatos, CA as a computer graphics artist to develop real-time, high-end 3-D graphics for flight simulation training with applications in the defense industry. She then returned to North Carolina to train as a bodyworker in 1994. She has studied martial arts since 1980 (karate, kung-fu, modern arnis, tai chi) and for the last 30 years has practised the non-violent art of Aikido which enhances and informs her bodywork practice.