VisionX3 Conference Speakers
NOTE: Our conference is postponed due to the coronavirus. We will provide an update when this event has been rescheduled.
Keynote Speaker
Deborah Zelinsky
Deborah Zelinsky, OD, is an optometrist noted worldwide for her work in neuro-optometric rehabilitation. Currently, she serves as founder and executive research director of The Mind-Eye Institute, based in Northbrook, Illinois. Her global reputation is due, in part, to her discovery of the use of eyeglasses to alter sound location and subsequent development of the Z-Bell Test℠. The patented test allows Dr. Zelinsky and her team to prescribe lenses and use other optometric interventions that balance processing of central and peripheral eyesight, while synchronizing the integration between auditory and retinal sensory systems.
The Mind-Eye Institute was created with the objective to make new science discoveries pertaining to eyes more accessible to patients both domestically and globally. Dr. Zelinsky’s vision is to train other eyecare professionals on enhancement of retinal processing using her patented methods, with a short-term goal to have accredited doctors practicing in most major population centers globally.
The 20/20 eye testing standard is over 150 years old and does not consider the peripheral processing or auditory integration both of which are critical. Dr. Zelinsky is pioneering a campaign to “Leave 20/20 in the 20th Century” and shift into a more updated assessment protocol including moving targets and overall awareness of surroundings. Using brain mapping of the retina (which is comprised of brain tissue) the optometric profession can perform brain, rather than eye, examinations. Patients needing this updated testing include those who have been diagnosed with a brain that isn’t functioning at its full potential. This includes a wide range of issues, including genetic mutations, autism, attention problems such as ADHD, dyslexia, learning problems, concussions, and stroke among others.
In addition to her work with the Mind-Eye Institute, Dr. Zelinsky is a fellow in both the College of Optometrists in Vision Development and the Neuro-Optometric Rehabilitation Association. She is a board member of the Society for Brain Mapping and a community leader for the Society of Neuroscience.
Learn more about Deborah Zelinsky and the Mind-Eye Institute at https://mindeye.com.
Keynote Speaker
Richard Miller
Richard Miller, PhD, is a world-renowned spiritual teacher, author, yogic scholar, researcher and clinical psychologist, who has combined traditional yogic practice with Western psychology and neuroscience. He is the founder of iRest®, a meditation practice based on the ancient tradition of Yoga Nidra and adapted to suit the conditions of modern life.
Richard states: “When practiced regularly – a little and often – iRest enables you to meet each moment of your life with unshakable peace and wellbeing, no matter how challenging or difficult your situation.”
Richard is committed to bringing the healing benefits of iRest to all segments of the population. He founded the iRest Institute (originally named The Integrative Restoration Institute), an educational nonprofit that provides events, teacher trainings, and educational content based on the ancient teachings of Yoga Nidra but presented in a form made accessible for modern day living.
iRest is practiced and taught by thousands of people worldwide in a number of different organizations that support well-being. There are programs in yoga studios, community centers, clinics, schools, hospices, correctional facilities, and US military hospitals. Based on current studies with iRest in the military, the Defense Centers of Excellence has approved iRest as a Complementary and Alternative Medicine warranting continuing research for its use in the treatment of PTSD. In addition, the US Army Surgeon General has listed Yoga Nidra (based on research with iRest) as a Tier 1 approach for addressing Pain Management in Military Care.
Richard was also the co-founder of The International Association of Yoga Therapy and founding editor of the professional Journal of IAYT. He is the author of Yoga Nidra: A Meditative Practice for Deep Relaxation and Healing, and The iRest Program for Healing PTSD. Richard has also developed a variety of iRest related products, designed to bring the healing benefits of yogic and meditative practices to a wide variety of people.
Learn more about Richard Miller and iRest at www.irest.org.
Keynote Speaker
Christine Roman
Christine Roman, PhD, was raised in Michigan and received degrees in Elementary Education and Special Education/Visual Impairment at Michigan State University. She worked as an itinerant teacher of the visually impaired in the greater Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area for 17 years prior to becoming a Research Assistant in the Vision Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh. While at Pitt, she completed studies in Orientation & Mobility and received a Master’s Degree in Medically Fragile/High Risk Infants.
Her doctoral studies were also completed at Pitt where she completed a PhD in 1996; her dissertation, Validation of an Interview Instrument to Identify Behaviors Characteristic of Cortical Visual Impairment in Infants, revealed that caregivers of infants can reliably report regarding the presence or absence of the characteristics of CVI.
Dr. Roman is the Director of The Pediatric View Program at The Western Pennsylvania Hospital in Pittsburgh, PA and a former Project Leader of the CVI Project at The American Printing House for the Blind in Louisville, KY.
She has lectured extensively regarding the CVI educational materials she has developed. These materials include: The CVI Range an assessment of functional vision, and The CVI Resolution Chart & CVI/O&M Resolution Chart used to plot and monitor progress both of which will be available in a book in press (working title, CVI: Identification, Assessment & Intervention) with The American Foundation for the Blind.
Learn more about Christine Roman and Perkins School for the Blind eLearning at www.perkinselearning.org.
Keynote Speaker
Raz Ingrasci
Raz Ingrasci is a UC-Berkeley graduate and has been an executive, consultant, and facilitator within the “Human Potential Movement” since 1972. Along with being a Hoffman teacher, he founded the Hoffman Institute Foundation in 1998.
“The Hoffman Process is the most highly effective method for people to heal, discover their true nature, and live a more free, open, loving and spontaneous life.” Raz’s passion for teaching the Hoffman Process is both professional and personal; it brings him into the depths of human experience where he learns at least as much as he teaches. In this process, participants learn how to transform counterproductive beliefs, perceptions, and emotional patterns that are limiting their lives.
Raz took the Process in July of 1989. From that experience he had three major take-aways: “I knew my marriage would last; I could be a great dad to my young children; and that I’d found work worthy of devoting my life.”
In the 2006 peer-reviewed magazine Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing, the Hoffman Process was shown to have outstanding results. Program participants demonstrated significant and lasting increases in emotional intelligence, forgiveness, compassion, life satisfaction and vitality, coupled with significant and lasting decreases in depression, hostility and anxiety. A survey of worldwide research literature shows that no other interventions produce comparably strong and lasting results.
Raz lives in the San Francisco-Bay Area with his wife of 35 years, Liza.
Learn more about Raz Ingrasci and the Hoffman Process at www.hoffmaninstitute.org/.
Martha Herbert
Martha Reed Herbert, PhD, MD, is a pediatric neurologist, neuroscientist, systems thinker, and writer who trained in medicine at Columbia University, Pediatrics at Cornell-New York Hospital and Neurology at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, where she founded the collaborative multidisciplinary TRANSCEND Research Program which takes a whole-body-brain approach to challenged brain development.
Prior to her medical training she received her PhD in the History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz, writing her dissertation on the evolution and development of learning processes. The theme of “differentiation” in both evolution and development was central to her dissertation, and was critical to her connecting with Anat.
She founded the Higher Synthesis Foundation in Cambridge, Massachusetts, whose mission is to study and inspire successful regenerative approaches to complex health and environmental problems, particularly those that fall under the umbrella of its “Gifted Clinicians, Transformative Treatments, Sensitive Measures” Project and her Body-Brain-World thematic.
Martha is also the scientific director of the Documenting Hope Project and principal investigator of its CHIRP™ (Children’s Health Inventory for Resilience and Prevention) Study and of its FLIGHT™ (Facilitated Longitudinal Intensive Investigation of Genuine Health Transformation) Study, which combines research with a film project to demonstrate, document, and study recovery from pediatric chronic illness. She is also working with Joyce Cameron on developing approaches to research in ABM NeuroMovement® that honor the richness and integrity of the method.
Martha is the author of the book The Autism Revolution: Whole Body Strategies for Making Life All It Can Be as well as many scientific papers.
Anat Baniel
Anat Baniel is founder of Anat Baniel Method® NeuroMovement®, a powerful practice that takes advantage of the brain’s remarkable ability to change itself for the better to heal body and mind. She is a trained clinical psychologist and dancer, and was a close professional associate of Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais for over a decade.
Anat is the author of two highly acclaimed books, Move Into Life: NeuroMovement for Lifelong Vitality and Kids Beyond Limits.
Over the past 30 years, Anat Baniel has helped thousands, from children with special needs to stroke survivors to high-performing athletes overcome pain and limitation, and reach new heights of performance, making the seemingly impossible possible.
Anat’s work is at the forefront of the emerging brain plasticity field, helping wake up the brain to its greater potency for learning and change throughout life.
Anat has helped both adults and children, from five days old to 90 years old, transform their lives physically, emotionally, and cognitively. Her work has helped children with special needs with a wide variety of conditions and high-performance athletes, musicians, business people, and other adults move beyond their present limitations to achieve greater energy, strength, health, and success.
Anat’s work with children with special needs is world-renown, applauded by parents, health professionals, and those at the cutting edge of the neurosciences. Increasing numbers of leading brain scientists, medical doctors, and others in the helping professions are enthusiastically endorsing the Anat Baniel Method® NeuroMovement®.
Joyce Cameron
Dr. Joyce Cameron had a 25+ year career teaching piano, piano pedagogy, and other music-related subjects in higher education. She also had a 10-year career in human factors and ergonomics working on a wide variety of projects for clients from the Department of Defense, Army, Navy, Air Force, FAA, NASA, industry, and academia. In 2019, she co-authored the book Questionnaire Design: How to Ask the Right Questions of the Right People at the Right Time to Get the Information You Need.
After retiring in 2006, Joyce heard about the Anat Baniel Method® at a conference where Anat introduced her Desk-Trainer program, since renamed NeuroMovement® for Your Busy Life. She joined the ABM Practitioner Training Program in 2007, completing the Basic Training Program, and also the Children’s Mastery, Vitality and Anti-Aging, and High Performers Programs. Joyce has served as support staff for several trainings since that time.
As support staff, she met Dr. Martha Herbert and the two began to collaborate on research related to ABMNM with a long-term goal of cultivating a culture of research within the ABMNM Community. In this work she has found advanced analytical techniques from both of her previous careers very useful in enhancing her understand of TMLs and FSs.
Deb Loest Deppe
Deb Loest Deppe was a student in the original ABM Professional Training Program, graduating from this program in 2003 and the Mastery Trainings in 2004.
She has assisted in the ABM Training Programs since 2004, becoming an ABM Assistant Trainer in 2011 and an ABM Trainer in 2014. She has a passion for supporting ABM students and practitioners in their overall success and learning.
Deb has a full-time private practice in Humboldt County, California, giving ABM lessons to clients from around the country. She applies the Nine Essentials and principles of NeuroMovement® in her work with infants, children, and adults in all areas, including dynamic movement, sports injuries, torticollis, speech, swallowing, latch-suck issues, breathing, and communication.
Deb has been a licensed speech-language pathologist since 1987 specializing in feeding, swallowing, speech, breathing, and communication.
In addition, she performs Pediatric Modified Barium Swallow Studies at a local hospital.
Lara Gillease
Lara Gillease has been a trainer in the Anat Baniel Method® NeuroMovement® Training Programs since 2014. She has been a practitioner since 2000, working with children and adults in her home location of Asheville, North Carolina, as well as other locations in the US and Europe.
She has been on staff as one of the practitioners working at the ABM Center alongside Anat Baniel. Additionally, Lara is part of the Anat Baniel Classrooms (ABC) project to bring ABM into the schools.
Lara came to ABM from the dance world and because of it overcame chronic back pain. She was able to return to the dance world to achieve her dream of dancing in full length ballets as well as co-founding, dancing, and choreographing for her own dance company. She was also a pilates instructor and owner of the pilates studio.
Carla Oswald Reed
Carla Oswald Reed has been a pediatric physical therapist for 50 years. Her work has been transformed and enriched by her training with the Bobaths (1972 NeuroDevelopmental Treatment for Cerebral Palsy, NDTA™), Moshe Feldenkrais (1980-83, Lifetime Certified Feldenkrais® Practitioner), Magda Gerber (1988 Intensive at Resources for Infant Educarers®), and most especially Anat Baniel. Carla was certified as an ABM NeuroMovement® Practitioner in 2004 and served as a trainer in ABMNM professional trainings from 2011-2016.
Carla currently maintains a pediatric private practice in Northern Virginia near Washington, DC, called Movement to Wholeness, LLC. She leads Making Every Movement Count℠ public workshops in Northern VA for parents and professionals who work with children. Nationally and internationally, Carla also leads Making Every Movement Count℠ mentoring programs for Feldenkrais® and ABM NeuroMovement® Practitioners who work with children.
Neil Sharp
Neil Sharp began studying with Anat Baniel in 2004 and moved to the US in 2007 to work as an ABM NeuroMovement® Practitioner at the ABM Center in San Rafael, California, where he is also the Research Coordinator.
Neil is a trainer in the ABM NeuroMovement® training programs and collaborates with Anat Baniel in research projects and new programs development.
Neil trained and qualified as an MD at Cambridge University and Edinburgh University Medical School. He worked in the United Kingdom as a doctor before leaving medicine to pursue a career in music as an opera singer, musical director, and violinist.
Neil lives in San Francisco, California.
