Nina Hutchings trained at the School of Vision Education in London, UK and has since been a full-time Bates teacher based in Aix-en-Provence, France for the last 25 years. She gives individual lessons and has been running workshops in different countries over the years including Switzerland, Spain, Belgium. She has also co-run workshops in collaboration with Alexander Teachers and Feldenkrais method teachers.

Nina also trained in Somatic Experiencing (S.E. Peter Levine), a body-oriented therapeutical approach for post-traumatic stress resolution based on innovative studies of the autonomous nervous system, the Polyvagal Theory. The connection between the autonomic nervous system, vision and visual function became a source of fervent study. Her teaching of the Bates Method, influenced by Somatic Experiencing, has transformed over the years into a Polyvagal informed perspective of understanding vision and its disturbances. Nina has been running further training workshops linking the Polyvagal theory to vision problems and vision improvement.

Laurence Fritz began her professional career as an optician-optometrist in the family business and later trained as an orthoptist in order to provide more help to people with vision problems. For more than 10 years she worked with serious visually challenged children and adults, discovering their visual function in order to develop their remaining visual capacity.

Since childhood, Laurence has lived in the world of optics. She is a great grandaughter of an optician who was a founding member of the Institut d’Optique Raymond Tibaut (1933); grandaughter of an optician-ophthalmologiste, and daughter of an optician pioneer in rigid contact lenses (1963).

Attentive to my patients' seeing better, the Bates Method has enabled me to practise orthoptics in a different way by offering a personalised, more complete and natural re-education that is less mechanical and respects the physiology of visual function and that of the patient.

Training:
Optician-optometrist and orthoptist: I.O.R.T. – Bruxelles and at Université Lille 2 – Lille.
Certified teacher of the Bates Method and Vision Education.
Brain Gym® and Cercles de vision® with Paul & Gail Dennison
Rhythmic Movement Training™ with Dr Blomberg
Bal-A-Vis-X, Balance/Auditory/ Vision eXercises™ with Bill Hubert.