Director and Trainer
David Weinstock is a certified Somatic Coach through the Strozzi Institute and Stuart Heller’s Five Rings Coaching Institute. He is a certified international trainer of Nonviolent Communication and has taught Aikido for 30 years. He offers individual coaching, workshops and classes designed to help his clients develop their abilities to self-direct, self-generate, and navigate through the complexities of life with greater clarity and integrity. He leads trainings locally and around the world—in his community, schools, prisons, organizations and businesses on four continents.
David draws from 30 years experience as an entrepreneur and artisan. After attending college for environmental sciences and community studies at Alfred University, NY, he moved into an old-world apprenticeship with an award-winning, four-generation goldsmith’s firm. Following this apprenticeship, he traveled the world for several years learning and connecting with different cultures. Having seen the effect of U.S. policy around the world, he returned stateside with a sense of responsibility and commitment to effecting change in the world from home. David set up shop as a goldsmith and began organizing for environmental and social justice causes, globally and locally.
David continued his community and communication studies at Evergreen State College and has been fortunate to personally work with Marshall Rosenberg, Robert Gonzales, Lucy Leu, and other pioneers of mind/body development in the NVC community. As a Somatic Coach and Aikido Instructor he is very grateful to have as his teachers, Richard Strozzi-Heckler, Wendy Palmer, Stuart Heller and Marc Brackett. His main Aikido teacher is Sensei Koichi Barrish of Granite Falls, Wa.
As a respected Master Goldsmith he helped to create Green Karat, an organization that tackles the environmental hazards of the gold industry by promoting recycled, post-consumer gold and stones. He co-founded Peaceworks Productions, a company that produces benefits for environmental and political non-profit organizations. In addition, David serves as Executive Director of Community Artworks, an organization devoted to helping community leaders manifest their dreams through the practice of fully embodied skills and actions. David is currently a board member and co-founder of Peace Dojo International. This is an organization that works for peace and justice by means of self- mastery and community service with the martials arts as its medium.
David and his wife Judith, along with 8 other families, co-founded an intentional community, where they have raised their family over the past twenty years. They have devoted their adult lives to practicing community, committing themselves to an integrated and intentional way of life.
All of Weinstock’s work, in particular is present organization, Liminal Somatics, is based on building our connection to one another and to nature. He is committed to developing our capacity to value what each of us brings to the circle so we can reclaim community and value diversity so we can sustain life on this planet.
Trainer
Judith Weinstock teaches somatic practices through the mediums of food, music and communication.
Judith has been a chef/owner/partner in four restaurants over the last 30 years. She has published two cookbooks, The Streamliner Diner Cookbook, (Ten Speed Press, 1990) and The Old Kingston Hotel Cookbook, (Sasquatch Press, 1998). For the last ten years Judith has been teaching “Humanities Through Food”, a curriculum that she has developed that integrates history, ethics, economics, agriculture, culture, science and food politics through the lens of food and the art of cooking. She is currently writing a third cookbook based on this curriculum.
Judith co-founded an A Capella trio, We Three, in 1979. They wrote and arranged all of their music and recorded three albums. They toured from Santa Cruz to Vancouver, B.C. for ten years. They shared the stage and performed with Holly Near, Pete Seeger, Sweet Honey In The Rock and Ferron. Judith has taught voice and guitar for many years.
Judith began practicing Re-evaluation Counseling when she was fifteen and went on to begin leading and teaching classes when she was twenty-one. This practice has formed the principle foundation in her communication and relationship work. She has been training and practicing Nonviolent Communication for the last eight years fully integrating this discipline with her somatic arts and sensibility.
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Associate Instructor
Tesfaye Tekelu is co-founder and project director of the Awassa Youth Campus, home to the Awassa Peace Dojo in Ethiopia, where he has managed the youth development and Aikido project since 2006. He also serves as vice-president of the Regional Martial Art Federation in Ethiopia and is the leading instructor of Aikido in Ethiopia. Tesfaye has Shodan in Aikido and is certified by leadership in Action from the Strozzi Institute in Petaluma, CA. He received his Bachelor of Arts in accounting from Africa Beza University College in Ethiopia. In addition to Aikido, Tesfaye teaches and performs dance, gymnastics, and drums and produces music in his free time.
Recently, lives in New York City and Teaches Aikido in schools and works in a non-profit organization as peace and culture specialist in New York City. Tesfaye is presently teaching Aikido and Leadership at the Schools at Columbia Universality” and Aikido and Somatic Consensus Trainings with David Weinstock
Shelley Weinstock, PhD, CNS As a professor and researcher for over 25 years, I have come to understand the great need for nutrition counseling and education. My move into clinical nutrition is motivated by the demand for translating the enormous amount of nutrition research in the professional literature into usable information for the consumer. Advising, teaching and conducting research in nutrition for
over 25 years. Teaching faculty at Columbia University’s Institute of Human Nutrition. Former Professor at Barnard College at Columbia University. Former researcher and teacher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. My expertise includes changing food habits to promote a healthy lifestyle, disease prevention and longevity, how to deal with nutrition-related disease issues, how to lose or maintain healthy weight, exercise nutrition, and adolescent nutrition. In all areas, I provide a personalized strategy to reach desired goals in a reasonable and healthy time period.
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Associate Director of Trainings and Outreach
Debra Hinman has lived, worked and traveled around the world in the field of international education, exchange, training and development for the past 30 years, visiting over 50 countries. She has been an innovative and visionary leader of international organizations interacted with governments, embassies, schools, businesses and NGO’s of all kinds. Debra is a poet, certified Hatha Yoga and Laughter Yoga teacher and speaks Spanish, French and Italian.