Our Facilitators

Nicholas Allan has been associated with Concord Institute since 1997.

He was trained under the tutelage Jean Torné and worked in various cafe and bistros across London.

Nicholas has owned and run the Star Anise Café in Stroud since 2004, inspired by his training with Concord School of Culinary Arts.

He has two grown-up children and enjoys theatre, trail running and tending to a multitude of houseplants at his home!

Nicholas Allan facilitates:

• The Foundation Course
• JumpStart

Françoise originates from Normandy and lived for 25 years in North East London. She worked in the City whilst training with various wholefood cooks from Concord Institute. She then facilitated cooking workshops including the Foundation Course and JumpStart. Her interest in food led her to complete an MA in Food Anthropology in 2016.

Her main focus is to inspire people to cook simple wholefoods that meet their needs through the seasons and makes sense with the place where they live. She finds it useful to reflect on where food comes from, geographically and historically, and how it is produced. She returned to Normandy two years ago and is now part of a cooperative network of local businesses. She is a cook, runs cooking workshops and thematic pop-up meals. She is based in a farm-kitchen which is a training ground for new projects. She travels back to London occasionally to facilitate the Foundation Course and the Wholefoods Primer Workshop.

Francoise Auvray facilitates:

• JumpStart

Blandine Bardeau is a qualified Macrobiotic Health Coach and Cook, as well as an artist. She has trained extensively at the Concord Institute under Jean Torné, Mutsuko Johnson, Françoise Auvray, and Nicholas Allan. She also completed her Macrobiotic training in 2018 at the International Macrobiotic School in Devon. As soon as she encountered wholefoods Macrobiotic cooking at Concord Institute in 2010, she fell in love with the smell of toasted sesame oil, the ubiquitous ginger and the mighty tamari, expanding her world and inviting her to create art on a plate. She is committed to sharing what she has learnt along the way, inspiring people to take their well-being into their own hands.

Blandine Bardeau facilitates:

• Macrobiotics at your fingertips

Anita is a versatile yoga teacher with 17+ years of experience. She trained in Nashik, India in 2005 and South London. In 2009, she trained in Hot Power Yoga in Mexico and taught regular classes in the UK as well as leading yoga retreats in Morocco and Croatia. Additionally, she works as a video editor in London's media industry.

In 2012/13, she became a Yoga therapist for stress, anxiety and depression and now teaches on the Foundation Course at Concord Institute. Her classes aim to reconnect the body, release tension and restore balance.

Her goal is to share her knowledge and experience to help people take their yoga practice off the mat and maintain mindfulness in everyday life.

Anita Caslin facilitates:

• The Foundation Course

Charlotte is the Participation Manager at Concord Institute.

She was introduced to the Institute in 2011, starting with the iEvolve programme and then participating in the wider curriculum.

Through the work at Concord, Charlotte discovered Tensegrity, and has since undertaken four years training with Cleargreen, the organisation founded by Carlos Castaneda to teach and promote Tensegrity. She has been a certified Level 2 Facilitator since 2018.

Charlotte has lived in Mexico, Canada and Yorkshire - loving them each equally and for different reasons. She now lives in Hackney, East London.

Charlotte worked in the charity sector for 8 years before beaconing a full time staff member at Concord Institute in 2019.

Charlotte Hopper facilitates:

• The Foundation Course
• Tensegrity Practice Groups

Mutsuko Johnson was born and raised in Osaka, Japan. She studied macrobiotic cooking with founders Michio and Aveline Kushi and was an active member of the macrobiotic community in Boston during the 1970s.

Mutsuko combines her ancestry and lineage from Japan with over 40 years’ practical experience of teaching, cooking and healing with wholefoods. She has raised a family of 5 children using macrobiotic cooking and seen the power it has to create healthy, happy living. She is dedicated to bringing this message and teaching to the community at large. 

Her unparalleled knowledge of traditional Japanese ingredients and depth of experience in wholefood home-cooking make her a fountain of knowledge for anyone wanting to learn these vital skills for healthy living. She brings a magical self-expression to the kitchen and the learning environment she creates is truly unique.

Mutsuko Johnson facilitates:

• Soba Night Dining Club

Greg Johnson has been the executive director of the Community Health Foundation in London since 1994. He began studying macrobiotics in 1970 and was an active member of the original Boston macrobiotic community in the early 1970s.

He served as retail store manager of Erewhon Trading Company, the first macrobiotic food store, and later designed and operated a second store. He was also a faculty member at the Kushi Institute and ran macrobiotic study houses with his wife. In 1973, he encountered the work of Werner Erhard and participated in various programs and workshops, including a period on staff with Werner Erhard and Associates.

He also spent 10 years in Japan researching macrobiotics and met his wife there. He is also an active participant in the work of Carlos Castaneda and is a certified Tensegrity facilitator.

Greg Johnson facilitates:

• iEvolve Belgium
• HeartSpace
• Power, Intent and Evolution
• The Meaning of Money
• Tensegrity Series with Greg Johnson

Guilhem Morera aka Jim Morris is the founder of the Dragonfly Practices. Guilhem was trained in the modern form of an ancient Toltec tradition in Los Angeles with the apprentices of Carlos Castaneda during 10 years. Back in France, he organized and guided Tensegrity® events all over Europe for Cleargreen Inc, the organization founded by Carlos Castaneda to spread his teachings. Since 2019, he founded the Dragonfly Practices and started to develop his own work, bridging the practical tools of the Toltec tradition with the esoteric knowledge of the Western world. In addition to his Tensegrity® training, Guilhem was also trained and certified in the old science of the cards by author and astrologer Robert Lee Camp. Guilhem is the author of two books about the science of the cards, one of them in collaboration with author and specialist of the megaliths Howard Crowhurst. In the last years, with a team of colleagues and the association Dragonfly Cayla, Guilhem opened a Center in South of France, in the Aveyron region, to host spiritual events and retreats. In addition to presential workshops, Guilhem is also offering online series of classes and private sessions where he uses his knowledge of the cards and astrology to help people answer questions they may have about their lives.

Guilhem Morera facilitates:

• Toltecs Movement Series

Deborah Murphy-Smith is one of the trustees for Concord Institute and has been facilitating on the Foundation Course for several years. She participated in a transformational programme called Being-In-Action (the precursor to the iEvolve programme) in 2003.

Unexpectedly a new orientation for her world unfolded. Deborah has worked within services for children for most of her career, and is currently a Senior Service Manager managing a team of social workers. Deborah is married and has four children, and is based in the South West of England.

Deborah Murphy-Smith facilitates:

• The Foundation Course

Dr. David Norris is an American, who has worked for more than 40 years as a college teacher, manager, international consultant and coach.

He has led programs for individuals, teams and organisations in North America, Europe, Australia, India and the Middle East. He originally studied English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York, where he received a PhD and also was a member of the faculty. In 1967 he went to Germany as a Fulbright Scholar to research his doctoral dissertation on Bertolt Brecht at the Free University in West Berlin and at the Brecht Archive in East Berlin. 

Since 1979 he has worked with organisations and individuals to uncover fundamental (often unconscious) assumptions in thinking and action as a basis for the generation and implementation of new possibilities.

Sheila Parmar is Managing Director of Concord Institute. For the first ten years of her professional life Sheila worked as a support worker and manager in the field of community development.

During that time she participated in a transformational programme called Being-in-Action, which began a process of opening a whole new and very unplanned future.

In 1998 four years after that experience she went on staff with the Community Health Foundation and hasn’t looked back since.

The last 20 years have been the most challenging and yet the most rewarding in her eyes. Sheila is married with two children.

Sheila Parmar facilitates:

• iEvolve Belgium
• JumpStart
• The Foundation Course
• Starting with Silence

Michael Rossoff has been interested in macrobiotics and natural healing for over 42 years. He studied with Michio Kushi in Boston from 1969 to 1973 and then moved back to Washington, DC to begin his career in macrobiotic education. He also taught in cities across the US, Canada, Europe and Israel and publoished MacroMuse, a macrobiotic magazine in the 1980s. In the 1970s, Michael studied acupuncture in England with JR Worsley adding it to his counseling practice. He returned to acupuncture school for advanced studies in 1999 and served as Academic Dean and teacher at Atlantic University of Chinese Medicine.

He has also taught shiatsu massage for over 20 years. Michael combines his experience in teaching, counseling, and acupuncture to provide students with practical knowledge for self-healing and self-care.

He draws on insights from oriental medicine, macrobiotics, and western medicine to share tools for thinking and living from his home in North Carolina.

Maria has been in the healing profession for 40 years, training as a pediatric nurse in Spain before studying and practicing Macrobiotics and Yoga. She moved to London in 1989 to study macrobiotics and body energetics, graduating as a Shiatsu practitioner and later as a teacher.

She completed her Master's in Macrobiotic Shiatsu in 1994 and has since studied a variety of disciplines such as Chinese Medicine, Acupuncture, Counselling, Kampo, Craneosacral therapy, Kundalini yoga, Qi gong, Shamanic Healing, Meditation and Voice work.

Maria is a co-founder of a retreat program, a Senior Shiatsu teacher and a visiting lecturer at leading Shiatsu schools in the UK and Europe. She runs an Integrated Oriental Therapy clinic in St Albans offering a range of holistic treatments.

Maria Serrano facilitates:

• The Foundation Course

Gregor has worked with Concord Institute since the mid-1990’s, introduced to ‘Being-In-Action’ by one of our earliest bodywork facilitators Portia Castor, with whom he began his training in the distinctions of transformational bodywork.

After working on staff at Concord Institute for one year, Gregor went on to work with Evan Root in the United States, where he was introduced to Baptiste Yoga. He subsequently spent ten years working closely with Baron Baptiste, serving as the Director of Teachers at his yoga studios in Massachusetts and a co-facilitator at his international retreats. He has since gone on to run his own programmes and studios with his wife, Claire Este McDonald.

Gregor’s greatest pleasure when facilitating is to support participants connecting, through their bodies, to an ease and intelligence that sources a deeper and wider dimensional experience of what it is to be human.

Gregor Singleton facilitates:

• JumpStart
• Grounding Your Body

Bill Spear is an internationally recognized educator, consultant, author and lecturer on integrative medicine, disaster response, feng shui, the I Ching, end-of-life care, and personal transformation. His clarity and ability to synthesize complex and diverse material is inspiring, insightful and empowering.

He is is among the most highly sought after and gifted feng shui experts in the world. Acknowledged by the Smithsonian Institute as “the leading authority in the West”, Spear guides clients beyond the typical historical and traditional confines of this vast cosmology to apply this art, science and philosophy in a broader context making it something modern and vital.

For the past four decades, Spear has consulted on design projects worldwide that include hotels, schools, exclusive resorts, corporate offices, private residences, hospitals, health care centers and large urban transformations.

He brings a profound grasp of the energetics of inner and outer spaces as well as a deep understanding of human nature revealing how the outer world is reflected in the intricacies of individual consciousness.

Read more about Bill Spear here.

Bill Spear facilitates:

• The Inner Landscape

Bill Tara is a pioneer in the modern Macrobiotic movement in both America and Europe. For over 50 years he has been an advocate of the Macrobiotic approach to nutrition, nutritional reform and natural approaches to health and healing. He opened macrobiotic education centers in Chicago and Los Angeles in the 1960s and was active in the natural foods revolution. In the 1970s, he established the first macrobiotic educational programs in the UK, founding the Community Health Foundation and co-founding the Kushi Institute.

He's a health counselor and has clinical experience in both America and Europe. He's written a book and been invited to 22 countries to present seminars on Macrobiotic Health Care, Human Ecology, Oriental Diagnosis, and Vegan Advocacy.

He works with his wife, Marlene Watson-Tara offering a wide range of educational programs and bespoke health services in the private and corporate world. Online courses in Nutrition and Oriental Diagnosis are available here.

Bill Tara facilitates:

• Macrobiotics: An Ecology of Mind and Body

Chef Jean Torné has been involved in classical and natural food cooking for over 40 years. He gained experience in meal planning and kitchen management working in prestigious restaurants in Paris and Lyon.

He opened and operated several natural food restaurants, one in Paris in 1979 and another in Antwerp in 1981. He co-founded a natural food cooking school in 1990 and served as its Head Chef before founding the Concord School of Culinary Arts in 2003 and directed it until 2008. In 2019 he established Jean's Kitchen, opening the culinary education of Concord Institute to the general public.

He's recognized for his passion for natural food and exploring new flavors and textures, drawing inspiration from different ethnic and traditional cuisines. He actively travels throughout Europe to cook and teach about wholefoods.

Jean Torné facilitates:

• JumpStart