SPONSORING TEACHERS
The ABME Sponsoring Teachers guide the training process for Licensure Trainees who want to become Licensed Body Mapping Educators. Our dedicated teachers have worked tirelessly to improve our training materials and collaborate with the Board as well as our Education and Scientific Advisory Committees to keep our information current and relevant.
Amy Likar
Amy Likar began her career as a flutist and became fascinated with performance health and wellness through her own recovery from stress-related injuries. She has since integrated her expertise in Alexander Technique and Body Mapping into her flute teaching, chamber music coaching, and master class teaching, as well as her own musical performances. By developing students’ physical ease, presence, and confidence, she helps them reach their musical potential.
As the Director of Training for the Association for Body Mapping Education, Amy Likar has trained, licensed and mentored over 100 professionals. These educators are now teaching in their own private studios and in institutions such as the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Amsterdam Conservatoire, Columbus State University, and Oberlin Conservatory.
A member of the Oakland Symphony, Amy has also performed as a freelance musician with Opera Parallèle, West Edge Opera, the San Francisco Opera and San Francisco Ballet. Highlights of her performance career include a critically acclaimed premiere of Martin Rokeach’s Concerto for Piccolo and Orchestra, in addition to the premieres of solo and chamber works by Valerie Coleman, Michael Stephens, Donald Sloan and Daniel Felsenfeld.
As a guest artist, Likar presents recitals, workshops and masterclasses. Residencies often integrate workshops for students and faculty across music, dance and theater departments.
She is the author of the Breathing Book for Flute and the co-author with Rena Urso of Mindful Flute Etudes. She edited and narrated Move Well, Avoid Injury.
She is a Verne Q. Powell Performing Artist and available for custom clinics and residencies.
Stephen Caplan
Stephen Caplan has defied the odds as a classical oboist in Las Vegas. What other oboe player has tuned a slot machine, recorded music with a spinning roulette wheel, and performed for Klingons at a Star Trek convention? Caplan is internationally recognized as a performer and teacher, and has served as Principal Oboe with the Las Vegas Philharmonic since its inception in 1998. For more than twenty years, he was Executive Director and oboist with the award-winning Sierra Winds, performing at prestigious venues internationally, including Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center, and producing numerous acclaimed recordings. He received the Nevada Governor’s “Excellence in the Arts” award for his work with Sierra Winds. Caplan, a Buffet Group USA Performing Artist, has toured internationally as a concerto soloist and chamber musician, and performed with classical music superstars including Luciano Pavarotti, Itzhak Perlman, and Hilary Hahn. He is equally at home accompanying popular music superstars on the Las Vegas Strip. He has championed new American music for oboe, premiering and recording dozens of new compositions. His recordings have been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered, and Performance Today, and he has played in orchestras for the Latin Grammys, CBS television’s “Christmas with Andrea Bocelli and Friends,” as well as other international television broadcasts. Caplan is Emeritus Professor of Music at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and has music performance degrees from Northwestern University and The University of Michigan. He has presented clinics at many of the world’s finest music schools and conservatories, and is recognized internationally for applying Body Mapping to double reed performance. His pedagogical articles have been published in scholarly journals in Australia, France, Germany, Great Britain, and the USA. Caplan’s book, "Oboemotions: What Every Oboe Player Needs to Know about the Body," is praised as “the operating manual for oboists.” For more information see: www.oboemotions.com
Bridget Jankowski
In 1998, Bridget Jankowski was the first person to become a Licensed Body Mapping Educator after logging more than 150 hours of training with noted Alexander Technique teacher and Body Mapping pioneer Barbara Conable. Bridget is an original member of the Association for Body Mapping Education’s Board of Directors and currently serves the organization as co-chair of the Image Committee, as a member of the Training Committee and Sponsoring Teacher, and most recently was hired to serve as their Executive Director.
Bridget has taught Body Mapping courses and workshops in a variety of settings across the United States as well as online to international audiences. She is the author of the newly revised What Every Musician Needs to Know about the Body, and Body Mapping for Music Ministers (GIA). She is also the founder of the Choral Mapping Program, an online Body Mapping curriculum for choirs.
In complement to her Body Mapping work, she is the full-time Director of Music at St. Matthew Parish in Akron, Ohio where she is the principal musician and directs two choirs. She maintains a small private piano and Body Mapping studio and is a sought-after accompanist in the Northeast Ohio area, working with individual soloists, high school choirs and community theaters.
Jennifer Johnson
From 1993-2004 Jennifer Johnson held the position of second violin in the Atlantic String Quartet based in St. John’s, Newfoundland. After a playing-related injury in 2004, Jennifer licensed in Body Mapping with founder Barbara Conable. She is now a Sponsoring Teacher and a member of the Training Committee for the Association of Body Mapping Education.
Jennifer is an internationally sought-after Master Teacher in Body Mapping and is renowned for her expertise in helping musicians to move according to the design of their bodies to address and prevent playing injuries. She has been on faculty of the New York Philharmonic’s Zarin Mehta Program and has presented Body Mapping workshops to music organizations around the world, including the The Finnish National Opera and The Tuckamore Chamber Music Festival. She was a keynote speaker at the Australian Strings’ Association 2015 Conference. Jennifer was the featured guest of Juilliard’s Noa Kageyama on the Bulletproof Musician podcast in October 2019 and of Renée-Paule Gauthier’s Mind Over Finger podcast in the fall of 2022. She was invited to teach Body Mapping at the Starling-Delay Violin Symposium at Juilliard in May 2023.
Jennifer is presently serving as the Lead for Musicians’ Health Research Initiative at Canada’s newly formed Music and Health Research Institute (MHRI).
Jennifer has written three books on Body Mapping: What Every Violinist Needs to Know
about the Body; Teaching Body Mapping to Children and Musician, Heal Thyself: Free Your Shoulder Region through Body Mapping. Her books have been translated into French, Spanish, Japanese with Portuguese and German translations forthcoming. Jennifer is now touring through the U.S., Canada and Europe with her new documentary that delves into the compelling stories of musicians whose whose lives have been profoundly changed by Body Mapping and the wisdom, compassion and vision of Barbara Conable.
It is called Music, Movement & Transformation: The Body Mapping Story and had its World Premiere at the National Opera Center in NYC in the spring of 2025. The documentary has been screened at international film festivals and was awarded the Best Canadian Indie Film for the 2026 seasonal Montreal Women’s Independent Film Festival.
Melissa Malde
Melissa taught voice and vocal pedagogy at the University of Northern Colorado for 22 years. Though she is now the Associate Dean of the College of Performing and Visual arts, she is still an active performer. She has sung with numerous national and international organizations, including the Moscow Chamber Orchestra, the Prague Radio Symphony, the Bad Reichenhall Orchestra, Vancouver Opera, Opera Colorado, Kentucky Opera, and the Colorado Music Festival.
Melissa won a German Academic Exchange grant to study in Germany. Prizes include the Kulturforum Gesangwettbewerb (Munich), the Concerto Competition (Cincinnati), the Brice-Gooter Award (NATSAA), and the Sudler Award and the Farwell award (Chicago).
Melissa is a frequent clinician on Body Mapping. She has presented at the Conference of the West Central Region of NATS, the Conference of National Pastoral Musicians, the Multidisciplinary Conference on the Rehabilitation of the Performing Voice, the International Conference on the Arts and Humanities and the National Conference of the College Music Society.