Lesley Greco RMT DOMP D.Sc.O
With backgrounds in osteopathy, movement and voice, Lesley has a special interest in bridging osteopathic philosophy with movement principles to support other manual practitioners, educators, community members, and arts workers. Rooted in practice-research, her work is devoted to learning, sharing and creating through listening based, cooperative, body-informed processes.
As part of her research practice, Lesley developed Osteopathy in Motion – an interdisciplinary process that explores attention, perception, improvisation, and supporting our capacity to listen and to respond to the worlds inside of us and around us.
Lesley has been a manual practitioner since 1996 and completed five years of academic and clinical training at the Canadian College of Osteopathy (Tkaronto/Toronto) in 2019. She successfully defended her research dissertation An Osteopathic Concept and Practice of Listening in 2021.
Lesley was introduced to the discipline of listening as an art practice by composer Pauline Oliveros (1932–2016). Lesley studied with Oliveros beginning in 2007 translating aural listening strategies into a physical listening focus with application to movement, voice and bodywork. Lesley’s essay on listening, touch and voice is included in The Anthology of Essays on Deep Listening edited by Monique Buzzarte and Tom Bickley and published in 2012.
Her most recent essay The Small Dances of Listening can be found in Resistance and Support Contact Improvisation @ 50 edited by Ann Cooper Albright and published by Oxford University Press (2024).
Lesley began to study singing with Fides Krucker in 2006 and was a teaching apprentice for her voice classes at Humber College School of Performing Arts Theatre program from 2008-2011.
Through long and rigorous research, Krucker has mapped out practical, creation-focused methods for inhabiting ourselves with integrity and vibrancy.
Interested in these methods and in the ways in which Krucker’s Emotionally Integrated Voice Method (EIV) are naturally resonant with osteopathic principles, Lesley entered the EIV teacher training and graduated with the first cohort in 2023. https://www.fideskrucker.com/
Voice and movement improvisation are foundational to Lesley’s research. In particular, Contact Improvisation (CI) has been a strong influence since being introduced to it in Tkaronto/Toronto in 2001. Lesley began teaching CI in 2009 assisting choreographer/dancer/activist Pam Johnson at Humber College School of Performing Arts teaching CI to physical theatre students from 2009-2011.
Drawing on a 20-year practice of Contact Improvisation and integrating EIV concepts, Lesley’s current project Practices for Partnering explores attention, breath, voice, and movement in the context of listening and responding in relationship.
Other influential teachers and mentors include; Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Bonnie Gintis DO, Paul Psutka DOMP, Sr Jane McDonell, Nancy Stark Smith, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, Irene Dowd, Margie Gillis, Ruth Zaporah, Katherine Duncanson, Esmeralda Enrique, and Carmen Romero among others.
Lesley has been a guest lecturer for graduate and undergraduate classes at the University of Guelph School of The Arts and the Improv Lab and has facilitated groups at Humber College, Ryerson University, York University, Halliburton School of the Arts, Leviathan Studio (BC), The Field Centre (Vermont) as well as teaching privately and in her local communities.
Lesley is an active member in good standing of the College of Massage Therapists of Ontario (CMTO) and the Ontario Association of Osteopathic Manual Practitioners (OAO). She has a 27-year clinical practice currently based in Guelph – the traditional territory of the Attawandron, Chonnonton, Neutral Peoples which is also the treaty land of the Mississauga’s of the New Credit and part of the Dish with One Spoon Territory.