Tom founded Praksis. He is passionate about community building and genuine inclusivity — an ethos that permeates the culture at Praksis.
Tom played rugby, cricket and many other sports throughout his youth. In his college and university years, he suffered recurrent shoulder subluxations, bone spurs with labral tears in both hips and stress fractures in his lumbar spine. Tom had little success rehabilitating these injuries with conventional therapies and would ultimately experience chronic hip, back and shoulder pain for almost a decade.
In 2015, Tom encountered two teachers, Ido Portal and Simon Thakur, who exposed him to the concept of movement practice. He spent the next seven years intensively studying and practising movement under their guidance, using a wide array of training modalities to overcome his chronic injuries without medical or surgical intervention.
After graduating from the Australian National University’s PhB (Hons) program with a philosophy major in 2017, Tom founded Praksis to provide a home for Canberrans interested in better understanding themselves, addressing pain and discomfort, and improving their experience of being in a body.
In 2022, Tom started working as an adviser to the ACT’s first independent Senator, David Pocock, having seen the positive impact his community-driven approach to politics was having on people across Canberra.
In 2024, he co-founded Independents for Canberra, a grassroots political group supporting independent candidates running in the ACT Election.
Tom became an Independent Member of the ACT Legislative Assembly for the electorate of Kurrajong in October 2024. He has since handed over management of the studio to a new team that emerged from within the Praksis community.
Find Tom on Instagram here.
Watch Tom tell the Praksis origin story here.