Erik Bendix grew up in Berkeley, California as the son of a sociologist who had escaped Nazi Berlin and an artist who had helped restore ancient pueblo pottery traditions to the American Southwest. As a boy Erik attended the Ecole d'Humanité, a progressive school high in the Swiss Alps. He earned philosophy degrees from Oxford and Princeton. He then worked in alternative education before moving with his wife to a homestead in the Blue Ridge Mountains to raise and homeschool their two children in a log house he designed. Bendix travels the world teaching movement arts, including folkdance from many cultures, movement development from infancy, Alexander Technique, and Body-Mind Centering®. He recently published a book and film about his own approach to finding courage while learning to ski. His translations of Rainer Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies and The Sonnets to Orpheus have appeared in Metamorphoses and Asheville Poetry Review. His own poems have appeared in numerous literary journals.