“Studying with Maritza is like entering the Harvard School of Yoga” -Yogi Times
Embodying 40 years of living Yoga and exploring it’s many forms Maritza brings the gift of presence and a rare wealth of experience to her teaching. A lifelong student, she was originally Certified as an Iyengar-Yoga Teacher in 1989 and later continued in 2000 as a Certified Anusara-Yoga Teacher. Well-known as one of Northern California most influential teachers, for the consistent depth of practice her classes deliver, she has quietly remained under the social-media-radar, yet she has inspired countless seasoned yogis, and trained many prominent yoga instructors over the last 30 years.
A French-American, born and raised in France, Maritza has lived -and taught Yoga in the San Francisco Bay for over three decades. As a young adult, she initially trained and worked as a professional stage actor in Paris and later NYC, before heeding a profound calling in 1981 which sent her on a life-changing, six-month solo journey to India, where she returned thereafter to study nearly yearly, through a period that lasted eighteen years.
Sought after for her intimate understanding and articulate instruction of yoga’s core energetics and bio-mechanics, Maritza teaches with clarity, focus and intensity, wrapped in light-hearted humour and authenticity, and she imparts these same qualities in her students. Besides her robust yoga credentials and extensive training, Maritza also draws on forty years of diligent Vipassana meditation practice, combined with a strong interest in psychosomatics and a passion in human development, to inform her teaching.
Insightful and engaging, fierce and fragile, soulful and snazzy... Maritza is known as a catalyst for transformation. If you study with her, she will empower you to penetrate your body and your life to untapped depths of inner vitality, courage, intuition, healing and continuous inspiration, through the subtle, profound and dynamic Force that is Yoga. (…all with style!)
Maritza resides on a hilltop in Marin County CA, and spends several months per year in Bali -her second home. She was the Award-winning creator of two best-seller Yoga DVDs, produced by Gaiam in the early 2000’s.
