Mai Garbizu
With curiosity and enthusiasm, Mai has being fully engaged in the ancient practices of yoga since 2006.
Through her curiosity, enthusiasm and devotion she creates a unique path of integrating yoga into life, which she shares from the heart with simplicity and a sense of humor. About Mai
Mai Garbizu is an architect – yoga lover – mother of a wonderful young girl, who lives a simple life
in Formentera island, where she is known as Yoga Slow Flow.
Born in the Caribbean into a family from northern Spain, she grew up playing barefoot between
cultures, weathers and life rhythms; developing a big connection to nature, body movement and
the arts that nourish the soul.
She atended her first yoga class some 25 years ago, getting instantly hooked by the after effects
of the practice, ever since yoga has become fundamental in her life.
Mai has practiced for many years traditional hatha yoga: Sivananda, Iyengar, Ashtanga, Yoga
Nidra, and Dharma Yoga under the guidance of great yoga masters, but the greatest teacher has
being constant self practice.
She teaches Breath Based Yoga, a slow flow Vinyasa focused on the movement of the breath, a
technique that silents the mind and sharpens concentration.
The classes are customized to the practitioner’s experience through asana variations, verbal
instructions, alignment tips, props and hands on assistance.
Each session is different, blending ancient techniques of self realization: meditation, breath work,
vibration and visualization to a choreographic sequence of asanas and guided relaxation.
Expect some serious, fun and playful practices with blissful effects…
In Mai’s Words
I was born in the city of eternal spring, Caracas. All my childhood memories are bathed in the bright and joyfully colored light of the tropics. I grew up surrounded by exuberant nature, climbing mango trees and playing on endless sandy beaches on the shores of the Caribbean Sea. These experiences awakened in me a love for mother earth and a deep respect for the wisdom of nature.
From my Basque father, my Cantabrian mother and my grandparents, I learned the spirit of exploration, curiosity and courage. Guided by them, I soon discovered the depth and beauty of art, which led me to study as an Erasmus in Paris, before graduating in Higher Architecture.
My teachers at the architecture school taught me, between calculations and design submissions, that knowledge is only one and that all paths lead to this unique knowledge.
At this stage I got to know the conscious breathing exercises and began to practice them daily, it was at that moment that I had the first realizations of the power of breathing as a connection between the physical and the metaphysical.
I discovered Yoga during a brief stay in Caracas, while working as an architect in London. A dear friend invited me to do a Yoga class with her teacher, the renowned Butoh dancer, Juan Carlos Linares. Yoga was love at first sight, a first contact that changed my life forever.
It was while I was living in Tokyo, with a scholarship from the Japanese government as an architecture researcher, when a crisis due to Crohn’s disease that had been with me for years led me to stop everything and return to my home in Barcelona. There, an emergency abdominal surgery and a long postoperative period marked the moment of making a definitive life change.
The search for integral health led me to meditation and it was at that moment that the daily practice of Yoga settled in my life as a source of health, connection and happiness.
From that moment I live an intense transformation in constant evolution, which nourishes my path of integration of Yoga in life.
Years later in Barcelona, a friend took me to practice with a teacher who came from New York and that’s how I met Andrei Ram Om. That day something magical happened, Andrei offered a class that was just like my self-practice and I had the feeling that I had always belonged to the lineage of Hatha-Raja Yoga and that I had finally come home.
With Andrei Ram Om and his teacher Sri Dharma Mittra, I have learned the determination of Yoga in sweetness. I have recovered the playful vision of childhood and I have felt the connection with nature again.
Since then I have been blessed to share more than 3,500 hours of Yoga teachings, mainly in Barcelona, Switzerland and Greece.
Currently I live a simple life with my family, Manu and our daughter Irati, on the island of Formentera. From where I share the freedom and beauty of Yoga in training and retreats inside and outside of Spain.
My Experience
Since 2007 I have guided +3000 hours of yoga classes, workshops & retreats in Spain
(Catalonia and the Balearic Islands) and Europe (Geneva, Athens and Thessaloniki).
Since 2010 I have had the honor of practicing with Andrei Ram Om and Sri. dharma mittra,
with whom I have done +800 hours of study in the lineage of Hatha Raja Yoga.
2013 Certification by the Generalitat de Catalunya as a Yoga Instructor.
2017 International Certification as Expert Yoga Alliance Continuing Education Provider E_YACEP 200h.
2018 and 2019 Director and main teacher of the deepening course SER, La Sala de Yoga, Barcelona.
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