About Marcia Monroe

Marcia Monroe brings a lifetime of experience to her teaching - both as a practitioner and seeker of yoga and as a student with scoliosis. She grew up in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil where her mother always emphasized the importance of movement, and body awareness related to good posture. She trained as a dancer from a young age, and was introduced to yoga early in life.

She is a student of Shri B.K.S. Iyengar, whose teachings and methodology deeply impacted her from the physical to the most subtle and metaphysical layers. She remembers one experience in his institute, “He was demonstrating a pose called uttanasana (forward flexion/extension) and teaching about the ribs in relation to the centerline. He said that one side was moving away from the soul and the other side was moving toward the soul. And in the end he said: you should embody the pose from the soul, not from the brain.” 

Her book YOGA AND SCOLIOSIS: A JOUNEY TO HEALTH AND HEALING has been blessed with a foreword from Shri B.K.S. Iyengar.

Marcia’s classes are not one-size-fits-all, they are based on self study (svadhyaya) and may challenge expectations: they require openness to learn with an expanded heart. While scoliosis or asymmetries are complex to teach as they are an individual journey, Marcia expertly holds space for her students’ growth from her own experience through the means of yoga. She also teaches general classes and children in New York City.

In the West she studied somatic movement with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, under whom she learned the importance of motor and perceptual development movement as the foundation for neuromuscular and psychophysical integration. This was a profound way to understand scoliosis, as was the Feldenkrais method of learning from a somatic experience. Marcia believes that learning processes are dynamic and fresh in a constant state of transformation. She attends and has presented at scientific conferences around the world and continues to learn anatomy, physiology, and daily yoga philosophy.

Above all, Marcia believes that a daily yoga practice is the key for self study, self management and transformation, through which we learn how to take responsibility for ourselves and find new possibilities.

She is based in New York City where she teaches Iyengar Yoga for asymmetry and scoliosis classes as well as conducting workshops internationally in Europe, East Asia, India, Brazil, USA and New Zealand. She is currently writing her second book titled Searching For The Spine!