Amanda.
authorised level 2 teacher SYC

born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela, she has been living in Europe for about 16 years. she moved to Milan when she was 20 and did her bachelor’s and masters’ degree in Architecture at Politecnico di Milano; later on, she worked there as an architect and in international cooperation before moving to Paris in 2013.

she started practicing ashtanga yoga in 2008 at La Yoga Shala in Milan and she hasn’t stopped ever since, that’s about 17 years (some people like the numbers).

in Paris, while doing her PhD at La Sorbonne, she was encouraged by her dear local teachers Linda and Gérald to start teaching and thus a whole new journey started to shape up in front of her. what started as a practice that stabilized her system and allowed her to navigate studies and work with more grace and less drama became an integrative part of her life which transformed into service.

since 2018 she travels to Mysore to study under the guidance of Sharath Jois whom in silence but with clarity has given her plenty: her breath, gaze and internal observation of her/their bodies get a lot of information every time she practices with him and this reverberates in her home shala when teaching. she received his authorisation (level 2) at the beginning of 2024 reinforcing her commitment and love for this practice.

Amanda has a mentor, deliberately chosen when she was ready, one she sought but that she waited for. her name is Angela Jamison and she is the best guide she has encountered so far in the west. AJ teaches in Ann Arbor (Michigan) and nurtures a few relationships abroad bringing clarity and compassion to other teachers’ works through her radical and clean insight. there is nothing authoritarian nor patriarchal in her teaching: it is honest, direct and compassionate.

Amanda likes to study, there is nowhere we can hide that, so she is a fierce student of Chase Bossart’s yoga sutras classes and has learnt to chant and study texts traditionally with Jayashree and Narasimhan in Mysore. all of this knowledge, as many know, is ungraspable - even useless - outside of the framework of a daily practice so her nerdy tendencies have been controlled by freeing the rational mind through practice and by deconstructing herself through many other things - therapy and friends included.

one person has taught Amanda to remain a beginner forever: that’s Chuck Miller.
two people have taught her everything she knows about ayurveda: Kate O’Donnell and Dr. Padmini Ranganathan. this science complements beautifully her practice.

Amanda also has a sitting-dogma-free practice. for a long time she had a serious pranayama program that followed Sri Tiwari’s lineage which eventually allowed her to feel ready to meditate, that’s when she found zazen. nowadays, she just sits.

informal settlements have been major gurus in Amanda’s life, also the place where she met the love of her life and partner-in-everything Giacomo. the barrios  have taught her decolonization, to appreciate local mastery, to respect, to step away, to be kind and loving, to launch revolutions - mostly internal ones - through relationships. it is within these contexts that both Giacomo and Amanda started to question important choices in their lives and where they began to build together a set of values that still stands today in an evolving way.

Amanda learns from Giacomo every day, their relationship is awakened, alive and conscious, nourished by the vows they said to each other and by them showing up for both of their personal growths.

Amanda has other interests outside of yoga, many actually: architecture, art, cinema, books, cats, feminism, drag queens, hiking, swims, family, fashion (who would have thought), traveling, cooking, writing, ayurveda, menstrual cycle, balconies, astrology, chocolate.


a few phrases Amanda likes these days:

when you pray, move your feet (african proverb)

when the mind is calm, FOMO cannot exist (AJ)

empty the asana, fill it with prana (A&G).

my grandmother’s prayers are still being listened.

love is a bet, a wild one, placed on freedom. not my own; the freedom of the other (Octavio Paz).