MONICA MARINONI

Monica was born in Milano, Italy, in 1961. After completing her studies at the High School of Visual Arts there in 1980, and having also been studying ballet and contemporary dance for several years, she started working as a dancer, dance teacher and later on as an interior and industrial designer.

A few years later her travels took her to South America first and to East Asia later. In 1985 in Sri Lanka she came across Vipassana meditation during a stay at a local monastery, and back in Italy she continued her studies at the International Meditation Center under the guidance of John Coleman in the lay tradition of Sayagyi U Ba Khin. For 9 years she studied, worked and taught there, studying at the same time for a degree in English Literature and a certificate in Hindi.

In 1994 she graduated with a thesis in Indo-Anglian Literature, after having worked for a few years as a translator of Anglo-Indian authors for different publishing houses in Italy. Next, she started a family.

In 1995 she moved to Auroville, an intentional spiritual community located in South India, where she has been living for the last 12 years working in different areas and raising her two sons.

In the same year she also had her first introduction to yoga, but it wasn't until 1999 that she begun the study of ashtanga yoga with Karen Haberman, and continued in the years to come studying in Asia and the States with different teachers, among whom Tim Miller, Rolf Naujokat, Dena Kingsberg, David Swenson, Gerald Disse, Chad Herst and since 2001 under the guidance of Sri K. Pattabhi Jois and his grandson Sharat at the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute in Mysore, India.

In 2003 she started teaching ashtanga yoga to children in Auroville. In 2004 she opened the Ashtanga Yoga Auroville with Chad Herst, where she has been teaching for the last 4 years, running a regular daily Mysore style program in the mornings, teaching teenagers in the afternoons and also offering Patanjali Yoga Sutras chanting classes.

Monica has received Guruji and Sharath's blessings and authorization to teach. With deep gratitude and respect she shares the teachings as she has been taught by them.