+ yogi
+ teacher
+ author
+ mother
MAE
English-Japanese speaker, bilingual/bicultural.
Globe-trotter & native Tokyo-ite.
Home is where my heart feels free.
I don’t feel time, most of the time.
+YOGI
Too many Big Questions early on in life made me sick. Sickness led me to yoga. Yoga gave me a spine ... to my posture and to my quest. India called me. I fell in love. Like a long-lost mother, She took me in; and took me to timeless states of meditation. It’s a state where I am comfortable with the unknowingness of becoming. I like being there.
+TEACHER
First & only Japanese woman to become an authorized Ashtanga yoga teacher by Sri K. Pattabhi Jois (2006)—but really, I am forever a student at heart.
After ten years in Omotesando, the heart of the fashion district in Tokyo, I moved my studio Veda Tokyo fully online (2021). We offer yoga, meditation, and food-life classes oriented towards holistic health & improved quality of life.
As adidas Training Academy (aTA) Japan Director of Yoga since 2016, my passion is to distill, package, and deliver the essence of traditional yoga practice to the public.
+AUTHOR
The pen is my sword, my mic, and my love.
I always knew, but it took me 30 years to realize.
Ashtanga Yoga Basics with Mae Yoshikawa (2013) is an educational handbook on the method of Ashtanga yoga published by NHK, Japan’s national broadcasting organization. This book is an extension of NHK educational TV’s two-part program featuring me as yoga instructor. Hadashi-no-mamade (2010) is a compilation of my blogs & essays, a chronicle of my authentic & modern yogic lifestyle.
Wrote a regular column on yoga lifestyle in Japanese Yogini magazine for 10 years—and loved connecting with my readers that way.
First book in English—Kizuki—coming soon.
+MOTHER
Still, the thing that I love most, and think I am best at, is being a mom to my two awesome boys. I had natural births with both of them—the second one in my bathtub at home.
May they grow up watching mama live to her fullest potential—may I live to be such an example.
May they think big, dream bigger, and smile EVEN bigger—knowing they never had to earn or prove their self-worth, to anyone.
May they see me live with Integrity, first and foremost, true unto myself, and ever-ready to keep boldly redefining what that looks like. Because evolution is our nature, and Joy is my guide ... as it is theirs ... and yours.
