Born to a Japanese artist father and a sensitive Austrian mother, Aoba was raised as the youngest daughter in a family with four other brothers and sisters. She was raised Japanese-style, in Tokyo’s Machida City ward.
Strongly influenced by her parents, Aoba was exposed to a variety of artwork from childhood, coming to appreciate art as a readily accessible part of her life. Through this organic art-appreciation process, she became interested in classical ballet, moving gradually from learning ballet to experimenting with a variety of genres of modern dance, jazz dance, hip-hop, and cheer dance. Diversity in body expression and the relationship between the physical and psychological have always been centers of curiosity for Aoba, remaining a central theme of her life interests.
As a small girl, Aoba spent one to two months of every summer in a mountain cottage in Nagano prefecture, living without television or telephones, thereby coming to love spending time immersed in nature. This childhood experience led Aoba to sense that one can become deeply inspired by nature and can truly relax by connecting with the energies of nature, such as the warmth of the trees and the power of the oceans.
Aoba sees it as essential to live as one with nature, receiving inspiration from nature as an essential element in her life. At the same time, she also sees art to be deeply inspired by and generated from nature.
Aoba’s fortuitous personal exposure to taichi and yoga in her teenage years also led her to become interested in diet, daily rhythm, breath, and the ideal of experimentation in general. The result was a realization that body and mind are indeed deeply connected, helping her to at the same time recognize and appreciate the importance of simplicity. Aoba’s experiences led her to the inevitable conclusion that some things that might at first glance appear to be useless are actually essential, while other things that might seem indispensable can truly be hugely unnecessary and wasteful.
These realizations have led her to seek to maximize her body’s mechanical functionality to perform better than any physical instrument, while living with the confidence of knowing that the simplest things are usually the truest expression of the way things should truly be. Aoba continues to pursue and refine her methods for approaching life in this way, while at the same time seeking to help others approach life positively through yoga. For her, yoga is a road to the elimination of wastefulness that allows her to travel deeply within herself. Aoba has found that all answers can be found within oneself, rather than through inaccurate and superficial comparisons with others.
Lifestyle, dance, and yoga have become completely interconnected in Aoba’s life, making her what she is today. She has deepened her understanding of yoga by completing the YogaJaya International Intensive Teacher Training course, and she is dedicated to permanently continuing her inquiry into life. Aoba is a YogaJaya Accredited Teacher (YJAT) and a Registered Yoga Teacher (RYT) with the Yoga Alliance.
