Hiroshi began practicing yoga 10 years ago, after leaving a job as an editor at a magazine. Yoga become a core element of his life as he abandoned Tokyo and moved to Hokkaido, northernmost Japan, to spend time in nature in a quest for Ainu culture, botanical knowledge and esoteric philosophies. Eventually taking up work again in an office in Sapporo, Hiroshi found an antidote to renewed office stress in the form of Sivananda style yoga, making it his escape route for deep relaxation.
Unfortunately, Hiroshi stopped his yoga practice when his instructor went back to India. A year later, exhausted from his office work, he met a new teacher who put him in touch with Tantric yoga and meditation, from which Hiroshi discovered the powerful effects of pranayama and kriya.
Later returning to Tokyo, Hiroshi started Ashtanga Vinyasa yoga practice. But it was only about one year later that, while practicing back-bending, Hiroshi had a strange feeling in his back. The next morning he could not get up out of bed. He could barely do asana and for 3 months he could not sit in a meditation posture at all. Coming in contact with a new yoga teacher, Hiroshi began to learn yoga again, this time through his own lower-back pain. His main focus became therapeutic yoga, body alignment, shatkarma (Hatha yogic purification, like fasting) and especially, awareness of being.
Just as his lower back pain was finally disappearing, Hiroshi met a yogi in Tokyo and the next month went to India to see him again. Hiroshi was introduced to Hatha Kundalini yogi and found a similarity in technique focused on pranayama, kriya and meditation. This newest contact with the world of yoga convinced Hiroshi that the time had come to share his own experience in yoga and he resolved to become a teacher.
In Sept. 2005 Hiroshi completed the YogaArts Level 1 Teacher Training Course certification at YogaJaya, acquiring basic yoga knowledge on everything from asanas to meditation, philosophy and anatomy. Upon completion of the intensive course he was certified as a registered yoga teacher by the Yoga Alliance. Continuing further in his professional studies, in Feb. 2007, Hiroshi completed certification in a Restorative Teacher Training Course at Sun and Moon Yoga. The focus was on deep relaxation techniques, including the use of props.
Hiroshi’s classes are best characterized as covering free-style vinyasa, body alignment, meditation deepened by the effects of asanas, pranayamas and kriyas, as well as deep relaxation through appropriate prop usage. His teaching reflects his own organic and natural lifestyle. In addition to yoga, Hiroshi has completed certification in perma-culture design. He also loves music and studies music theory as a vehicle to deepen yoga’s effects through the incorporation of music in a natural and organic environment.
Hiroshi has studied with various teachers including Nozomi Tsukamoto, Sytze Enteres, Arvind Pujee, Dominica Serigano, Danny Paradise, Emil Wendel, Lucy Roberts and Leza Lowitz.
