MARAY SUTTI PICQ

The body as a question

Before yoga, there was the body itself as a question, a playground, a way of understanding the world.

As a teenager, I studied theatre, and it was there that I first understood the body as something to be inhabited, not just used. That early exploration opened a door I never closed. Over the years that followed, I moved through capoeira, contemporary dance, aerial silks, trapeze and rock climbing, each one teaching me something different about strength, risk, expression and attention. I was not looking for a discipline yet. I was playing, in the truest sense: letting the body lead and following where it took me.

Eventually, that play began to settle into practices that could hold it all: yoga, Pilates, and disciplines that build strength while also supporting mobility and release. Not because the earlier explorations were left behind, but because I had found a way to gather them into something sustainable, something I could return to for a lifetime. The body, I came to understand, is not only a tool for movement. It is a first door, to a deeper knowledge of oneself, of others, and of how we move through the world.

A practice that became my own

When I first came to yoga, what captivated me was the peace I could find there. The teachers would play mantras, and I felt them calm my mind and caress my heart. Everything felt quiet. Everything felt at home. That feeling kept me coming back.

For me, it was not a single moment. It was a slow accumulation of years, questions, and a willingness to stay with what I did not yet understand.

I began practicing yoga in 2001. I was not looking for a career. I was looking for something I could not name. A way of being in my body that felt true. A way of being with my mind that did not require escaping it. I found that in a practice that asked me to show up again and again, not to become better at postures, but to become more honest with myself.

Over the years, that practice took me through different traditions. Ashtanga, in my early years, gave me structure and discipline. Hatha gave me steadiness. The precision of the Iyengar approach taught me to see details I had been missing. Biomechanics gave me a language for what the body is actually doing. And philosophy gave me a way to think about what it all means. More recently, I completed my training as a sports coach, accredited by the French Ministry of Sports, a formal recognition of something I had been practicing all along: understanding the body not just through tradition, but through science.

I studied with teachers who profoundly inspired the way I teach, particularly Dona Holleman and Maty Ezraty. Each offered me a different way of paying attention. Later, my meditation practice was deepened through the teachings of Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach. They taught me that awareness is not something you achieve, but something you return to, again and again.

Philosophy as a way of looking

Alongside the physical practice, there was also the study of philosophy. I spent five years at the Sorbonne in Paris studying philosophy of yoga, Buddhist philosophy, metaphysics, phenomenology, and philosophy of science. That training taught me to examine assumptions, to follow an argument to its end, to question what others accept without examination. It transformed how I read the Yoga Sutras, the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads. Not as dogma, but as living texts that ask us to think, not just believe.

How I teach today

None of these influences fit neatly into one box. And at some point I stopped trying to make them fit. Instead, I began to integrate. To let the practice become my own. Not by inventing something new, but by understanding what each tradition, theatrical, physical, philosophical, offers, and finding the thread that connects them.

I teach from a place of long-term practice, not from a fixed method. I am interested in helping students develop their own understanding, not in reproducing a system. I believe the body is not something to dominate, but something to understand. Movement is a way of gathering information. Breath is a way of regulating attention. And the philosophical texts are not relics. They are tools for examining how we live.

In 2001, I started with a question I could not answer. Decades later, I am still asking it. But the question has sharpened. It is no longer about what yoga is. It is about what it can become for each person who practices it with sincerity.

If you are reading this and something in you recognizes that question, you are welcome here. Whether you are a teacher looking to deepen your foundation or a practitioner who has never taught but feels it is time, the invitation is the same. Let us study together. Let the practice reveal what it needs to reveal.