Maya Castillo
Maya found yoga in a church hall in Tijuana, age nineteen, because the gym next door was full and the class cost a dollar. “The teacher was about seventy,” she says. “She adjusted my shoulders once and I felt taller for a week. I went back every day.”
Twenty years later, by way of teacher training in Mysore and a decade of teaching in LA, she leads our Venice studio and most of its Hot 26 schedule. Her classes are known for three things: cues you can actually follow, playlists that shouldn’t work but do, and an unhidden delight when someone gets their first backbend.
Her teaching philosophy fits in a sentence. “I am not here to make shapes happen. I am here to make people brave for ninety minutes, and the shapes follow.”
Ask her students and the answer is usually about precision. Maya teaches the same sequence hundreds of times a year and treats every round like the first. “The series doesn’t change, so I have to. Each room needs something different from me.”
Off the mat she surfs badly and cheerfully, knows every taco stand from Rosarito to Malibu, and will talk you out of buying yoga gear you do not need.
Find Maya on the Venice schedule most mornings at 6:30 and most evenings in the Hot Room. First-timers welcome.
Specialties: Vinyasa Flow, Hot 26, backbends, beginners welcome.