Faye Villalba

After working for nearly 20 years as a feature film production coordinator in London and Madrid, Faye moved to the Côte d'Azur some 20 years ago, where she continued to deepen her existing yoga practice with Christian Pisano and his wife, June Whitaker, two of the best Iyengar teachers in Europe. 

When Faye and her husband adopted their daughter in 2005, she decided to "retire" from the film business and to turn her passion for yoga into a career. Around that same time Faye came across the teachings of Vanda Scaravelli, who studied for many years with B.K.S. Iyengar before establishing her own, innovative approach to yoga through the proper alignment and “awakening” of the spine. Faye found this hugely inspiring and went on to attend numerous workshops with different teachers Scaravelli had trained, notably Diane Long and Sophy Hoare.

Faye talks about how her decision to teach was born of a desire to share the extraordinary benefits of yoga. She herself had turned to yoga when going through an extremely painful period of life, battling with the frustration of infertility and numerous highly stressful cycles of IVF. 

In her words: "the most amazing thing about yoga was that my body (which had so stubbornly refused to do what a ‘normal’ female body is supposed to do) started transforming and literally ‘bending’ itself to my will. Within a relatively short space of time I started to feel myself become more supple, stronger (an incredible feeling for someone with weak wrists and ankles!), and more aware. At first I found it difficult to feel the much-cited ‘union’ between body and mind, as I was so busy concentrating on the postures; but as soon as these started to become more familiar I did indeed begin to find peace, firstly in my practice and then gradually in my everyday life."