Witold Fitz-Simon is a nationally certified teacher of the Alexander Technique, a certified teacher of yoga in the tradition of Donald Moyer and B. K. S. Iyengar, and a published author and blogger. He maintains an active teaching practice in the Alexander Technique and Yoga in Manhattan and Brooklyn, New York.
After growing up in England and Brazil, Witold Fitz-Simon moved to the United States in 1985 to study film at NYU’s prestigious Tisch School of the Arts where he was awarded a BFA, graduating with honors. He began to study yoga and meditation as an antidote to a stressful career in the entertainment industry. Taking advantage of the wealth of yoga available to New Yorkers, he began studying with yoga teacher and choreographer Colleen Winney. He followed that with several years of study at the world-renowned Jivamukti Yoga Center, immersing himself in their physically intense and devotional style of vinyasa.
After a short period studying the Ashtanga Vinyasa Primary Series with Eddie Stern and a subsequent knee injury, Fitz-Simon retreated from the classroom to practice on his own with BKS Iyengar’s seminal book, “Light on Yoga.” A year of solitary practice led him to the Iyengar Yoga Institute of New York. There he felt an immediate connection to Mr. Iyengar’s way of working. For six years he studied the Iyengar Method closely with one of the Institute’s founding teachers, Robin Janis.
In 2000, Fitz-Simon embraced the yoga lifestyle and began teaching yoga full time after a training intensive at the “Yogaville” Integral Yoga Ashram in Virginia, where he was fortunate enough to hear the late, world-renowned Swami Satchidananda teach on several occasions. Even as he began his own teaching career, he continued his training in the Iyengar method, apprenticing with and assisting Robin Janis.
In 2006, Witold discovered the teachings of long-time student of B. K. S. Iyengar, Donald Moyer. He fell in love with Donald’s intelligent and compassionate expression of Iyengar Yoga and began to take yearly trips to California to continue to study with Donald and Mary Lou Weprin, and in 2012 he graduated from the Yoga Room, Berkeley‘s Advanced Studies Program.
After continued struggles with a back injury sustained early on in his career in the entertainment business, Witold discovered the Alexander Technique. At the urging of his teacher, Jessica Wolf, Witold enrolled in the 1,600 hour, three year training at the American Center for the Alexander Technique (ACAT) to become a teacher of the Alexander Technique, and graduated in 2013.
Witold is author of the “Yoga Practice Journal” and “Practicing Freedom: The Yoga Sutra of Patañjali” published by Dedo Press. His instructional website “Yoga: Art+Science” is visited by more than 90,000 readers annually and read in over 20 countries.