From an early age she practiced Zazen (sit still) as a daily meditation in her hometown of Sapporo, Japan, where she was raised.

Her calling for yoga happened when she left New York City and moved to Seattle after 9 years in corporate sales.

She studied with Bikram Choudhury (Original Hot Yoga) in 2003, Bryan Kest (Santa Monica Power Yoga) in 2005, and has taught yoga since then.

Since 2005, she has spent 10 days on a silent retreat in the tradition of Vipassana Meditation, which requires 11 hours of daily sitting for 10 days without talking and half-fasting, and deepened her meditation practice by returning to the retreat every year.

Her other specialties include Pre-Natal Yoga (trained by Colette Crawford at Seattle Holistic Center in 2009, also at 8 limbs yoga in Seattle in 2005), Yin Yoga which consists of series of long held (3 to 10 minutes) postures which she is trained in by Paul Grilley (2010) and Bryan Kest (2005), also Yoga for People living with MS.

From 2007 to 2009, Saiko was an active member and volunteer instructor of Yoga Behind Bars, a non profit organization to help bring yoga to incarcerated people. She has held weekly class and special workshops for fundraising, as well as taught yoga to female inmates at King County Jail in Seattle.

She was also the first ambassador of Lululemon Athletica, the yoga wear company based in Canada, when the first store in Washington State was opened in 2007. As an ambassador, she held free yoga class in the storefront in University Village (Seattle) every Sunday for a year.

In November 2008, she made a pilgrimage to India, where she spent 6 months exploring the country and deepened her yoga and meditation practice. She has studied at Yoga Institute (Mumbai), the oldest yoga school in the world, and Iyengar Yoga Shala (Mumbai). During this time, she has travelled to South India and had a blessing of teaching yoga to Tibetan refugees in Mungod, India, and also had an honor of meeting His Holiness the Dalai Lama the 14th for his teaching in his residence in Dalamsala (Northern India) and received his blessing. She also spent two weeks in Rishkesh, “the yoga capitol of the world” located in northern part of India, and attended yoga classes and daily aarti (sunset rituals) ,practiced yoga in the form of Mantra, and meditated by the holy river of Ganga.

Before she returned to the US, she spent a month in Japan in 2009 and had honor of sharing the art and benefit of yoga with her own parents and Japanese people.

Becoming a parent of a daughter who was born in November 2009 has given her another joy and new dimension to her own life and yoga practice.

You can find her at Sentinel Athletics in Everett, where she is a co-owner and trainer of the fitness program, at Embrace The Moon in Ballard for her unique Yin Yoga program, or at  Bikram Yoga Seattle in Fremont (Seattle) and West Seattle as one of the senior teachers there. She also holds private sessions sharing yoga and conditioning with people with various conditions. She has taught and shared her joy of yoga with students ages 0 to 95 years old, from completely healthy individuals, to the ones with many chronic illnesses, cancers, or mental issues.

Yoga is for everyone and the door should be open to everybody. From day-one you will feel the benefit.

Her most recent accomplishment is to become certified as a Level 1 Crossfit Trainer in August 2011. She is resuming her unique “Functional Fitness” classes which contain intense strength trainings followed by long deep stretching of yoga postures.

Saiko’s teaching is authentic, unique, caring and strong.