Hi! I’m Mariana.

Psychotherapist, Yoga Teacher, Life & Mindfulness Coach and Founder of Alive as Life.

“Attune to the peace and balance within you, and let yourself live the life you love.”

– Mariana

Alive as Life

Alive as Life is a practice of coming home to your body and to the life moving within you.
It’s about attuning to your breath, your heart, and the quiet wisdom of your being — so you can live in alignment with who you truly are.

We are nature itself: whole, complete, and inseparable from life. There is nothing to fix, nothing missing.
As my teacher, Mark Whitwell reminds us: “You are the power of the cosmos.”

Alive as Life represents freedom — the freedom to trust your body, meet yourself with compassion, and live the life that wants to move through you.

The Heart of My Work

My work weaves together two paths of healing and self-discovery:

  • Yoga: a practice of intimacy with life, reminding us that we are already whole, just as we are.

  • Psychotherapy: a compassionate, grounded space to meet our experiences, patterns, and pain with awareness and presence.

Together, these practices reconnect us to the body — the source of memory, emotion, and truth. From that rooted place, therapy and yoga become alive, real, and embodied. We don’t just talk about life; we feel it, breathe it, and live it.

Guiding principles:

  • The body, mind and spirit are not separate, they are one.

  • You are already whole.

  • The body is wisdom, always communicating.

  • Change is not about becoming someone new, but letting go of what does not belong.

  • Cultivating, as opposed to ‘fixing’.

My Journey

For many years, I carried the question: What am I even here for?
At times, I couldn’t find a reason to live.

Over a decade ago, I left Mexico and moved to New Zealand — searching for safety, freedom, and a life that felt true. I left behind cultural and familial patterns, and in the quiet of solitude began to discover who I really was.

I tried many paths, shifting careers and directions, always searching for “purpose.” It wasn’t until I immersed myself in yoga, meditation, and psychotherapy that something changed. These practices brought me into rhythm with my own heart — a sense of wholeness, safety, and aliveness I had been seeking all along.

I realized I had been looking outside of myself — in countries, careers, and beliefs — when the truth was already within me: I am life itself, whole and complete.

Now, I hold space for others to discover this same truth in themselves. Together, we listen deeply, meet the parts that hurt, and move toward experiencing life as full, alive, and real.

Qualifications & Training

  • Yoga Teacher (500 YTT) — The Heart of Yoga with Mark Whitwell.

  • Humanistic Therapist — Gestalt & Person-Centred Psychotherapy, Humanistic Institute of Gestalt Psychotherapy.

  • Certified Transformative Coach — International Coaching Federation.

  • Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Teacher — Mindfulness Training Institute & Mindfulness Aotearoa.

  • Science of Wellbeing Course — Yale University.

A little more about me.

I am originally from Mexico, lived seven years in New Zealand, and now call Fiji home. Earlier in life, I took a path in accounting and finance before realizing this wasn’t my calling. When I’m not teaching or in session, you’ll often find me dancing, playing, or swimming in the ocean.

  • Smiling woman in a wetsuit taking a selfie on the beach with waves and a partly cloudy sky in the background.
  • A man and woman playing and laughing on a sandy beach with cliffs and trees in the background.
  • Woman in a blue dress and wide-brimmed hat standing in a lavender field with mountains in the background.
  • Girl in a wide-brimmed hat wearing a blue shirt petting a brown horse outdoors on a sunny day.
  • A woman with curly hair stands on the deck of a boat with her arms raised, facing the ocean under a blue sky.

"Listening is the oldest and perhaps the most powerful tool of healing. It is often through the quality of our listening and not the wisdom of our words that we are able to effect the most profound changes in the people around us. When we listen, we offer with our attention an opportunity for wholeness. Our listening creates sanctuary for the homeless parts within the other person. That which has been denied, unloved, devalued by themselves and others. That which is hidden. In this culture the soul and the heart too often go homeless. Listening creates a holy silence. When you listen generously to people, they can hear the truth in themselves, often for the first time. And in the silence of listening, you can know yourself in everyone. Eventually you may be able to hear, in everyone and beyond everyone, the unseen singing softly to itself and to you.”

– Rachel Naomi Remen