Michèle Anne Barocchi
RESEARCHER, YOGA TEACHER & FOUNDER OF INBODHI FIRENZE
She holds a PhD in Infectious Diseases & Immunology from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Master of Public Health, and has devoted over twenty years to scientific research and global health.
Her academic career took her between the United States and Brazil, where she led a molecular epidemiology group studying immune biomarkers of childhood pneumonia and collaborated with the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. Her work has been published in 45+ peer-reviewed scientific papers and presented at major conferences in immunology and infectious diseases.
Alongside science, Michèle has pursued deep personal and spiritual inquiry, studying and teaching yoga, breathwork, and sound as pathways to awareness and healing.
In 2004, she founded It’s Yoga in Florence—today INBODHI Yoga Firenze—where she leads classes and teacher-training programs in the lineage of Rocket Yoga.
Her training is rooted in the vision of Larry Schultz, creator of Rocket Yoga, with whom she practiced in San Francisco over twenty-five years ago. Her first class was Rocket 3, and from that day the practice never left her: “It became a home to return to—teaching me consistency, discipline, lightness, and trust.”
After a serious accident in which she lost her left leg, it was the Rocket sequence that helped her return to the mat. Michèle often shares how that experience taught her to rediscover impermanence and to modify, adapt, and find harmony in a changed body:
“I realized I could change every movement and that—despite everything—the gift remained intact: the possibility to move, to breathe, to be inspired, and perhaps to inspire others.”
Today Michèle weaves science, yoga, and awareness, creating spaces for profound growth and transformation. She is President and Co-founder of MAPS Italia, the European affiliate of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), and has completed formal training in MDMA-assisted therapy and ketamine-assisted therapy at the Polaris Insight Center in San Francisco.
Alongside yoga, she is a Transformational Breath® Group Leader and a Certified Vedic Chant teacher, integrating the power of breath and sound in both individual and group work.
Her inquiry—scientific and spiritual—centers on the meeting point of body, mind, and consciousness: a bridge between medicine, psychology, and contemplative practice.
In every context, Michèle invites people to live yoga as an ongoing process of transformation: a practice that begins on the mat and extends into daily life, nurturing empathy, humility, and inner freedom.
For her, Rocket Yoga is not just a discipline but a metaphor for life. As her friend Larry would say, “Watch a pose appear and disappear”—a reminder that everything changes, and every ending contains a beginning.
She continues to teach and train new teachers through the INBODHI method, advancing a vision of yoga as a tool for personal growth, authentic connection, and service to the world—an approach that blends rigor, presence, and kindness, and gently points us back to awareness rather than perfection.