About Sheri

Sheri Bortz, MD was born in 1950, and raised on the south side of Chicago. She did her undergraduate work at the University of Ill., Champaign-Urbana, and then attended Medical School at Washington University in St. Louis, MO. As a child she loved the study of biology and considered a career in medical research. During her clinical years she discovered she had a gift for working with people. She shifted gears into primary care medicine, a decision she has never regretted.

For the first eight years of practice Dr. Bortz worked with low income people at various non-profit Bay Area clinics. Eventually the politics of non-profit medicine tired her, and she has been doing a mixture of primary care and urgent care in the private sector ever since. Her current practice is at Blosson Ridge Medical Group in Los Gatos, CA.

Always curious, and never convinced that the Western medical system had all the answers, Dr. Bortz explored the uses of acupressure massage, interactive guided imagery, psychosynthesis, and process-oriented psychotherapy in the healing process. She eventually got a master’s degree in Transpersonal Psychology from The Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, CA. The studies there helped her bring together everything she had been learning.

Dr. Bortz started practicing yoga in 1988 under the guidance of some of the top local Iyengar yoga teachers, Lolly Font and Elise Miller. It was a slow start for this plodding yoga student, but finally the fire of yoga practice ignited, and she participated in workshops, attended conferences, and finally decided to teach yoga. In 2002 Dr. Bortz earned her yoga teaching credential from yoga teacher and physical therapist, Joyce Anue in the South Bay’s YES yoga teacher training.

In Joyce’s training Dr. Bortz was exposed to forms of yoga other than Iyengar. She had the wonderful experience of doing a five-day workshop with Desikachar, a teacher from India, who teaches a form of yoga called Viniyoga that focuses on gentle movements coordinated with the breath. She now takes classes with an Iyengar-based teacher in Campbell, CA, Linda Bostrom, and explores yoga in her daily practice at home. Dr. Bortz teaches a synthesis of Iyengar and Viniyoga.

Dr. Bortz has over 30 years of experience in the primary care field and integrates Western allopathic medicine with her knowledge of psychology, yoga, and other healing systems. She has a true passion for the study and teaching of yoga. As a yoga student and teacher she has found a path for self-development and has the joy of sharing with her students the knowledge accrued through years of study and practice.