Hi, My Name Is Elena.
Happy you made it here!
I'm a passionate and experienced yoga, pilates and yoga therapy teacher.
I am a traveller, an explorer and an enthusiastic photographer.
I believe we can all live comfortably in our bodies and feel good.
In my experience we can find yoga everywhere and we can turn everything into a practice of awareness.
My Journey
I was born in Russia, grew up in Israel, and lived in both Panama and Costa Rica before moving to Switzerland, the place I currently call home.
Being a "citizen of the world", from a young age has undoubtedly had no small part in what sparked my love of global exploration, and I remain a perpetually avid traveller, lover of nature as well as an enthusiastic photographer.
Primarily, I am a passionate yoga, pilates, and yoga therapy teacher. My ongoing love affair with these practices started at the age of 17, when constant, chronic back pains led me to seek and subsequently find immediate relief in yoga. My own experience of living with kyphosis and scoliosis inspired me to continue to seek movement and strength-based healing practices, which in turn led to my learning about and becoming certified as both a pilates instructor and yoga therapy teacher.
My holistic understanding of the body was formed by these challenging and cathartic experiences to a great extent, as well as my keen interest in anatomy and physiology, however one could not overemphasize the influence of the wealth of knowledge and compassion passed down to me by Maty Ezraty, my yoga teacher who I found 10 years into my journey, and who’s teacher’s training I attended.
Through her guidance and greatly due to my own journey I came to believe we can all live comfortably in our bodies and feel good, a belief that continues to inform the way I practice and teach yoga until this day.
In my classes, I combine these different worlds, disciplines, and perspectives into a cohesive, alignment-based flow that seeks to positively challenge and engage one's body, so that ultimately you’ll be finishing each class with a good, activated feeling. This form of practice along with elements of vipassana and metta bhavana meditation which I often like to include in my classes, serve to leave each student feeling great through a hard-worked yet energized body and a calm, relaxed mind.
