My life and yoga
I first came to yoga through Kundalini yoga in my early 20s. There was very little yoga in Estonia back then as I practiced for years at a back hall of a gym after an aerobics class. In hindsight I can say that there was a seed that got planted during my first yoga class, now over 20 years ago, which gradually led me to re-evaluate my life and my values and sprouted questions and longings that I had not felt before.
I come from a business (play hard, work hard) background and worked in recruitment for many years. In 2007 I took a sabbatical with an intention to travel for a year in India and Asia. That year changed my life, or rather, the way I perceive life and that journey is still unfolding. The call to seek and explore lead me to Australia and to the magical Byron Bay where I did my first teacher training in Hatha Vinyasa yoga and ended up teaching regular classes and on retreats for Byron Yoga Centre for 1,5 years. In the beginning of 2009 I left Australia and kept traveling, learning and teaching in Hawaii, Canada, India, Vietnam and back at home in Estonia.
In 2014 I moved to Berlin to be with my partner Eli. Over the years I found my niche and my people in this big crazy town, I ran my own classes and am proud to be part of Yellow Yoga's vibrant team.
In 2019 I took a step towards a dream of a more wholesome and sustainable life, as we bought a small piece of land on the foothills of Abruzzo National Park in Italy. In 2020 I graduated from a permaculture course and am in a process of building a food forest and sustainable homestead on our land together with my partner Eli and our two rescue dogs Hassan and Charlie. I've been sharing my time between Italy and Berlin, but in the spring of 2024 we took the leap and moved full time to Italy.
I am forever curious about bodies and movement, I'm most at home when surrounded by nature and it's ridiculous how much I love dogs.
My external journey has always been accompanied by an inner quest or longing for a deeper meaning, purpose, connection, truth in life. Over the years my practice and sense of self has evolved gradually, to allow more space, kindness, inner-knowing and acceptance, always brining me humbly and gratefully back to a resolve to be a beginner.
I’ve been lucky to experience a lot of diversity on my travels, which has shaped me to be adaptable, open, curious and receptive. I’ve lived in vibrant communities and I’ve also learned to embrace (even to welcome) solitude, quietude and self-reflection in more isolated spots surrounded by raw natural beauty and letting the silent beauty outside be my guide to discover those qualities within.
My own practice and the way of teaching has been evolving and shaping quite to bit over the last couple of years. When I started teaching in 2007, I was drawn to dynamic, alignment focused practices with creative sequencing. These days my pace is slower, I place HUGE focus on getting my students to feel, know and be interested in their own unique anatomy and ways of moving, not so much conceptually but experientially. I respect tradition and I am fascinated by the history and philosophy of not only yoga, but also buddhism and taoism. And at the same breath, I am super curious about everything that contemporary embodiment field has to offer in guiding people to become aware and listen to the wisdom of their own bodies. I also put emphasis on creating a strong correlation between practice and life - yoga, mindfulness, awareness is not something that gets only cultivated on the mat. A practice can serve a number of ways:
My approach to yoga is non-dogmatic, grounded in both extensive study of various movement and meditation modalities and in my own personal journey. My classes aim to empower, encourage exploration and offer a safe space to connect more intimately with both - the visible and the invisible, the mundane and the mystical
TODAY, at the very center of my teaching are somatic practices inspired by the Feldenkrais method, Thomas Hanna (Clinical Somatics) and Tias Little's S.A.T.Y.A (Sensory Awareness Training for Yoga Attunement) training. The term somatics refers to a wide range of bodywork, meditation and movement practices that emphasize your internal perception and the felt sense of an experience. “Soma” is a Greek word that means “living body” and the somatic viewpoint considers the body as wise, adaptive, fluid, self-adjusting and self-regulating and therefore a potent gateway to possibility and change. Simply put, instead of just doing the movements, there is a strong emphasis on body-mind connection and feeling the movements in the body. I combine somatics with Yin Yoga, Flow, Restorative Yoga and meditation.
My second big teaching lens is functional anatomy - I am motivated by getting my students to feel, know and be interested in their own unique anatomy, nervous system patterns, ways of moving and being. Both on and off the mat.
And the third cornerstone of my teaching is forever being a keen student of yoga philosophy, as well as Buddhism, Taoism, the Chinese Medicine. And Nature - a magnificent teacher always!
Use LIINA YOGA ONLINE on to find your daily groove either with free pre-recorded practices or by joining weekly live-stream classes. On different days, your moods, needs might be different - I'll make sure, that you have an online video library for all those different moods - to energize and get an exercise, to wind down after a busy day, longer clips when you really want to take the time and dive into your practice and shorter ones, when you only have 10 minutes, restorative yoga for days when you don't feel like getting up from your mat at all, Yin yoga for deep nourishment and joint health, and meditations for a more calmer, focused mind-set.
Check out upcoming retreats and workshops to really allow you to see and distance yourself from the way we often function as if on autopilot. Taking time to slow down really gives perspective and makes space for you to re-evaluates where you are, where you're heading and where you WANT to be. This can be a chance to dive deep into the inner world (of being alive, here and now) and get in touch with what in you still needs to be understood and transformed. Recharge, renew, strengthen, realign.
I come from a business (play hard, work hard) background and worked in recruitment for many years. In 2007 I took a sabbatical with an intention to travel for a year in India and Asia. That year changed my life, or rather, the way I perceive life and that journey is still unfolding. The call to seek and explore lead me to Australia and to the magical Byron Bay where I did my first teacher training in Hatha Vinyasa yoga and ended up teaching regular classes and on retreats for Byron Yoga Centre for 1,5 years. In the beginning of 2009 I left Australia and kept traveling, learning and teaching in Hawaii, Canada, India, Vietnam and back at home in Estonia.
In 2014 I moved to Berlin to be with my partner Eli. Over the years I found my niche and my people in this big crazy town, I ran my own classes and am proud to be part of Yellow Yoga's vibrant team.
In 2019 I took a step towards a dream of a more wholesome and sustainable life, as we bought a small piece of land on the foothills of Abruzzo National Park in Italy. In 2020 I graduated from a permaculture course and am in a process of building a food forest and sustainable homestead on our land together with my partner Eli and our two rescue dogs Hassan and Charlie. I've been sharing my time between Italy and Berlin, but in the spring of 2024 we took the leap and moved full time to Italy.
I am forever curious about bodies and movement, I'm most at home when surrounded by nature and it's ridiculous how much I love dogs.
My external journey has always been accompanied by an inner quest or longing for a deeper meaning, purpose, connection, truth in life. Over the years my practice and sense of self has evolved gradually, to allow more space, kindness, inner-knowing and acceptance, always brining me humbly and gratefully back to a resolve to be a beginner.
I’ve been lucky to experience a lot of diversity on my travels, which has shaped me to be adaptable, open, curious and receptive. I’ve lived in vibrant communities and I’ve also learned to embrace (even to welcome) solitude, quietude and self-reflection in more isolated spots surrounded by raw natural beauty and letting the silent beauty outside be my guide to discover those qualities within.
My own practice and the way of teaching has been evolving and shaping quite to bit over the last couple of years. When I started teaching in 2007, I was drawn to dynamic, alignment focused practices with creative sequencing. These days my pace is slower, I place HUGE focus on getting my students to feel, know and be interested in their own unique anatomy and ways of moving, not so much conceptually but experientially. I respect tradition and I am fascinated by the history and philosophy of not only yoga, but also buddhism and taoism. And at the same breath, I am super curious about everything that contemporary embodiment field has to offer in guiding people to become aware and listen to the wisdom of their own bodies. I also put emphasis on creating a strong correlation between practice and life - yoga, mindfulness, awareness is not something that gets only cultivated on the mat. A practice can serve a number of ways:
- as a mirror, a safe place to reflect, notice, become aware
- as a place to cultivate compassion and kindness towards ourselves and our (human) conditioning
- as a container to build the capacity of our nervous system to stay present and be with what is
- as a place to experiment, play, make mistakes, not take ourselves too seriously
- as a way to connect to a something that lies beyond the personal, the stories, the image-making
- ....
My approach to yoga is non-dogmatic, grounded in both extensive study of various movement and meditation modalities and in my own personal journey. My classes aim to empower, encourage exploration and offer a safe space to connect more intimately with both - the visible and the invisible, the mundane and the mystical
TODAY, at the very center of my teaching are somatic practices inspired by the Feldenkrais method, Thomas Hanna (Clinical Somatics) and Tias Little's S.A.T.Y.A (Sensory Awareness Training for Yoga Attunement) training. The term somatics refers to a wide range of bodywork, meditation and movement practices that emphasize your internal perception and the felt sense of an experience. “Soma” is a Greek word that means “living body” and the somatic viewpoint considers the body as wise, adaptive, fluid, self-adjusting and self-regulating and therefore a potent gateway to possibility and change. Simply put, instead of just doing the movements, there is a strong emphasis on body-mind connection and feeling the movements in the body. I combine somatics with Yin Yoga, Flow, Restorative Yoga and meditation.
My second big teaching lens is functional anatomy - I am motivated by getting my students to feel, know and be interested in their own unique anatomy, nervous system patterns, ways of moving and being. Both on and off the mat.
And the third cornerstone of my teaching is forever being a keen student of yoga philosophy, as well as Buddhism, Taoism, the Chinese Medicine. And Nature - a magnificent teacher always!
Use LIINA YOGA ONLINE on to find your daily groove either with free pre-recorded practices or by joining weekly live-stream classes. On different days, your moods, needs might be different - I'll make sure, that you have an online video library for all those different moods - to energize and get an exercise, to wind down after a busy day, longer clips when you really want to take the time and dive into your practice and shorter ones, when you only have 10 minutes, restorative yoga for days when you don't feel like getting up from your mat at all, Yin yoga for deep nourishment and joint health, and meditations for a more calmer, focused mind-set.
Check out upcoming retreats and workshops to really allow you to see and distance yourself from the way we often function as if on autopilot. Taking time to slow down really gives perspective and makes space for you to re-evaluates where you are, where you're heading and where you WANT to be. This can be a chance to dive deep into the inner world (of being alive, here and now) and get in touch with what in you still needs to be understood and transformed. Recharge, renew, strengthen, realign.
Get updates on new video releases, workshops, retreats
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It is a monthly update on what is current in my life and in my yoga practice, I'll be sharing not only upcoming events but also interesting thoughts, ideas, information, experiences I've gained from inspiring sources (like other people, life, nature, etc). Subscribe and as a token of my gratitude, I'll send you a free SOMATIC SERIES - 3 short practices that combine somatics with yin, flow and rest. |
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