Hello and welcome to my blog! My name is Elina and I am based in East London. I write about yoga, wellbeing & mindfulness, and occasionally about as-ecological-as-possible living.
On The Same TimeZone yoga blog was started when I was living in Cyprus, back in 2016. The name of the blog comes from being originally from Finland, a country that shares the same timezone with Cyprus – That is about the only thing those two countries have in common.
After seven years spent in the academia and a 10+ years career in financial and information technology, I have been a full time yoga teacher for almost four years. My intention was never to go into teaching yoga, at least not full time, but hey, life has its ways. My side hustles are walking dogs, doing translations and content creation.
I have practiced yoga on a regular basis for about 15 years. In 2016 I completed my 200 hour teacher training with the YogaWorks system, under the guidance of Anna Zorzou and Vanessa Morton. I have continued my studies with some in-depth studies in Iyengar Yoga (See my interview with Vula Bolou, a Senior Iyengar teacher here), Pregnancy Yoga with the Birthlight School, Yoga Nidra with the Yoga Nidra Network, as well as anatomy, breath work and contemporary vinyasa flow with the likes of Leslie Kaminoff and Jason Crandell. I also hold a Certificate of Yoga Therapy for Chronic Pain from the Minded Institute in London.
As a life-long athlete I have gone through few big injuries, teaching me valuable first hand lessons about (E/)ego, patience, rehabilitation and holistic approach to healing and bouncing (or crawling, as it sometimes felt) back to active lifestyle. I believe that in life it is as important to have a critical mind as it is to be curious and open minded. With this yoga blog I want to demystify yoga (and give tips on how to simplify life in general, as yoga helps with that too) and play a part in making it accessible to all.
I am a firm believer yoga works for everybody and every body to support us in life, and the key is to find the teacher(s) and style(s) that resonate with you. My style is focused on the biomechanics of the body and working in the intersections of mobility and strength, infused with a decent amount of breath awareness and at least a little bit of yoga philosophy. And there is always a big nice relaxation part. For me, rest is the most important component of our wellbeing and I nothing makes me happier than students telling me how relaxed they feel afterwards – whatever the class style has been!
This blog has articles both in my native Finnish and in English. Sometimes the posts are about the same topic, sometimes I do a post just in one language. If you speak both languages do check both the English and Suomi tabs.
If you have any questions or there is something you would like me to write about, feel free to drop me a line. All the pictures are mine, unless otherwise stated. Please do not use them (or any other content featured here) without my permission.
