My Story

I was born in Istanbul in 1988, grew up in Cyprus, having spent many years in between Istanbul, London, America and India. I currently live in Nicosia and have my yoga studio in North Cyprus.

Since the childhood, I have had an instinct of growth and expansion. I started to take Meditation classes at the age of 15. Although it was hard to find Meditation and Yoga classes at that time, I did find a meditation class, some books and began with Osho (Bhagvan Shree Rajneesh) books.

In 2007, I have attended my first Yoga class and fell instantly in love. I found in yoga calmness of the mind, confidence, and a strong feeling of being centered and grounded which enabled me to feed the desire to know more of the world, both inner and outer, which was only made possible by venturing away from my home, the island of Cyprus. My passion for Yoga and Travelling was so big, I started traveling and learning Yoga more in the United of States. I attended yoga with Ganesh Iyer who was an Indian teacher and is a certified Hatha/Vinyasa instructor. I studied along side him at the Ganesh College of Yoga. 

In 2009, at the age of 21, I travelled to India and started to practice daily, whilst studying i started to work as a yoga teacher at one of the most well-known Yoga Villages, Ashiyana in Goa, India, which has a large yoga community from all over the world. And that time, i was introduced to the Ashtanga Method and started to practice Ashtanga.Since then i am an Ashtanga Yoga Practitioner.

With my ongoing traveling and learning in 2010 i moved back to North Cyprus where i opened the first Yoga studio in North Cyprus “Shivani Life Centre” I began to teach yoga full time and introduced many to yoga. Shivani Life Center offers different styles of Yoga including Vinyasa, Hatha and Ashtanga as well as workshops with many international teachers, organising Retreats & Yoga Holidays for everyone and i love connecting with people and seeing people connecting with others. Since then, i have been organising and teaching Retreats worldwide.(Japan, India, Finland, North Cyprus, Peru, Bali..)

In between running my studio, In 2014, I moved to Delhi, India and lived there for 3 years. In India, i was teaching and doing yoga with Indian Gurus as well as international yoga teachers. I attended to ashtanga yoga retreats at Purple Valley twice and completed 4 weeks of course. I visited holy regions in the Himalayas and had a change to study Philosophy and Hindi/Sanskrit Languages. Traveling has been my passion, i continued to travel all over the world (40 countries) , where I had the chance to train and take classes from well-known Authorised Ashtanga Yoga Teachers by KPJYI such as Kino Mcgreggor, Tim Fieldman in Goa, Pratham Aswal in New Delhi, Krantivira in Tokyo, Dmitry Baryshnikov in Moscow, Mikko Seppinen in Copenhagen, Bela Lipat in Finland, Suveer Balvi in Mumbai, Petri Raisanen in Turkey and at that time, i finally found my teacher, my guru, whom i connected from the heart and learnt the most. Govinda KAI (Russell Paul Yamaguchi )in Japan in 2015. I had stayed at Myoshinji Temple 5 times! I was very inspired by Govinda`s teaching methods and open approach to Yoga and Yoga Philosophy.For many years, i visited him again and again in Japan. After that, i traveled to Mysore, India and studied under the guidance of Jois Family (KPJYI) in 2018.

I visited and attended the Dalai Lama`s teachings methods as well as Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche in Dharamsala, India.

In my teaching, i emphasise on energetic alignment, creating space in the body and synchronising movement and breath. In my classes i try to create a creative, dynamic flow of movements and teach my students to be in the moment.

I am also a registered teacher with the Yoga Alliance (RYT and E-RYT 200 HOURS)

In addition to Yoga studies I have trained and self-studied Reiki, Life Coaching, Anatomy & Physiology, Feng Shui, Pilates and Thai Massage, incorporating aspects of these fields in my daily teaching and private lessons.I hope to meet some of you soon on the yoga mat or meditation cushion be it in a class, workshop or retreat.  

Thank you for visiting my page and i look forward to meeting you and introducing you to some of my practices.

Namaste !