How yoga changed Elif's life and how it can change yours too - Neha Sathishkanna TGS

Elif Yoruk is a yoga teacher, who lives in London and found her passion for yoga 16 years ago, after the birth of her second child, when she lived in Ankara, Turkey. She was having trouble with severe migraines,that she suffered from during perimenopause, and through inspiration from her best friend, she started yoga in order to help minimise her migraines and improve her overall wellbeing. She took her first step and went to her first yoga class, which changed everything.

I asked her how she felt after the first class and her response really showed how yoga was the spark that changed her life. She told me, “after my first yoga class I was amazed and I was immediately hooked. It was so good that I went to yoga classes every day and sometimes even two times a day”. Her yoga teacher saw her strong passion and dedication for yoga and encouraged her to take a teacher training course. This, however, would be a major career change, as she worked as a biologist after gaining a degree in biology. But with the difficulties of having two young children and the demands of her job, she was ready for a change.

Two years later, after completing her yoga teacher training course for children, she worked at a leukaemia kids hospital in Ankara, helping the children there as they battle the disease by bringing them fun, physical exercise. She described it as a “tremendous experience but also challenging”. The breathing practice that she did with them helped to calm their minds and their bodies. She also included mild stretching which she based around children's stories to keep the kids engaged and focused but to also make sure they had as much fun as possible. She said “they become so happy that they forget everything when they are doing yoga so it was very good for them”.

In 2015, after five years of continuously practising yoga, she got her chartered yoga teacher training and began teaching yoga with one to one yoga clients and at a nearby studio. However, one year later another big change occurred in her life…she moved to England. She said “It was really challenging for me as I had a big language barrier”. She spent a lot of time studying by reading  with the help of newspapers, books, and listening to podcasts, which she still does every day.

So now she has to restart her business in the UK while still giving online classes to her clients in Turkey. She began teaching at the adult learning centre, in Staines, and still teaches there. To keep improving on her skill, she got her prenatal and postnatal yoga training in London and began teaching prenatal yoga classes, for private clients. She believes that teaching yoga is “helping people find balance and peace within their daily lives”. Many of her clients from her website have praised her for being a “teacher of life”, for her “supportive and understanding” attitude towards teaching yoga to them and how it has benefited their lives in ways they couldn’t imagine. In the future she hopes to open her own yoga studio with a little bakery to expand her business.

Through Elif’s story you can see how yoga has not only helped her recover from her severe migraines, which many women go through during the menopause stage, but also how yoga helped young children while they went through a tough battle with cancer. She believes that “yoga is for everyone, for every age and every physical ability, and if someone can breathe they can do yoga”. The NHS has talked about the health benefits of doing yoga and how it can help people in all walks of life, especially people with high blood pressure, heart disease, pains, including some types of arthritis, as well as mental health conditions, such as anxiety. It is also a great relaxing way to lose weight and at the same time improve your flexibility, reducing your risk of injuries as you grow older.