How The Natural Yogi was born
In 2012, Dutch yoga teacher & journalist Eliza Coolsma moved to Madrid with her then boyfriend.
She had worked as an editor at a magazine and yoga teacher back home, and decided to start teaching full time in Madrid.
That didn’t happen overnight: Madrid was very new to Vinyasa Yoga (there was mostly Hatha Yoga and Iyengar Yoga, and nothing in English) and Eliza didn’t realise yet how many foreigners were looking for an English speaking community.
But through her Spanish teacher and his friends, she slowly started to build a group.
One thing led to another and soon she had classes of 25-30 people every Sunday in Retiro Park. Students staid afterwards for a picnic or they went for lunch in a cafe nearby.
The wonderful thing is that this is also what made Madrid feel like home for Eliza: the community of like-hearted people.
Maternity leave led to a flourishing studio
In the fall & winter months, classes moved indoors into different (initially dodgy ; ) places. Eventually Eliza found a new home for The Natural Yogi in WunderHouse, a students’ residence with a beautiful basement with traditional Spanish tiles.
When Eliza got pregnant in 2016, she took it as an invitation to invite other yoga teachers to join her who took over during her maternity leave and stayed once Eliza came back.
It felt like a real studio was born now.
We started to add more in depth workshops which eventually led us to offer our first teacher training, but more on that later.
A blessing in disguise: we lost our space
A blessing in disguise, WunderHouse decided to sell the basement to a restaurant owner right before the pandemic. A blessing, as the rent would have been too much during a pandemic where classes had to move online.
Also right before the pandemic, Eliza & Lucy decided to offer The Natural Yogis’s first 200 hour Vinyasa Teacher Training. Even in that first year, 15 students joined our training (and we still offer the training every year!)
We found a space near Retiro Park that allowed us to rent the space per class, instead of paying for a fixed monthly rent. That really saved us during those very challenging years during and post-pandemic, where many of our students moved away from Madrid or lost a big part of their income.
We are so grateful for everyone who stayed with us, and came back after we started offering in person classes again.
The Natural Yogi continues to be the one English speaking yoga studio & community in Madrid with breath-led, transformational & conscious Vinyasa Yoga.
Eliza moved to Italy, The Natural Yogi continues
And now, founder Eliza has moved to Italy with her family. But it never felt like an end of The Natural Yogi.
On the contrary: even from afar, she’s witnessing the wonderful community of yogis flourish.
The Natural Yogi is still a home away from home for many. Whether it’s during a weekly class, a retreat or our Vinyasa Yoga Teacher Training.
We want to thank everyone who makes it to class, so that we can continue to offer what we feel is important and transformational in this world!
