How everything began
Our Story
How did a chance meeting in India lead to a yoga home on Corfu? Somewhere along the way, there was a shepherd’s hut, a little map of dreams and a journey that didn’t go to plan. Behind ineayoga is a personal story of love, friendship and finding something we hadn’t quite known we were looking for.
2017 – INDIA
From a first gaze in India to a retreat centre on Corfu Island
We are Athina and Cedric, and ineayoga is our home. Before it became a place to welcome you, it began with a friendship, a few questions about life, and a little map of dreams.
We met at a yoga teacher training in India in 2017. One of the first things Cedric asked Athina was, “Where have you been?” It was a strange question to ask someone he had only just met. Neither of us quite knew where it came from, but looking back, it feels like predestined karma playing out.
During the training, Athina twisted her ankle after getting up from meditation. Walking became difficult, giving Cedric the perfect opportunity to show his caring side and help her over the next few days. That was the beginning. A year later, we became a yogi couple.
2018 – THE SHEPHERD'S HUT
A little prophesied map,
drawn surrounded by sheep
For a year, we lived between two cities: Athina in Brighton, UK and Cedric in Hamburg, Germany. Then, during a well needed weekend together, we rented an old shepherd’s hut in a pasture. Sitting around a fire, surrounded by sheep, we asked ourselves: What do we actually want to do in life?
We drew a little map, just for fun. It said: "Travel. Freedom. Yoga. Music. Finding a true home."
We didn’t have a business plan or a retreat centre in mind yet. We decided to leave our homes and travel, trusting that somewhere along the way we might find a place to live and share yoga.
A few months into our journey through India, Thailand, Africa and Bali, the pandemic forced our travels to an unexpected end. With no homes to return to, we went to Corfu, where Athina’s family lived and her mother, Andriana, ran a small holiday accommodation business.
We had travelled halfway around the world looking for a place, yet stranded in Corfu, we just realised a perfect place was right in front of our nose.
2020 – STRANDED ON CORFU ISLAND
A home – built over generations
The roots of ineayoga reach back long before us. With years of hard work, Athina’s parents created an apartment house, built by her grandfather with his own hands. One level at a time, they brought to life a place to welcome guests from around the world.
Hospitality was part of this place from the beginning. Each generation has added something of its own.
In the beginning, we helped run the accommodation, worked long days, and slowly began to wonder whether the yoga home we had imagined could take shape here.
With her parents’ support, we set aside a few rooms outside the main holiday season and offered our first retreat.
Three guests came, whereof two were our friends.
We held another retreat, then another. Five people came. Then eight. It was a small beginning, and enough to keep going.
2022 – THE TRANSFORMATION
Making space for something new
Over the following years, the place changed alongside us.
The backyard, once filled with parked cars, small boats, tools and paint, became our yoga shala. The workshop where Athina’s father tinkered with his motorcycle, became a meditation sanctuary. A dry backyard area became a flourishing green garden.
We launched an online event called the Yinternational Summit, bringing over 3000 people together, yin teachers, experts, and students from all over the world. That was when Sally and Silvia became our first team members. With Silvia lovingly caring for our on-site guests and Sally managing communications and so much more, we had the support we needed to move forward and grow.
Each season, we offered a few more retreats. By our fourth year, the whole season was dedicated to yoga retreats and teacher trainings.
We have now welcomed more than 1500 guests. That would never have been possible without the foundation Athina’s family built, the right friends showing up and supporting us, and the trust they placed in us to let the place blossom.
2024 – A GROWING COMMUNITY
What it means to share our home
We live here too. We share meals with our guests, usually around one long table. We begin each retreat together and close it together, giving everyone time to settle in and become part of the group.
There is something beautiful about watching strangers grow comfortable with one another. Conversations deepen, laughter comes authentically, people find room to be themselves.
Living where we work also asks us to keep learning. In the beginning, we taught every retreat ourselves. Eventually, we understood that caring for this place meant making space for our own rest, too. Setting boundaries, finding the right people to support us, and realising, work, yoga and life is not separate, it is one big thing altogether. On the way, a fabulous team, and many brilliant teachers helped us holding retreats, each bringing their own character and experience to the home we share.
In a world that expects humans to function like machines, we want to create a life that feels good to live: for ourselves, our team, and the people who come here. That intention puts quality of this moment before profit and shapes how we live and work every day.
We are also deeply grateful to our primary teachers, Shari Friedrichsen (Himalayan Institute) and Christopher Wallis (Tantra Illuminated). Their teachings continue to shape our own practice and the yoga we share at ineayoga.
OUR PATH TO YOGA
The Yoga that shapes our lives
Our paths into yoga were different.
Cedric came from years of martial arts and had been teaching since he was fifteen. Those years gave him discipline, focus, and skill and love for movement. Even-though he was exposed to meditation and yogic culture from an early age, his first consciously chosen return to the yoga mat offered something unfamiliar: permission to simply be there, without needing to compete or prove anything.
That experience still informs how he teaches: showing up with commitment while allowing softness, surrender and space.
Athena came to yoga when life felt difficult, she had everything yet was missing herself, she was missing feeling at home, she was struggling quite a bit with family dynamics. Athina was working as a music teacher, and during this difficult period, she turned to yoga as a way to grow through her challenges rather than hide from them. A good friend, Martina, took her to a small library outside Brighton to join yoga during a school term. Only a couple of months later she came to realise that practice had so much to offer and all she had to do was skip one therapy session every six weeks in order to fund her yoga classes. The rest is history.
Yoga became a fundamental part of life and Athina continues to draw inspiration from both yoga and life interchangeably so that the separation between yoga and life can get smaller and that both can feel more real. Mantra being one of the most potent of her practice and offerings as it brings her passion for music together with the depth of yoga.
At the heart of our shared practice are the teachings of Non-Dual Tantra Yoga. For us, this means learning to meet life more fully, with honesty and openness. Sometimes that means softening our resistance. Sometimes it means recognising a need and setting a clear boundary.
We explore these teachings through movement, meditation, breath, sound and the senses, giving ideas room to become experiences we can feel and carry into daily life.
2026 – INEAGAIA
A new chapter begins
It feels as though ineayoga was our baby, and now it has grown enough to stand on its own two feet. With more time and space to care for ourselves, we chose to deepen our relationship, which is the foundation of this whole place. Then, in 2026, we got married. For us, it wasn’t just a signature; it was indeed a celebration of love.
And just a few weeks later, an opportunity came alive to acquire the land next door and make it part of ineayoga, opening space for a new chapter.
The home Athina’s family built gave us the basis to begin. Now, we are entering a new phase: crafting a place from scratch, with yoga and practice at its heart from the very start.
This gives us room to bring more of our vision to life, thoughtfully shaping spaces for movement, stillness, chanting, connection and rest. As we grow, we carry forward the same spirit and care that has always made this place feel like home.
NOW
What we hope you take home
People arrive here for many reasons. Some want sunshine, the sea and a week of yoga. Others come feeling tired, at a crossroads, or in need of time for themselves, or being on their spiritual journey.
In our closing circles, guests often tell us about things they hadn’t expected to find: relief from something they had carried for too long, a clearer sense of what they need, the joy of connecting with others, or simply the feeling of being themselves again.
Those moments stay with us.
As ineayoga grows, we want to keep making space for them. We grow gradually, reinvesting in the place and allowing the people who become part of it to help shape its future. The wellbeing of this home and the people within it remains our measure of success.
Our hope is that you leave feeling more alive. That your breath feels a little easier, that you notice more beauty around you, and that you feel more at home in yourself.
For us, that is what it means to grow in yoga.
With love,
Athina & Cedric
