About Lavinia
Originally from Romania, Lavinia has been living abroad in different countries for more than a decade. After graduating from Economics & Business Administration and working in the corporate world for a while, she decided to switch high heels and offices to bare feet and yoga floors. She has been living in Sweden for the past 9 years. After struggling her entire life to understand that sort of sensitivity and itch that maybe only creative people feel, she finally understood that she’s an artist.
From free classes in Slottsskogen Parken and living room yoga she founded her boutique yoga studio Unfold Your Mat that gathers the local and the international Gothenburg community. What started as her hobby, passion and self development tool soon became a practice that she would also share with others. A place where we can observe our patterns, let go of the unnecessary and grow together.
She is incredibly passionate about self development, the power of the mind and continuous learning in life. She believes when we are fully focused and connected with ourselves we can truly access that unleashed creativity we all have inside.
It’s in that moment when we choose a place that nurtures us and allows us to meet our demons, grow and expand that magic happens. When we choose connection instead of dissociation and distraction we truly start to live our story and embrace the path. That is the moment when we transcend the tools and we become the art itself. This is the way to us.
Lavinia's yoga experience
Lavinia Elise Parcalab is an experienced and certified teacher for Hatha, Vinyasa and Ashtanga yoga. Her own yoga journey started more than a decade ago with Katarzyna Stryjniak-Erickson and hatha yoga classes in her studio in Poland. Because she is fascinated about the fact that yoga is able to release physical and mental tension, serving as an all-round healing practice, she decided to commit her life more into yoga and to eventually become a yoga teacher in order to share this amazing tool. Therefore, she completed yoga teacher trainings (200 hours Hatha and Ashtanga yoga teacher training & 300 hours Vinyasa yoga teacher training) at AYM Yoga School Rishikesh and Samyak Yoga School, Mysore with Yogi Chetan Mahesh, Yogacharya Trupta, Yogacharya Rakesh, Yogacharya Arvind and Stephanie Viu- Kessler as teachers in 2015, respectively 2016, in the home country of yoga: India.
In 2015 she founded Unfold Your Mat in Gothenburg, Sweden and works successfully full time as yoga teacher since. In Gothenborg, she practiced with Olle Bengström for 2 years and Sara Stangertz for 1 year. Her main teacher and biggest source of inspiration is currently Elaine De Souza with whom she works on deepening her practice through modern Vinyasa yoga and Handstands.
In order to be able to teach from her experience, Lavinia continues to explore all things yoga, acrobatics, training and movement on a regular basis. After practicing Ashtanga Yoga primary and intermediate series on a daily basis for couple of years, she is now more interested in using all the knowledge accumulated through time and experience into creating effective classes for her students that bring balance, strength and challenge to grow on a constant basis. She draws her inspiration from different styles of yoga and teachers of different practices.
So far she studied with John Scott, Tim Feldmann, Kino McGregor, Deepika Mehta, Mark Robberds, David Robson, Petri Räisänen and Lucy Crawford among others.
In addition to her yoga practice, Lavinia keeps researching other types of training tools, movement and acrobatics. She is interested in handstands, strength training, cycling and hiking.
She teaches her own yoga style, a combination of the various styles she practiced and researched throughout time, going from dynamic and strength based to relaxing and gentle. Classes are a mix of strength, coordination, challenge and mobility for a healthy body and mind in the modern world. She believes that balance and variety is key to keep ourselves healthy and inspired to keep learning, growing and improving our physical and mental fitness. Her focus is on useful and healthy practice always adapted to the unique modern individual. She equally values softer practices, such as yin and restorative yoga. Regardless of the techniques used, Lavinia’s classes invite at moments of mindfulness, awareness, reflection and strength of mind through moving our body and bringing awareness to details. Welcome to class!
Unfold your mat
Welcome to class!
IN MEDIA
Lavinia’s speech at CreativeMornings Gothenburg – talking about Sanctuary theme in January 2023
Interview with Maxime from the Podcast Ma vie en Suède, September 2020 [en français]