Elin Marsh
Founder & Lead Trainer
E-RYT 500. Twenty years of teaching, trained in Mysore and London. Leads the 200-hour programme.
A small company with a long view.
Northline was founded in Edinburgh in 2014 to run the kind of retreats our teachers wanted to attend: small, serious about practice, and rooted in place.
Our story
It started with nine people and a lot of snow.
Elin Marsh had been teaching in London for a decade when she rented a shooting lodge on the Dee for a week in January 2014. She invited nine students, cooked most of the meals herself and taught twice a day while the snow came down.
The guests went home and told their friends. A year later there were three retreats; by 2016 there was a teacher training. What hasn’t changed is the conviction that the best retreats are built around a teacher and a place — not a venue looking for a group.
Today Northline is a team of fourteen, split between Edinburgh and Bolzano, with six permanent faculty and a network of local partners in four regions.
Milestones
Twelve seasons
A short history of a company that has deliberately grown slowly.
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2014
A borrowed lodge in Braemar
Elin Marsh runs a single January retreat for nine guests. It sells out by word of mouth and becomes the template for everything that follows.
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2016
Portugal and the first training
We begin working on the Costa Vicentina and graduate our first 200-hour cohort of fourteen teachers.
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2017
Maso Ranui
The Silent Week finds its permanent home in Val di Funes, in partnership with the Pernthaler family.
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2020
Yoga Alliance RYS 300
The advanced programme launches — paused for a year, then delivered with an expanded online curriculum.
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2023
B Corp certification
Northline becomes a certified B Corporation, formalising our commitments on local employment and travel emissions.
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2026
Twelve seasons
Thirty programmes a year, six permanent faculty and more than 3,400 guests since that first week in the snow.
How we work
Four principles
Written down in 2019 and reviewed every January with the whole team. They decide what we say no to.
01
Depth over breadth
We would rather run eight excellent retreats than twenty adequate ones. The calendar grows only when a teacher and a place are ready.
02
Local by default
Venues, guides, cooks and drivers are local and independently owned. Over 80% of what we spend on a retreat stays in the region.
03
Teachers are the product
Faculty are paid fairly, year-round, and given time to train. Our teachers stay — the average tenure is seven years.
04
Honest travel
We publish travel advice that favours rail where it’s realistic and offset what we can’t avoid through verified Scottish peatland restoration.
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14
people on the core team
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7 yrs
average faculty tenure
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82%
of programme spend stays local
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4.9/5
average guest rating, 2022–2026
Faculty
The people in the room
Our permanent faculty lead every retreat and training. Guest teachers join for specialist modules and are chosen with the same care.
Tomas Reiter
Mountain Programmes
Certified Alpine guide and yoga teacher based in Bolzano. Designs every Dolomites itinerary.
Dr. Hannah Okafor
Anatomy & Physiology
Chartered physiotherapist (HCPC) specialising in hypermobility and spinal health.
Calum Fraser
Meditation & Highlands
Former Buddhist monastic, teaches Vipassana-based practice and leads our Scottish retreats.
Not sure which programme fits?
Book a twenty-minute call with our programme team. We'll talk through your practice, your calendar and what you want to take home.