She embarked on the path to teach Vinyasa Flow in 2013, and quickly made the leap out of the world of Sales & Marketing to co-found The Refinery E9 – a boutique yoga and fitness studio offering. Located in the heart of Hackney just off buzzing Well Street, The Refinery has four fitness disciplines including Yoga, Meditation, Barre and HIIT, as well as two therapy rooms offering holistic therapies that complement each other to nourish clients’ mind, body and soul.
Zoe’s ethos is around accessibility and believes yoga is for everybody. She is an ERYT-500 qualified yoga instructor and has been teaching for 6 years. As well as developing and leading The Refinery School of Yoga Teacher Training programme for the last two years (with over 30 graduates successfully completing the course), Zoe also has over 700 hours of Yoga training in different disciplines including Vinyasa Flow, Ashtanga and Prana Vinyasa.
1. What’s your idea of perfect happiness?
Sunset, friends, family and a glass of rose.
2. Do you live to work or work to live?
Well that's changed over the years since I started teaching yoga - I used to work to live, but the balance is tipped now and I love to work!!
3. What one thing are you most passionate about?
Health and wellbeing should be accessible for everyone.
4. What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Raising a young family while leaving a secure job and starting my own business.
5. Who’s the person you’d most like to share a cup of matcha with and why? -
Madonna. I've always loved her music, grit and determination....also would love to know how she gets inspired to keep changing.
6. What is the best piece of advice you could give someone?
Believe in yourself and take a chance.
7. If you could have any super power, what would it be and why?
Oh definitely to be able to fly....imagine that feeling of freedom.
8. What is your motto?
Don't take things too seriously.
Refine with ALFI
In 2020, Zoe and her husband Luca Bertali launched an innovative fitness app in the form of augmented reality offering, Refine With ALFI. ALFI is an Avatar Led Fitness Instructor that makes for the most inclusive, visually appealing, and movement-focused PT ever experienced in the virtual and on demand fitness space. The Refine with ALFI app has been created with motion capture, 3D and augmented-reality technology, which overlays digital content in the form of a fitness instructor onto the physical world — as if they're actually there with you, in your own space.
Of the new launch, co-founder Zoe Bertali says; “We discovered AR technology quite a few years ago and decided it would be a wonderful way to encourage an accessible, unpretentious and exciting fitness journey outside of our bricks and mortar studio in Hackney. Our ethos is about wellbeing, not just a physical aesthetic result. We still have human-connection at the heart of the app, all the workouts are created by our high-quality instructors. But through ALFI, we’re giving users something unique, a fitness app with a difference, to keep their workouts motivating and interesting, whether used at home or whilst travelling.”
