If you’ve been looking for ways to manage stress and calm your nerves, you’ve probably come across a company called Sanmaya. Founded by Mia Ulvila, the company offers a variety of wellness and yoga services to support self-management, recovery, and overall well-being. Mia originally started doing online courses somewhat by accident. In the future, she wants to help promote a sustainable work culture.
Mia Ulvila, a Master of Education and experienced yoga teacher, has been teaching yoga for almost 20 years and has trained over 10,000 clients. Mia, who previously ran a yoga studio in the center of Seinäjoki and Piir, currently works mainly online, but also in the field of workplace well-being and working life, especially in the Seinäjoki region and Ostrobothnia.
– Many people dream of implementing online courses because of the so-called passive income. However, there is a huge amount of work behind the scenes and the annual marketing budget is large, Mia says.
The business has grown and is currently assisted by a marketing person and a customer service person.
Mia's first online course, The Power of Shadow, was created even before the corona era. The most popular course, Vagus Nerve and Yoga, was created a few years later at the Piiri Yoga Hall, and it was not originally intended to be an online course. However, when it immediately became full, the next one was also organized with the possibility of remote participation at the request of customers. Eventually, the same entity was described as an online course, and it has now been sold for almost a million euros. The reason for this is probably that the importance of the vagus nerve in recovery has been prominently featured. For Sanmaya, it was the beginning of building a new kind of online business and many other courses.
In 2025, Mia received support from Liiver to launch a new product in the BtoB market. The support resulted in the creation of the Coaching for Managers and Leaders, Johda ja voi heyni (Lead and Feel Well) – a coaching program for supervisors and managers. In the future, Mia plans to invest in promoting workplace well-being and provide more services to companies.
With its services, Mia wants to support a responsible and sustainable work culture, where people, as resources for organizations and companies, feel good and their resilience is supported.
– From the perspective of consumer customers, responsibility is about addressing issues related to sales ethics and complying with sales ethics.
Sanmaya's content exudes authenticity, which Mia has also received a lot of good feedback from customers. Social media videos are intentionally simple, the content is the most important thing.
– You never know what will work on social media, so I experiment a lot and don't want to spend a lot of time editing social media videos. However, I want to invest more in the quality of the course videos in the future.
Mia has been involved in the activities of the GENGREEN project. Being involved has given Mia a sense of community.
– It has been nice to get to know female entrepreneurs from different fields and be part of the network.
Watch the video for more!