HOW THE VIRTUAL YOGA STUDIO CAME ABOUT.

OUR STORY

I wanted to start the Virtual Yoga Studio as a way of making Yoga accessible and affordable for everyone.

When I was at University, I was chatting with two plus size friends in a conversation they had initiated about exercise. They pointed out to me that I had been given a head start that I didn’t even know that I had. I loved exercise – it didn’t occur to me that other people might not. To them, it was traumatic. They had learned to hate it due to negative experiences and even ridicule they had experienced as kids.

One of the girls then told me a story about how when she was younger, she had always loved swimming but unfortunately had come up against a fatphobic teacher who had made her do a press up out of the pool at the end of the lesson. She was unable to do it, and so the teacher proceeded to make the whole class watch her struggle and cry whilst they all laughed and judged her. The impact of this incident was clearly still very raw and had totally changed the trajectory of my friend’s relationship with exercise. The sad thing is, the majority of my clients have experienced something like this. It’s not ok.

From then I felt I had an obligation to try and encourage other people to repair their relationships with exercise and understand that there could be another way. I feel strongly now that it is my mission in life to reach as many people as possible and try to help them reconnect with themselves and their bodies. And if I can, help people unpick their negative relationships with exercise and access it in a really positive way. I absolutely believe that yoga can be a fantastic tool to help people achieve this.