Brighton Yoga Foundation – End of an Era

Last week, I got the email from the Charity Commission – the Brighton Yoga Foundation (BYF) had officially been wound up!

As its founder and Chair for most of its 9 years, I have to admit I shed a tear – even though I supported (and still do!) the merger with the Brighton Natural Health Foundation. 

But I am also very proud. BYF was successful beyond our wildest early dreams. It has inspired many others round the UK to follow its example and to bring yoga to those who would not normally have access to it.

The Brighton Yoga Foundation was accepted as a charity in May 2016. Two years earlier we[1] had launched the Brighton Yoga Festival which has now become a highly successful annual celebration of the local yoga community and one of the biggest annual yoga gatherings in the UK. But we always wanted to take yoga beyond its traditional clientele – to the people who really would benefit from it the most, but who didn’t think yoga was “for people like them”. So we established Brighton Yoga Foundation with that stated objective. In just nine years, we raised around £200,000 in grants and donations[2], enabling us to deliver each year literally hundreds of yoga outreach classes with thousands of participants. 

We took inspiration (and many ideas and policies !) from the wonderful Edinburgh Community Yoga and the many local yoga teachers before us who had been delivering outreach yoga in the city. All our teachers had specialised qualifications in dealing with their client group and we paid them at a competitive rate.

And over those 9 years we delivered free (or voluntary donation-based) classes to:

• Children in schools and stressed teenagers,
• Women recovering from domestic abuse and sexual violence,
• Homeless people,
• People recovering from addictions and serious illness, 
• People with mental health conditions,
• Older citizens and those with limited mobility,
• Refugees and asylum seekers,
• People in prison

From 2014 to 2022, we organised the annual Brighton Yoga Festivals in the city (two of them online during Covid), with attendances ranging from 800 to 3000 people. We also provided other events and services for the city’s yoga community:

• Yoga on the Beach – an annual seafront event with yoga classes open to all; 
• Mat rental service – providing yoga mats and associated equipment for rent at low cost for yoga teachers and community groups, thanks to a generous donation of 250 yoga mats from Yogamatters;
• Yoga history – a series of interviews published online with some of the people who were instrumental in developing the early years of what has become the most vibrant yoga community in the UK;
• Yoga teachers’ forums – more than a dozen events open to local yoga teachers to discuss key issues of mutual interest: everything from diversity and teaching post-trauma yoga to accountancy and marketing;
• Major debates on critical issues – 2019 “Silenced Voices” – the worldwide first panel of survivors discussing the various sexual abuse scandals in the yoga community; 2020 a “Black Lives Matter & Diversity” in Yoga panel; 2021 a panel discussing “How Can Yoga Survive the Pandemic”;
• Most recently, we took the initiative to collaborate with others to establish the UK yoga community outreach network involving over 80 organisations, studios and individuals sharing good practice and learning on how to deliver such work.

Our outreach yoga programmes did not go unnoticed and received national recognition with awards from the British Wheel of Yoga in 2023 and from the National Sport & Recreation Alliance in 2024.

And all this was achieved with no full time staff or offices! But we were fortunate to have a part-time co-ordinator for the yoga outreach programmes (Laurie & then Tammy) and many dedicated and tireless charity trustees[3].Our work has not finished – on the contrary. Brighton Natural Health Foundation is continuing many of these yoga outreach programmes and delivering similar mindful movement courses such as Tai Chi, Qi Gong, pilates and meditation. We know that mindful movement can be enormously beneficial for many people and can contribute to the NHS’s prevention agenda.

[1] Key people involved in the early days include: Mikaela Perera, Janaki, Holly Cooper, Mark Sheppard, Cat Duval, Emma Newlyn, Anika Grimm, Effie Love, Michelle Pauli, Rachel Matthews, Jo Finn, Rob Shepherd, Caroline Vitta, Camille Pierson

[2] There are too many grant-giving bodies to list them all, but a special mention to Sussex Community Foundation, Brighton & Hove Council, Active Sussex, Yogamatters and the National Lottery for their consistent financial support

[3] Again, too many to mention them all, but special thanks to Camille Pierson, Anika Grimm, Emma Newlyn, Josie Duggan, Hannah Waller, Amy Tarrant, Clare McGill, Sam Hart, Caroline Pick, Gaia Pabla, Anwar Osman, Christine Gibbons, David Thomas, Nataliya Asare, Indie Foolheea, Alina Kovalcsuk & Carmen Appich