My mum, Shelagh, first introduced me to yoga when I was fifteen. It was something she had quietly woven through her life for as long as I could remember — a practice she’d turn to in the evenings after a long day of teaching.
It was a mystery to me until we began going to an evening class together in a local school hall. I can still remember the faint smell of polish on the wooden floor, the sound of the large blue mats unrolling, the calm, quiet that fell as we began to breathe together. I remember feeling awkward in my teenage body — stiff, self-conscious, unsure of what to do with my limbs — especially next to my graceful, endlessly bendy mum who seemed to float between poses.
Something started to shift. The warmth of the teacher, the rhythm of the breath, the simple invitation to notice what was happening inside. Slowly, it stopped feeling like something I had to get right and started feeling like something I could belong to. I felt my body changing — growing stronger, more awake, more connected. The first time I experienced that feeling of flow during a sun salutation, of strength and ease perfectly balanced, I knew something in me had shifted.
My mum practiced yoga quietly for decades, never making a fuss about it. My dad Chris used to tease her that she should train as a teacher one day. “Maybe,” she’d laugh — always too busy, too devoted to her work in education to imagine it then.
Life has a way of unfolding in circles. When my dad injured himself and had to give up running — after years of running clubs, marathons and races — he began joining her at yoga classes. To everyone’s surprise, he fell in love with it. And a few years later they decided to train together as yoga teachers.
My dad is the kind of person who throws himself wholeheartedly into anything new — and sometimes moves on just as quickly. My mum, ever steady, warned him that yoga wasn’t a phase; it was a way of life. If they were going to do it, they’d do it properly. And they did.
At the time, I was on my own path with practice and had also decided to train as a teacher. We trained at the same time in 2013 whilst living in different cities – me with Sun Power Yoga, and them with the British Wheel of Yoga. When they qualified, my parents founded their own business, Yoga 2, and began teaching together. Their classes are such a joy — warm, funny, grounded, and full of heart. My mum’s wisdom and quiet strength alongside my dad’s lightness and humour nurture a rigorous, nourishing and inclusive practice (with dad jokes that ensure everyone’s abs get a workout).
When I was pregnant with my first baby in 2020, my partner and I moved in with my parents so we could bubble together and birth near them — at the Rosie Maternity Hospital, where I was also born. We practiced together in the beautiful studio they’d built at home with my brother Nick and his beautiful sustainable Ubuild design — a serene space filled with light and wood, built with love by their own hands.
Three years ago, they moved to Bristol to be closer to us and their grandchildren. They’ve recreated that same feeling of calm and creativity where they live here (with Ubuild blocks dotted around their new home as a tribute to their previous creation), and their classes in Frenchay are very popular and they share online practice with around 100 people per week via their zoom classes, which they started in lockdown and are still thriving.
Sometimes, when I see my parents teaching together — their movements so familiar, their laughter still echoing through the room — I feel that same warmth I did as a teenager in that first school hall. Yoga is one of the many strong threads that connects us: a language of love, resilience, and presence that we continue to share across generations.
Leave a Reply