Here’s something that not many people know: in my very first week as a yogi, one of my teachers was Zara.
I was brand new and had no idea what I was doing or whether I would return for a second class. Zara was warm, funny and uncompromising. She taught me things I did not yet know I needed.
She was, from pretty early on, convinced I should become a teacher. She was not shy about sharing this opinion. “Nagged” might be the most accurate word. Lovingly, persistently, enthusiastically nagged.
She was right. Becoming a teacher was one of the best decisions of my life. And a huge part of why Phoenix exists at all is because of the people who showed me — sometimes gently, sometimes firmly — what yoga could do.
What Zara built.
Zara didn’t stop at teaching. Alongside Eva and Sarah, she built Live Karma Yoga — a Community Interest Company whose whole purpose is to take the practice somewhere it doesn’t usually get to go.
LKY runs free and contribution-based classes in spaces and communities that are in real need of positive awareness. Prisons. Hospitals. Schools. Safehouses, hostels and homeless shelters. Their teaching team is now 38 strong — and a great number of them, as it happens, are also part of the Phoenix family.
LKY takes free and contribution-based yoga into prisons, hospitals, schools, safehouses, hostels and shelters. Their aim is simple: cost or circumstance should not prevent someone from trying yoga.
“There is no greater power for change than a Community discovering what it cares about.”
— M. Wheatley
LKY works with organisations including Paddington Now, Chelsea Physic Garden, Lululemon, Carneys Community, Enable Charities and Friends of the NHS. Those partnerships help it take classes to more people and places.
Why Phoenix is their home.
From the start, we wanted Phoenix to be a studio that people helped shape, not somewhere they simply paid for a class and left. Members don’t just have a say in what happens here; they shape what happens, and our work with LKY is one way that commitment reaches beyond the studio.
Welcoming LKY felt completely natural. Their values are our values. Their people are, in many cases, our people — around fifty of our teaching team also work with or for LKY. And Zara, the woman who spent my first week of yoga gently insisting I had something to offer the world as a teacher, is herself a Phoenix teacher today.
There’s something in that I find genuinely moving. The studio I built is now home to the community that helped make me. That’s not planned. It just happened because people with shared values find each other.
About Live Karma Yoga
LKY is a CIC driven by Community and Connection. They run free and contribution-based classes in spaces that need them most — prisons, hospitals, schools, safehouses, hostels and shelters. Their community classes are open to all, with sessions tailored for specific groups including female yoga, SEN and elderly communities.
If you know someone who could benefit from what LKY does, or if you’d like to get involved, email info@livekarmayoga.com or visit Live Karma Yoga →.
Follow them on Instagram: @livekarmayoga
You’ll see LKY faces at Phoenix day-to-day. And there are fundraising workshops coming up that we hope so much you can be part of — watch this space, or follow @livekarmayoga to hear first.
And Zara — thank you. For teaching me in that first week. For not letting me off the hook. And for building something this important.
Ray
