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. I had no idea what I was doing, what I’d got myself into, or whether I’d come back for a second class. And there was Zara — warm, funny, completely uncompromising about the practice — teaching me things I didn’t know I needed to learn.
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.
The belief at the heart of LKY is simple: yoga and wellness should be accessible to EVERYbody. Not just people who can afford a drop-in class in a nice part of London. Everybody. That conviction shows up in where they go and who they serve — and it’s a conviction I share completely.
There is no greater power for change than a Community discovering what it cares about.
— M. Wheatley
One of LKY’s core values is that yoga is about Community over Competition — that we are genuinely stronger together. This is why they collaborate with as many organisations and initiatives as possible: Paddington Now, Chelsea Physic Garden, Lululemon, Carneys Community, Enable Charities, Friends of the NHS. The list keeps growing because the belief is real, not strategic.
Why Phoenix is their home.
When Phoenix opened its doors, one of the things we were clearest about was what kind of studio we wanted to be. Not just a place where people come to practise, pay and leave — but a genuine community space. Owned by its community. Shaped by its community. Open to the world beyond its walls.
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
If you know someone who could benefit from what LKY does, or if you’d like to get involved, get in touch at info@livekarmayoga.com or find them at livekarmayoga.com.
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.