The Yogacampus story began in 2002, when the owners of The Life Centre (one of the UK’s oldest and most respected yoga centres) had a dream. This was to share some of the huge benefits which they had gained through practising and studying yoga worldwide beyond just the Centre’s regular visitors.
They agreed that the way to fulfil this dream was to offer high quality yoga teacher training, enhanced by a faculty drawn from the cream of the world’s yoga teachers. In 2003, the dream became reality when The Life Centre Education Limited was born (as a non-profit making educational body) and our first teacher training was established.
Within the year, we took on our first teacher training students and hosted our first visiting international teachers. By late 2004, 25 new yoga teachers could proudly claim that they had trained with The Life Centre Education and a group of teachers of a calibre beyond our wildest imagination – including Rod Stryker, Richard Freeman, Tias Little and Shiva Rea – had all enthusiastically embraced the dream and joined The Life Centre Education as visiting teachers.
As time passed, more students arrived, not just from the UK, but from all over Europe and beyond. More students graduated, some of them now regular teachers at The Life Centre and other top yoga venues, and others with their own yoga centres. We expanded into specialist teacher training, offering yoga therapy (initially together with the Yoga Biomedical Trust) and yoga for pregnancy, children and families. Our early visiting teachers kept coming back, new visiting teachers joined the faculty, and The Life Centre Education’s community of yoga friends continued to grow, to the extent that our courses and other events achieved recognition well beyond that of The Life Centre itself. We therefore decided to recognise The Life Centre Education’s independence by developing and re-naming it as a separate entity from The Life Centre.
While we were keen to reflect our focus on yoga education, it was equally important that our identity reflect our close sense of community and our long and fruitful relationships with loyal supporters and friends – from our earliest fellow travellers on the yoga journey and our own first teachers to all those who have participated – as students, teachers and behind the scenes – in our courses and events. After months of meetings, deliberation, discussion and even competitions, the solution came from a dear friend (and one of our first visiting teachers), Richard Freeman, who suggested Yogacampus. It immediately felt right and, thanks to Richard, everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief.
As we move forward, our goal at Yogacampus remains that of sharing our knowledge, love and respect for yoga. Yogacampus is here to support those practitioners who wish to grow their relationship with yoga and to help the community flourish.