Graduate Success Stories
Yoga is widely recognised as an effective complementary therapy, and there are many opportunities as you can see from our graduate stories below.
Opportunities in clinical healthcare and private practice
There are opportunities to work in clinical healthcare settings as well as in private practice. Our graduates have gone on to build rewarding yoga therapy careers working in institutions such as hospitals, psychiatric clinics, osteopath practices, women’s refuges, schools, hospices, and prisons. Some choose to specialise, working with charities or specialist health associations.
Develop additional skills and confidence
Others find that the additional skills and knowledge acquired on the course gives them the confidence to work with a wider range of one-to-one clients and to offer more specialised yoga classes, workshops, and retreats.
Benefit from self-development
Graduates regularly report that they benefit personally from the self-development that is inherent within the course, leading them to a deeper and more compassionate understanding of themselves and of those around them.
Aidilla Jeharey
www.suriayoga.com & @suriayogauk/
I really enjoyed the yoga therapy course which offered a supportive and encouraging learning environment and gave me the skills and confidence I needed to develop a career in yoga therapy. Since graduating I have used those skills to work with diverse clients including survivors of torture, at Freedom From Torture Manchester, emergency services personnel at GM Combination Authority & GM Fire & Rescue Services and corporate clients, and students at the University of Salford. This experience has helped me to develop a trauma-informed approach to working with individuals who have a history of PTSD/Complex PTSD related symptoms, where I provide a safer and nurturing space for healing.
As a lifelong student, I remain up to date with the latest research and findings in mind-body practices, and I’m currently in the 3rd year of an MSc in Mindfulness Studies. My intervention research project is entitled “The Role of Mindfulness in Sleep Outcomes for People with Post-Traumatic Stress related Sleep Disturbance – A Quantitative and Qualitative Pilot Study”. I was also involved in the setting up of The Yoga Therapy Association, and this year started my first intake for Yoga Teacher Training.
Charlotte Kahn
www.maidayoga.com @maidayogauk/
After graduating, I began running group classes for the charity, Parkinson’s Care & Support UK, and now offer 1 to 1 for private clients with this condition. In 2021, I created a 3 hour teacher training module on “Teaching Yoga For Parkinson’s” which I run annually with The Yoga Teachers Forum. In 2021, I was employed by Camden Council to offer therapeutic chair yoga classes for community centres across the Camden borough. Clients attending have a wide range of health concerns including: arthritis, stroke recovery, and Dementia. At the beginning of 2022, I began working with people with advanced stages of Dementia, and I am now working at four care homes across London, offering group classes that incorporate movement, music, and singing. I am currently developing a new teacher training module on “Teaching Yoga For Dementia”, due to be launched in Autumn 2023.
Tristessa Moore
linktr.ee/yogatherapyhull @yogatherapyhull/
Since qualifying in Yoga Therapy at Real Yoga in 2018, I have gone on to specialise in Trauma-Informed Yoga for adults and teens. Much of my Yoga Therapy delivery is in schools as my background is in teacher training (PGCE, University of Huddersfield) and in teaching English. I have been awarded funding to train PE teachers, Safeguarding, Wellbeing and Special Educational Needs staff on how to support pupil mental health through Yoga and Mindfulness in East Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire.
Many of my classes outside of these trainings are to school pupils in the PE curriculum, and I also support mental health and rehabilitation in prisons, secure units, and in specialist neurological care hospitals and for the NHS Wellbeing Recovery College.
Catherine Watson
www.hopeinyoga.com
The training has opened up a host of rewarding opportunities working with a variety of organisations to deliver yoga therapy. I run small group yoga therapy courses to help people suffering with chronic health conditions including musculoskeletal, persistent pain, anxiety, depression, cancer, fibromyalgia, trauma, and arthritis. An initiative funded through South Oxfordshire District Council.
Along with three other yoga therapists, have collaborated with Nilbon Yoga to bring yoga into the healthcare setting to support and empower those living with chronic pain. We have won an award from Greenshoots Seed Finance Award Scheme, to grow this work, and a generous grant from the Together Fund enabled us to deliver sessions for free in the community. I volunteer for My Cancer My Choices charity to offer yoga therapy to patients and staff from the Royal Berks Hospital. And a collaboration with a Trauma consultancy has enabled me to offer trauma informed Yoga Therapy sessions.
Sue Skelton
www.sueskeltonyoga.co.uk. @/sueskeltonyoga/
Since graduating, I am using my yoga therapy skills and my experience as a Clinical Nurse Specialist in Oncology and Palliative Care, to focus on supporting anyone living with cancer. I run specialist classes for; Victoria’s Promise, a small charity for young women experiencing cancer, a Not-for-Profit organisation The Yoga for Life Project, and I work with Synthesis Clinic, an Integrative Oncology Clinic offering 1:1 Yoga Therapy for their clients. I contribute my medical knowledge on the cancer module for the Yoga Therapy Training, and I am working on an online Yoga for Cancer course, due to be rolled out later in 2024. I also run group classes, including a therapeutic chair yoga class where my clients have a variety of conditions including, arthritis, dementia, fibromyalgia and mobility problems.
Diana Briggs
www.therapeutic-yoga.co.uk. @therapeuticyogauk/reels/
As well as being a Yoga Therapist, I am also a CBT practitioner, and combine the traditional practices of yoga and mindfulness with modern evidence based scientific research. I work as a Social Prescriber for NHS Southern Health, integrating yoga therapy with mindfulness courses, and linking referral patients with holistic practitioners. I also run a private practice offering yoga therapy, chair yoga, restorative yoga, and meditation, as well as retreats. I’m currently training to be a spiritual counsellor at Sweet Track Glastonbury.
Patricia Onderdonck-Young
http://www.yogitrish.co.uk. @/yogitrishcornwall/
Since graduating, I have made links with social prescribers and am working with individuals and groups within my local community.
I work with a number of women individually to support them in releasing trauma held within their bodies and I have completed an additional qualification in Supporting Healing & Recovery after Sexual Violence to support this work. I have delivered a workshop of Yoga Therapy for peri/menopause and now work with a number of peri and post-menopausal women on a one-to-one basis. In terms of the various projects that I am now involved with, completing the Diploma in Yoga Therapy has given me a credibility that I simply did not have as a yoga teacher.
Gayl Long
https://www.in8yoga.com
Since completing my training in 2021, I have successfully integrated my yoga therapy skills into my corporate coaching work which I run alongside my private yoga therapy practice.
The course substantially deepened my ability to help coaching clients tune into their bodies somatically and to find a deeper wisdom. Using visualisations, breath work and movement alongside traditional coaching methods, enables clients to access insights and possibilities beyond the cognitive mind, resulting in sustainable shifts in perception, personal and professional growth. Alongside this work I have developed considerable expertise in working with people who have osteoporosis. This is a subject of great personal interest which I chose for my specialist project during the course and which I have been studying ever since.
I am a guest speaker for the Royal Osteoporosis Society and run face to face group yoga classes for those with osteopenia and osteoporosis. My yoga therapy training continues to enrich my yoga teaching, my coaching, and my life.
Konika Shankar
https://www.shalayogahaven.co.uk @/shalayogahaven/
Since graduating in 2019, I have established a successful yoga therapy practice in my home studio working with clients with a range of health conditions from Chronic Fatigue, Arthritis, OCD to Anxiety, depression and panic attacks. I have found clients with stress and trauma related conditions have particularly benefited from learning breathing and meditation practices, which lead me to further my training with Dr’s Richard Brown and Patricia Gerbarg- Breath Body Mind. I also returned to training with Jyoti Manuel of Special Yoga, and am now a senior practitioner and trainer in both areas, as special Yoga began collaborating with Breath Body Mind.
My work has always focussed on the more therapeutic aspects, and I specialise in connecting with children and adults with Special Needs or are neurodivergent, alongside those with mental health issues. As well as my training, I also draw on my own personal experience with depression after a difficult childhood, and being a parent with a child with profound and multiple learning difficulties which can be emotionally challenging.
Yoga Therapy with its rich and varied methods of working – physically, energetically and mentally is a powerful tool to really help a client cultivate a way of working with the natural capacity of the body and mind to optimise their wellbeing.
Sarah Swan
www.swan-yoga.co.uk
Since graduating in 2019, various new opportunities have come my way enabling me to use the skills I learned during my yoga therapy training. As well as working one-to-one with private clients with a wide range of health issues, my training has also influenced how I teach yoga, enabling me to offer a much more therapeutic and tailored approach, which is well-received.
I have also worked as a Yoga Therapist over the last five years with in-patient and day patients at a private mental health hospital where yoga is part of its healthcare programme. Therapeutic yoga work in small groups can be challenging, but this experience has been immensely rewarding for me. In training, you learn the importance of being well-grounded and the need to “hold a space” while offering appropriate yoga practices, in the moment, working holistically with individuals, not just symptoms. Providing therapeutic yoga with these small groups has taught me to hone these skills, whilst gaining a deeper understanding of a wide variety of mental health (and physical health) conditions. More importantly it has given me valuable insight into how yoga therapy can help support and change individual health and wellbeing.
Katie Maughfling
katie_maughfling@yahoo.co.uk
I qualified as a yoga therapist with Real Yoga in July 2020. Since then, I have reduced my group classes and focus on 1-1 yoga therapy. I have found that the learning from the course about the subtle body and how mind and emotions affect energy flow, invaluable in allowing me to offer a truly holistic service. Alongside yoga therapy I provide ayurvedic lifestyle and nutrition advice based on the client’s dosha type, and bespoke essential oil blends which resonate with the kosha system in yoga, addressing the needs of the physical, energetic, mental, wisdom and spiritual bodies of my clients. And as a reflexologist, I find the listening and counselling skills, and the insight I have gained into the human psyche through yoga philosophy, are invaluable in helping me build a truly effective therapeutic relationship with my clients. I currently work at ‘The Practice Rooms in Cheltenham’ where I am also the Practice Manager.
Ruth Henderson-Cash
www.yogawell.biz @yoga_well_chelt/
Time really has flown by since I completed the Yoga Therapy course. My interest in researching conditions, whether client related or for a workshop, led me in the autumn of 2020 to develop and record a 5-session course to support women through the menopause, called Embrace the Change. I structured this around the Kosha energy model. The local yoga studio (Orange Yoga) was brilliant in providing production support, and making the video series available to purchase. There followed some zoom and in person courses as well as a women’s wellness day for a regional Police force.
Through my journey so far, client work has felt like oxygen that feeds me. It reminds me of the vital importance of yoga therapy and its transformative power. But developing and nurturing professional relationships has also been important to raise awareness of the skills of yoga therapists, create opportunities, and also to keep me motivated and energise and this recently led to an invitation to deliver a funded four week course to support people living with fatigue conditions (including long Covid).
My yoga therapy training has personally helped me be kinder to myself, and to use these therapeutic tools to support my own well-being. I will always have more to learn and discover, and that feels exactly as it should be.
Gemma Peppiatt
www.yogalikewater.com @gemma_peppiatt
I loved the Real Yoga Therapy training. Feeling how beneficial its effects were for me, gave me a deeper understanding of how I could incorporate yoga therapy into my teaching for the benefit of others. We were introduced to such a wealth of knowledge over the 2 years, that still I’m happily delving deeper into these aspects of yoga; both for myself and as a yoga teacher, yoga therapist and teacher trainer.
I was already a pregnancy & postnatal teacher but have found myself increasingly drawn to all aspects of women’s health. As well as working with older people and those with limited movement. I regularly run chair yoga sessions in local care homes.
I deliver these aspects on the Yoga Like Water teacher training courses my husband and I run. I also teach pregnancy & postnatal yoga teacher training courses.