Heart & Bones Yoga
Business Name: Heart & Bones Yoga
Product: Online yoga classes and yoga teaching training
Based In: Courtenay, British Columbia
Scroll down to learn more about Heart & Bones Yoga and what inspired them to start their business.
What inspired you to start your business?
As the founder and lead teacher of Heart and Bones Yoga, it’s been 20 years in the making! I’ve been teaching yoga since 2003 and after seeing so many yoga injuries and emphasis on extreme movements and poses, in 2012 I started to shift how I was teaching so that it was more inclusive and accessible. I started to take anatomy and biomechanics courses and applied that to yoga poses to help teach people to move in ways that supportive for their joints and muscles. In 2016 I started sharing this approach on social media and quickly grew a global following of yoga teachers and everyday people who wanted to practice yoga asana in this way.
Heart and Bones Online was created after seeing how many people around the world wanted more of this anatomy-informed and inclusive approach to yoga, we built the platform and launched it in 2018. Heart and Bones is now a thriving online yoga studio and yoga teacher training website with members in over 50 countries.
How do you describe your business?
Heart and Bones Yoga Online is a custom built online courses and classes platform. We offer anatomy-informed, inclusive approaches to yoga. Our main offerings are online yoga classes and yoga teacher training. We teach and certify yoga teachers from around the world in this approach so they can better serve the people in their classes. We offer online classes that welcome people as they are supporting healthy and sustainable movement practices, anatomy education along with mindfulness practices and nervous system support.
While this is an online business, we work hard to make it feel like you are part of a community and not just a customer. The way that we teach and share our classes feels like your favourite yoga teacher is in the room with you, welcoming you just as you are. Our teaching style offers inclusive cues for all-bodies and abilities. This approach is quite unique in the online yoga space as most mainstream online yoga platforms don’t offer the diversity in teachers and teaching the way we do.
While our online studio and teacher training teams have teachers from around the world, the Heart and Bones “behind the scenes” team are all Canadian, proudly sharing our passion with an international audience. Including choosing our offerings to be in CAD. Because we serve a global community, over the years we’ve been told by different people that we should charge in USD as that’s the “globally recognized currency.” But it never felt right to do that and as a purpose-driven business, we felt it was more ethical as a Canadian business to charge CAD.
What’s your bestselling product & why do you think it’s so popular?
Heart and Bones Online Studio and the Heart and Bones Yoga Teacher Training.
Heart and Bones has become a global name in the yoga because of our anatomy-informed and inclusive ways of sharing yoga. Mainstream yoga has made a lot of people feel like they don’t belong unless they are skinny, bendy and wearing Lululemon. We often hear from people that they’ve tried yoga but didn’t return because they couldn’t do a lot of the poses and the teacher didn’t give them options for something different.
There are so many powerful benefits to this wisdom-tradition of yoga, beyond the physical and when people feel like they can’t do yoga because they don’t fit in or that they aren’t flexible enough that’s where Heart and Bones comes in.
Heart and Bones Yoga is all about encouraging and welcoming people just as they are. Are about sharing ways to move no matter if you can’t get down to the floor, can’t touch your toes, or whatever it might be. We’ve filled a sorely needed niche in the yoga world and it’s amazing to see how many people love it. And we love that our certified teachers new graduates each year from around the world are sharing this approach so that more people are able to enjoy the profound benefits of yoga no matter their abilities.
The design of the online studio is really unique in the ways that you can narrow down the right class at the right time for you. Another way we offer inclusivity in our classes is that we don’t label the classes and beginner/intermediate/advanced because our anatomy-informed approach is detailed and supportive for all bodies and abilities.
Instead, you can choose the classes based on your mood or energy levels, the body part or area of the body you want to move (eg, hips, shoulders), chair classes, standing-only classes, lower-back friendly classes, and so on. We also have our signature “move and learn” classes that teach you about your amazing body and how to move it not just on the yoga mat, but in your daily life.
We also have a engaged global community who attend our monthly live classes and of course, enjoys the over 400+ on demand classes.
We have a wonderful and diverse teaching team that embody our inclusive mission. Our teaching team are from Canada, the UK, Europe and the US. From physiotherapists, mental health therapists, yoga, fitness and movement teachers, each teacher brings their own welcoming approach.
The Heart and Bones Yoga Teacher Training and continuing education courses are another aspect of the business. We’re the leading online yoga teacher education and anatomy-informed yoga and have certified over 400 yoga teachers from around the world. Each year we sell out our yoga teacher trainings with our unique approach to yoga education. Our online course blends pre-recorded content with monthly live calls and small mentorship groups. Some of the most common feedback about the training is people say how much it changed their life, how it’s so much more than yoga teacher training. Which reflects our intention to share welcoming and supportive practices where people are seen and supported just as they are.
What’s your personal favourite product?
Heart and Bones Online! We are constantly working on how to improve the user experience. The biggest issue for people is actually pressing play and doing the classes, so we continue to inspire people to move more with our monthly and playful challenges, tailored programs and playlists. Our live classes are a lot of fun and a great way for us to connect with our global community in a more personal way.
