Intoducing Movement for Modern Life

MFML was founded in 2013 and was recently voted the UK’s Favourite Online Yoga Platform or App 2023, Vogue having referred to them as the ‘Netfix of Yoga’, they have 1,700+ classes, courses and challenges with world-class teachers. They encourage their Movers to take a gentle look within to find the perfect class for moving 

This January we have teamed up with them to offer four free yoga classes to help you to reignite your yoga practice. January is the perfect time to begin yoga, full of the good intentions of the new year, or to restart your practice. 

We love the concept of seeing life with a ‘beginner’s mind’. Not being afraid to ask questions, drop expectations, drop your pre-conceived ideas of what a yoga practice ‘should’ look like and instead simply be open to learning and to the present moment. Our bodies change every day with new cells, MFML believes that each day and each moment is an opportunity for a new practice.

Read on to find out more about MFML and how they’ve established themselves as the ‘Netflix of Yoga’

Tell us about MFML, when it began and how it all started…

We started way back in 2013! In 2012, I was living out in the countryside, away from my teachers. The teachers I saw online were way better at marketing than teaching!! I wanted my world-class teachers to be available to me at home, in my own time! And I wanted to make yoga truly accessible to all, so it wasn’t about the fancy expensive leggings and the 190-minute classes, and the posh studios. I wanted it to be just snippets of practice to help ease us through the challenges of life. For me, yoga has been a lifesaver to help get me through the heartbreak of divorce plus the immobility I suffered after a car crash. So my passion for sharing yoga wasn’t about fancy shapes and long classes, it was about real wellbeing and health, through the joys and challenges that life can bring. And not being serious, or hung up on poses in our practice. 

What makes MFML unique to other online platforms

Well, we were the first in the UK and are still the best, just voted ‘Favourite Online Yoga Platform 2023’.
I think what makes us the best is that we’re down-to-earth, real and accessible. We’re not about fancy outfits or fancy poses on a beach. We’re about embracing our real life, exactly how we are right now. This is pretty revolutionary, in a world full of products looking to change us, lose weight, be better, fitter, and stronger. We’re about real acceptance of the here and now, and finding a real practice, right now, to help our mood help with a physical benefit we’re looking for. We’re here to help you through life’s challenges and struggles. You can search classes by emotion. We have classes for heartbreak. In an online world which tells us that we must always be full of love and light, this is pretty radical. We embrace diversity and difference in all its forms. We embrace how different we feel today from yesterday and we encourage you to look within to find a class for today, not for how you’d like to be, or strive to be, but for where we are now. In our aging and less than ‘perfect’ bodies, All is perfection. We embrace yoga for each and every body. Not just the white, skinny, young and flexible vision of beauty that so many brands sell to us.

What are your biggest tips for keeping up with your online practice / making it a habit?

The best tip that I have is to keep your practice short and simple. Just start with 10 minutes a day. And try to put your practice into a daily slot that you always keep. For example, you always have a coffee in the morning? So perhaps do your breathwork in bed when you’ve had your coffee. Or you always brush your teeth in the morning? So roll out your mat for 10 minutes after tooth brushing. Habits are easiest to form when they’re next to another habit.

My favourite habit is my coffee in bed with breathwork and meditation. I wouldn’t miss out on this start to the day!

My second favourite habit is ending the day with a 30-minute quiet class and stretching before getting into bed. This ensures that my racing mind is quietened and I’m feeling calm, and ready to sleep. It actually adds extra time to my day, because instead of p I’ll actually just do the class and then sleep. Otherwise, if I’m feeling sleepy I can fall into a ‘doom scroll’ mode. And it also saves me time because I find myself sleeping pretty much immediately after class. Rather than lying awake and making lists. So yoga, when added at strategic times, adds hours to the day as well as improves the quality of our days and brings us joy.

https://movementformodernlife.com/blog/yoga-motivation/

Tell us about your begin (again) course

This course is great for both those starting out and the most advanced practitioners, who have a beginners mindset. Who wants to explore a variety of world-class teachers, but be part of a friendly community, who wants the classes to be progressive in series’, but varied across teaching styles and approaches. The first four classes are with inimitable Adam Hocke, as part of a seven-part series. He has a fun, down-to-earth approach to practice. Keeping things very accessible, but a truly authentic teacher, with his teachings firmly in the foundations of his yoga-off-the-mat philosophy. Receiving a class every day, you’ll not need to search the website, simply click on the link, roll out your mat and begin (again!). This is the easiest way to stick to your New Year’s intentions of honing a daily at-home yoga practice.

What kit do you need?

Keep it simple, a mat that makes you want to roll it out. And the props that you feel will encourage you to actually do your practice. Whatever will encourage you to actually use them! Maybe your favourite colour. In a material that you love. Do what brings you the most joy! Yoga has no need for fancy props or even a mat, but these things encourage most of us to actually practice. Personally, I love a bolster that I can hug in a restorative practice. I like to use bricks to bring the ground closer to me so that my practice is less like striving and more like living in the present. I like to use a mat which hasn’t cost the earth to produce.

What other MFML classes and courses are the most popular

We have really wide-ranging content, and some of the favourites are our Menopause for Modern Life course, which includes classes for menopause and also talks on nutrition and wellbeing.  Our transformation challenge is truly a life-changing course. With 30 classes weaving in yoga philosophy, so we can journey towards living our yoga both on and off the mat.

One of your favourite teachers on the platform is Lucy McCarthy, whose classes range from her daily 10-minute morning magic class, which is I think the most popular class on the site. She has really beautiful yoga nidras and breathwork classes. Her range is vast and her style truly accessible. Mimi Kuo-Deemer is a very popular teacher who has Qigong, yoga and fusion classes, and then Amy Holly’s Barre classes are so many people’s favourite workouts, and both Sally Parkes and Vanessa have awesome Pilates classes to help us to get strong. 

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