News

Jewish Chronicle
December 31 2004

Flexi-job for City woman

By Gaby Wine

A 28-YEAR-old North-West Londoner has given up dreams of a high-flying City career to open her own yoga school.

Melissa Freedman has just launched the London School of Yoga, which runs classes in Hampstead Town HaII and CopthalI School in Mill Hill.

Having worked as a management consultant, Ms Freedman said that her formerly stressful working life has now been replaced with a sense of well-being.

"While I was working in the City, I used to teach colleagues yoga for a Iaugh, but I never thought I would become, yoga teacher. But I found that the more I worked in the City the more stressed I became and the more I did yoga, the more relaxed I became."

Having been born with hypermobile joints, which result in great flexibility, Ms Freedman recalled that when she was younger, she was doing yoga without even realising it.

"My party trick was sitting in the lotus position and then walking on my hands."

At UCL, where she studied French, she took up yoga to counter stress. "When I do yoga, I feel good physically, spiritually, and mentally. I have, learnt to get rid of the millions of things which go round my head."

A member of the Association of Jewish Yoga Teachers, Ms Freedman said that yoga had also enhanced her religious identity. "Yoga has left me more in touch with my roots and affirmed that I love being Jewish after years of trying to run away from it.”

The classes, which can be booked through the website (www.londonschoohofyoga.com), differ from other yoga programmes, since students are graded at eight different levels.

“Yoga can be very intimidating for a first-timer. If they are introduced to 46 different positions, they might freak. Whereas if they are presented with 10, it is far less daunting. The grades give students something to aspire to.”

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