People are craving connection and the holistic approach that only yoga can provide

Tell us about MoreYoga

With 40 sites, MoreYoga is London's largest yoga studio brand. We offer a gateway to personal transformation through yoga, mat Pilates, meditation and a range of wellness practices. Our mission, when we launched in 2016, was to make high-quality yoga affordable and accessible to all.

We run more than 1,300 classes a week and all types of yoga styles – vinyasa, mandala, rocket, as well as the softer practices, such as yin and yoga nidra, plus our own signature Pilates classes.

Across our network, we see around 90,000 visits per month and have 20,000-plus monthly customers. We encourage members to aim for two to three classes per week to truly feel the benefits and maximise the value of their membership.

Our £1 membership offer brings people into yoga who had been priced out of the market

How do you make yoga accessible?

Accessibility is at the core of our brand DNA, by ensuring affordability and convenient locations. We've prioritised removing barriers and our flagship £1 first month, then half-price for life membership (£44 per month) has always run alongside flexible pay-as-you-go packs.

While our £1 membership offer may seem as though its not sustainable long-term, by continuing to offer low-cost introductory offers, regular pay-what-you-can community sessions, and ongoing discounts for health workers, students and £1 classes for those in need, we have continued to bring people into yoga who may not necessarily have had the opportunity before, as they were priced out of the market.

Our app allows people to book into classes effortlessly and discover yoga in their local area, making it easier to incorporate yoga as part of their daily routine.

How is the concept evolving?

We're weaving in therapeutic modalities, such as sound healing, breathwork and community circles. We also offer our instructor network the chance to host workshops on their chosen theme and we get some really varied ideas brought to the table.

Our approach is to be intentional rather than trend-driven; we want to ensure every offering serves a genuine purpose in offering true value for elevating people’s health and wellness, deepening our community‚ healing and self-awareness. We’re also intentional in curating offerings that honour the roots of yoga.

Ceremonial practices, trauma-informed therapy and integrative coaching are all areas we're exploring through our positive mental health programme, MoreMind, which has been created to bridge the gap between physical practice and mental wellbeing.

We have a dedicated product and innovation team who help us to stay ahead of the curve and an internal teacher development programme. Added to this, we listen carefully to what our community wants.

As MoreYoga evolves as a brand we are addressing many touchpoints within the health and wellness space, so that members continue to feel welcome, valued and excited by our offering.

Ceremonial practices, trauma-informed therapy and integrative coaching are areas we’re exploring through our positive mental health programme, MoreMind

Is the Reformer Pilates boom having any impact on yoga?

We see reformer Pilates as complementary rather than competitive and we love that it encourages more people to explore mindful movement and body awareness. However, what MoreYoga offers – with touchpoints across the physical, mental and spiritual – is hard to replicate. Yoga’s beauty lies in the fact it combines ancient wisdom and modern practice, backed by more and more emerging science

We’re finding that people are craving connection – to themselves and others – and the holistic approach to their wellness that only yoga can provide.

Our customers come for a yoga way of life. What unites them is a desire for something more – more connection, more strength, more calm, more clarity. 

Are you back to pre-pandemic levels yet?

Yes and beyond. We lost 80 per cent of our membership over the course of the pandemic and had three months’ cashflow in the bank in October 2020, so it got very real for us.

The turning point was October 2022. The demand for affordable yoga started to surge and we began climbing steadily back.

By 2023, we’d surpassed pre-pandemic levels, averaging 90,000 visits per month and holding onto all of our 34 yoga studios.

By January 2024 we saw 24 per cent growth year-on-year and since then we’ve more than doubled our membership base and are looking forward to our ambitious expansion.

We survived through agility, creativity and the continued support of our loyal community. We were one of the first London yoga studio brands to pivot to online, filming round-the-clock from March 2020 so our members could keep practicing. We maintained a really beautiful dialogue and open communication with our members during this time and we believe this led to the maturing of the brand. 

Fundamentally it has been our commitment to purpose and clarity around our values of diversity, community, and affordability that have seen us through those darker days. We supported more than 3,000 health workers with free yoga, turned studios into food banks, and raised thousands for charities. These actions weren’t just survival strategies – they deepened our bond with our community and reminded us why we do this work.

Our community support also meant we were able to help some of our teachers with income during this time. That move kept our community connected and gave us the resilience to hold on through lockdowns.

The gap in expansion while we regrouped financially also gave us the opportunity to take a step back and look at ways we could elevate our brand and look deeply at customer experience. We've since worked with award-winning interior design company, Kai Interiors, to push ahead with a refresh of studio design/fit out.

We wanted to move beyond functional space into something that felt intentionally designed: calm yet energising, minimalist yet warm. For us, design is part of wellness – the look, feel and atmosphere of a space all contribute to how someone experiences their practice and their community.

What are the current opportunities and challenges?

The opportunity lies in deepening our offering, scaling impact and continued innovation. We also have ambitions to boost our workplace wellness offering and cross-disciplinary wellbeing services.

The challenge is standing out in a saturated wellness market while staying true to our values, alongside the current challenges of today’s financial climate and the inevitable business rates that can cripple high-street businesses.

We’re looking at regional expansion and our dream is Europe and global, but we’ll  take it one studio at a time

What are your expansion plans?

In the short term, our focus is on optimising our network and launching new studios in key London neighbourhoods. We’ve recently opened new sites in Battersea, Peckham Rye, Peckham’s Queen’s Road and Manor House, with another nine planned, including Clerkenwell (Q4 2025), Walthamstow and Canning Town (Q1 2026).

Medium- to long-term, our vision is still 100-plus studios across London, as it was when we spoke to HCM before the pandemic in 2018, bringing high-quality yoga and Pilates to local high streets, without the boutique price tag.

We’re still definitely looking at regional expansion and our dream is Europe and global, but we’ll take it one studio at a time and ensure we’re staying true to our vision and values. We’ll grow, but we’ll always grow with depth.

We’re proud to say we’re not franchised and all our studios are managed centrally through our small but highly-dedicated team. This allows us consistency of experience as we know the business inside out and we're incredibly proud of our staff and teacher retention – this built-up knowledge and connection to our vision adds real value to the business. However, people often approach us assuming that we’re franchised, so watch this space for investment opportunities. l

• Read HCM’s profile of MoreYoga in 2018