We offer a guided ‘At Home’ subscription service, and focus our efforts on producing the very best content for it that we can. Here's why.
Words by Lisa James | 26th March '21
It seems like such a long time ago now that we went into that first ever lockdown, doesn’t it? And even longer ago to the time when we didn’t even really know what a lockdown was! But it’s the one-year anniversary in the UK this week, and it got us thinking about how much has changed.
Like being at Soul & Surf. But in your lounge.
Right at the beginning, we took a punt on running some online retreats and weekly classes (the original ‘At Home’) – and they were good (great even) but I’m not sure we really thought this coming together online would be a long-term thing. And yet here we are, fast-forwarded a year, and it absolutely is.
There are detractors of course – those who say it’s not quite the same, it’s not quite as good, it’s not ever going to be for them… But for so many of us (and I’m putting myself firmly in this pot!) it’s been an absolute gift to be able to explore and develop our yoga practices in the comfort of our own homes, with teachers we’d normally only be able to get to once in a blue moon.
Which got us thinking – if we were enjoying practising in this way, others must be too. And wouldn’t it be bloody brilliant if our teachers, who are so loved by our guests, were available to them not just once or twice a year but all year round…
So we sat down and worked it out – how we could evolve these one-off events into something a bit more permanent. But something very definitely Soul & Surf.
We knew for example that we wanted to keep the SOUL very firmly at the centre of it all and that we wanted to deliver a mix of quality content to suit the different pockets of time that we’ve each got available at home. Online classes weren’t really working given all the different time zones at play, plus (and this was the one that really threw us for a while) we definitely didn’t want to reinvent the wheel – stick to the knitting and all that.
We loved what they were doing – providing teachers with the opportunity to take students on a journey with their practice (get the name now?) – and jumped on board.
We’d offer a guided ‘At Home’ subscription service through their platform, focus our efforts on producing the very best content for it that we could, and curate it all (as we do) to deliver an ongoing programme of classes that gave you all that’s great about Soul & Surf, but in the comfort of your own home.
Rach, Nat, Hayley and Becca are all in there, and so far this year we’ve supported subscribers with practices to help ‘keep on keeping on’ (January), develop some self-love (February) and get into some stronger practices (March). April is a water-themed month as we look to the future and getting back into the surf – so if you’re up for building a bit of strength, flexibility and resilience for your surfing now’s a pretty good time to join.
And the bonus of it all is the next time you see Rach, Hayley, Becca or Nat in real life – it’ll be like you’ve never been away (they might take a little while to get used to that mind…)!
[Of course things change. We're currently running a new iteration of At Home - and you can find out more on its dedicated At Home page here.]
