YOGA IS
A SPECIAL
NEED.
by Jyoti Manuel
am the founder of Spe-
cial Yoga. I found
yoga for myself in the
mid 1970’s and imme-
diately knew that it
was the path for my
personal healing as an
abused child. It was one of those
AHA moments in life. Within a year
or two, the impact of yoga had been
so profound for me and i had a sixth
sense that i would have a yoga
centre to help others on their healing
path . However, I had no idea then
that it would involve children and
particularly children with special and
additional needs.
Over the course of my yoga journey,
adults with disabilities and children
came to practise with me and Special
Yoga was born. Sometime around
1999/2000 it was clear to me that
my path was to support children with
special needs through the medium of
yoga, and i have truly never looked
back.
I have been running training
programmes both in the UK and glob-
ally to empower others to deliver
therapeutic yoga to children with
(and without) special needs since
2002.
special needs as is possible in the
world, we are working with our
special yoga teams to encourage
special yoga in schools, orphanages,
hospices, hospitals, psychotherapists,
for paediatric professionals and for
parents.
I am very excited to be opening a
healing space in Bournemouth where
I have recently moved to from
London. The space is open to healing
work, be it yoga, psychotherapeutic
practises, healing...and for parents
and children with special needs to
come and benefit from the special
yoga practises that we offer. I would
also like to use the space to train up
local teams to empower the local
community of children with families of
special needs and educators to use
the special yoga practises.
The methodology of Special Yoga
continues to evolve and grow as I
travel and learn more from the
children and their families. We have
a network through the UK and global-
ly of special yoga practitioners that
have been trained with me. With the I also have Special Yoga projects in
intention and mission to bring this Sri Lanka and India where we are
practise to as many children with doing a study to evaluate the benefits
of special yoga for adolescents with
cerebral palsy, Peru, Spain, Thailand,
Russia and over the course of the next
year we will be opening the work in
Iceland, Palestine, Australia and
Nepal.
The future of Special Yoga is very
bright. We are forming relationships
with UNICEF and other humanitarian
and social impact organisations to
run trainings to local global teams for
children with physical disabilities,
and trauma and autism/ADHD.
I have been asked to give you one
thing that inspire me in life: I am not
sure there is only one but what
inspires me is love, the triumph of the
human spirit and redefining possible.
Founder of Special Yoga
Bournemouth, United Kingdom.
www.specialyoga.org.uk