Rachael Hely from Barwon Heads Yoga says she will “never, ever forget” how her regular students have supported her business during the pandemic.
Ms Hely, who has been teaching yoga for 17 years, has been running Barwon Heads Yoga for a decade.
“So many of my students and clients are now really good friends,” she said.
“I am so unbelievably grateful that they support me in what I do.”
Ms Hely said that her whole business model “turned on its head in March” when the pandemic struck Victoria.
She began taking classes through Facebook Live, offering them for free.
Hundreds of people joined the classes, including some interstate and New Zealand.
“I knew that many of my community would be suffering financially and I wanted to not only support them in their practice, but to remind them how to find an inherent steadiness in such wobbly, weird times,” Ms Hely said.
During term two, she began running Zoom classes, with her friend Sean McPhillips from Mighty Films lending her a portable microphone to help out.
Ms Hely later moved her large group teaching sessions to an on-demand platform, via Zoom, and also ran private classes with permitted student numbers.
When regional Victoria went into stage three lockdown in August, she kept going with on-demand Zoom recordings and one-on-one physiotherapy-led, private sessions.
Ms Hely said her on-demand platform has tripled in size since the beginning of the pandemic.
“My students are now mostly doing at least three classes per week rather than one,” she said.
Ms Hely said that sales of a book she wrote last summer, titled So, A Year in Yoga, also increased during the pandemic.
“With the initial sharing and spreading of the Facebook Live classes, more people could get a feel for how I teach,” she said.
“This meant book sales also went up. That was the most unexpected aspect of this whole ride.”
Ms Hely encouraged residents to support local businesses.
“If you want to see the local business you love here next year, now is the time to support them,” she said.
“We are local people serving local people.
“We know and love this town and the coast: it’s also our playground, our shelter, our home.
“We know about your world and we care about your experience with us.”
Details: www.barwonheadsyoga.com.au
