When a Weekly Yoga Class Isn't Enough: Why I Started Offering 1:1 Yoga Therapy for Chronic Pain

A student came up to me after class a while back and said something that's stayed with me since. "I love this hour," she said, "but my back's been like this for six years, and I don't think a class is ever going to touch it." She wasn't complaining. She was naming something true — and something I'd been noticing in more people than just her.

If you've been carrying a pain that's outlasted the physio, the painkillers, the "just give it time," and the well-meaning advice to try yoga — I want to talk about why a general class often isn't the answer, and about something I offer that can go further.

Group Classes Are Wonderful — And They Have a Limit

I say this as someone who loves teaching group classes and has no plans to stop. But a class has to be built for the room, not for any one body in it. I can offer a few variations of a pose in the time I have, but I can't spend twenty minutes with any single person working out why their hip guards a certain way, or why a particular movement flares an old injury while a nearly identical one doesn't, or what's actually driving pain that's been there so long it no longer makes obvious sense.

Chronic pain is rarely simple. It's tangled up with old injuries, with compensations your body built years ago and never let go of, often with a nervous system that's learned to treat certain movements as a threat long after the original injury healed. A weekly class can offer movement and a bit of relief. It's not built to untangle years of pattern.

What Yoga Therapy Actually Is

This is the piece of my training that changed how I think about all of this. Yoga therapy isn't a fancier yoga class — it's a one-to-one process that starts with actually listening. Before we do anything on the mat, we talk: about your pain history, what's already been tried, what a flare-up actually feels like and what tends to trigger it, and what your body has quietly learned to avoid over the years.

From there, the practice is built around you specifically — not a generic "yoga for back pain" sequence, but movement, breathwork, and rest practices chosen because they address what's actually happening in your body. Sometimes that means working nowhere near the painful area at first, because the real issue is somewhere else entirely. Sometimes it means very small, very slow work that barely resembles what people picture when they hear "yoga." It's shaped by your pain specifically, which a room of fifteen people moving through the same class simply can't offer.

Who This Tends to Help Most

In my experience so far, it's usually people who recognise themselves in a few things: pain that's become long-term rather than a passing injury; a body that's started avoiding whole categories of movement "just in case"; frustration with being told to rest, or to push through, without either actually helping; or the sense that generic yoga-for-pain videos either do nothing or occasionally make things worse, because nobody's asked what's actually going on for them specifically.

If any of that sounds like you, please don't take that as a diagnosis or a verdict — I'm not a substitute for your GP or physio, and I always work alongside your existing care, not instead of it. It's just the pattern I keep seeing in the people I work with 1:1, and it might be worth a conversation.

What Working Together Looks Like

I keep this simple and unhurried. We'd start with a proper conversation — no mat required for that first part — about your pain history and what you're hoping might shift. From there we build a small, realistic practice together, one that respects what your body can actually do right now rather than where you think it "should" be. We go slowly, we adjust constantly, and nothing is ever pushed through gritted teeth — pain that gets worse under yoga therapy is a sign to change course, not a sign to try harder.

This isn't about becoming more flexible or chasing a deeper stretch. It's about your body slowly learning that certain movements are safe again.

If You've Read This Far

I'm not going to pretend one blog post can tell you whether 1:1 yoga therapy is right for your pain — that's exactly the kind of thing that's better worked out in conversation, not a sales page. So if any of this resonated, I'd genuinely love to hear from you. No pressure, no pitch — just get in touch and we can talk through whether it might help.

Living with pain that hasn't responded to the usual advice? Reach out — I'd love to have that conversation with you.

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