Susanne founded ChirpYOGA on 13 October 2012, a year after she and her husband Paul completed their yoga teacher training together in Bali. From the start, the aim was to offer something different from the image-conscious, business-led side of Western yoga: independent approaches, practised in depth, with time to slow down and pay attention.

Over 14 years, ChirpYOGA has travelled with us. Along the way came Susanne's sell-out monthly Restorative Yoga workshops and Hot Yoga classes at Yoga Kula in Leeds, Vinyasa Yoga classes and retreat days at Goat Gap, our home yoga space in the Yorkshire Dales, and our YogaHEAVEN retreats in Portugal. At our retreats, Paul's Thai Yoga Massage quickly became a favourite with participants, and he led the morning meditations and an evening talk on Eastern philosophy and the history of yoga. From 2016 to 2020, Christine Krauss of ChirpFood and her partner Florian, Susanne's brother, joined both the Goat Gap retreat days and YogaHEAVEN as hosts, bringing wonderful food, cookery classes, foraging and fermentation workshops.

When the pandemic paused our international retreats, we moved to Spain at the end of August 2020. ChirpYOGA is now based on our finca in the Sierra de Almenara, part of a Natura 2000 Special Protection Area for birds, where a rooftop shala looks out over the valley. From 2027, we will welcome small groups of friends here for yoga retreats, with guests staying in the neighbouring guest house on the finca.

Susanne brings more than 30 years of teaching movement and bodywork, from a career in contemporary dance and choreography to Vinyasa, Hatha, Restorative Yoga, Yoga Nidra and somatic practice. She is also a trained Nuad Boran Thai Yoga Massage practitioner.

Paul, Susanne's partner in life and in ChirpYOGA, is a massage therapist and yoga teacher who came to yoga through anatomy and radiography. He holds an MA in the Traditions of Yoga and Meditation from SOAS, University of London, and brings yoga philosophy into the conversations that run through our classes and retreats. He will soon be offering a range of massage styles here in Spain.

Our ethos is to respect the roots of yoga and bodywork, from philosophy to asana, and to help more people find the satisfaction of simply moving, centring and connecting. We still travel to learn, and everything we bring home finds its way into the practice we share.