TEEN YOGA
20 years changing young lives
It started, as so many important things do, with failure. In 2004, Charlotta Martinus — a qualified secondary school teacher and yoga instructor — walked into a yoga session for a group of 14-year-old boys. It was, by her own account, a complete disaster. The boys were disengaged, uncomfortable, fidgety. Every technique she had used with adults fell flat. She could have walked away and concluded that yoga and teenagers simply didn’t mix. Instead, she spent the next several years talking to teenagers, working out what would actually work.
Young people are in a period of rapid neurological development. They respond to authority, to peer dynamics, and to their own bodies in ways that are fundamentally different from adults. What works in a yoga studio does not transfer easily to a secondary school classroom. Charlotta observed how social dynamics shaped their capacity to engage, and how the neurobiology and physiology of adolescence demanded an entirely different approach. Patiently, she built a methodology from the ground up.
By 2010, she was training others and working with every local school. In 2016, Teen Yoga was established as a UK registered charity to develop and raise awareness of the approach, which is not simply yoga adapted for teenagers. It is a specialist, body-based approach to emotional regulation and resilience — drawing on yoga’s neurobiological evidence base but redesigned from the ground up to meet the needs of young people.
“At Ralph Allen School, referrals to CAMHS dropped from 14 to zero in a single academic year. At Foxwood Academy, behavioural incidents fell by more than 50%.”
The evidence accumulated steadily. In schools, the results were striking. In 2019, an EU-funded international research project produced statistically significant reductions in perceived stress. In clinical settings, the Southampton CAMHS Yoga Practitioner Pathway, launched as a pilot in 2023, was made permanent the following year, succeeding with many young people where conventional talking therapies had stalled. Teen Yoga has now trained more than 2,500 practitioners, across the UK and worldwide. Through them, Teen Yoga has helped over one million young people.
The challenges along the way have been real. The word ‘yoga’ itself can be a barrier and building an evidence base rigorous enough to convince schools and health services has taken years. As one in five young people in the UK now has a probable mental health condition and CAMHS waiting lists keep growing, the urgency has never been greater.
Twenty-two years on from that unsuccessful session in Bath, Teen Yoga continues to work to give more young people the tools to regulate, to breathe and to find calm. The policy landscape — with its renewed focus on preventative mental health and somatic approaches — is beginning to shift. Teen Yoga welcomes your help!
Teen Yoga funds its work entirely through the courses it provides and the generosity of supporters. If what you have read here matters to you, there are two simple things you can do: join one of the courses, or make a donation. Visit: teenyoga.com
Om Magazine
First published in November 2009, OM Yoga magazine has become the most popular yoga title in the UK. Available from all major supermarkets, independents and newsstands across the UK. Also available on all digital platforms.
