Fran: “I was working in The City. Trying to practice yoga but finding it more stressful getting away from my desk than being sat there answering calls and managing e-mails. So instead of a class in North London I went to India. It started in India really. We were right at the southern end of Goa, on a semi-deserted beach, living in an idyllic bamboo hut. I remember thinking there was a massive gap in the market for more yoga in London. There must be a way to get this into people’s lives without it feeling like it had to be this entirely dedicated way of life. Eat tofu, never drink, live a pure swami lifestyle, wear orange. My original idea was really bare bones. Hire space in peoples’ buildings, where people can do their yoga practice or provide a teacher and charge for it. Taking yoga literally into their offices. Mark had had a similar idea to provide a service where yoga teachers could just go and use office space, where they could just turn up and teach. In the end it took shape with more of a gym element to it. Obviously it’s not a gym, but it’s the idea that just because you’re doing yoga doesn’t mean you can’t have the facilities that a gym would have. You’ll have lovely showers and nice shampoo and conditioner in the showers. It’s much more tailored to our audience. So we were looking at what our market demanded.”

Mark: “The idea came from Goa, but I only got there because I’d had injuries beforehand to my foot and head that had started me doing yoga in the UK. I was actually taken along to my first yoga class by a girlfriend who was too scared to go by herself, having been told for ages by my doctor that it would be good for me and by my parents that I would enjoy it – my mother dabbles and my father is taken along and enjoys it even more than he reluctantly admits to. But it was my past in the Army, from playing sports and generally being a boy that got me hooked. I instantly understood the physicality of it. The relaxation and restorative parts made sense as well, with the stretching, indicative of old pre and post sporting rituals. It was very easy to see how yoga could increase performance and health and longevity, prevented illness, pain, breakage and damage. It was all quite scientific. Quite technical really. Very matter of fact. The other side, the ‘spirituality’, was not what I wanted or what I was interested in. It never put me off though. Maybe I wasn’t looking for it, or maybe I was but didn’t know what I was looking for. People sitting crossed legged chanting Om struck me as very strange, but it didn’t really upset me. However, once you do yoga for a while I challenge you to try and remain unaware of ‘it’. It’s spiritual by its very nature. That’s why it was invented. I think you just have to work out what your definition of spiritualty is. But not necessarily before you try it“