More Than a Yoga Class: Building Community in Ely

Sunday Yoga Book Here

A yoga class can just be a yoga class.

You arrive. You put your mat down. You move, sweat, breathe, perhaps feel a little better, then go home again.

There is nothing wrong with that. Sometimes that is exactly what someone needs.

But I have slowly realised that what Bee and I want to build around the classes in Ely is more than that.

We want the yoga to be a doorway.

A reason for people to meet, and then keep meeting.

A place where we can practise together, but also eat together, go for walks, laugh, talk, sit quietly, have difficult conversations, cry when life is heavy and celebrate when something good happens.

Not because everybody has to become best friends. Not because we are trying to build a group where everyone thinks the same thing. But because there is something missing when life is lived almost entirely inside private homes, private screens and private struggles.

What Portugal made clear

This came into focus when we travelled around Europe in the motorhome with Leela.

We began at Buddhafield Festival and travelled on to KIND Family Gathering in Portugal. Both had their own flavour, but there was something shared between them: people were not only there to consume an experience. They were helping, caring for children, sharing food, making space, offering what they could and being part of the life around them.

At KIND, we met people who were trying to build a more connected way of living. They spoke about raising children around kind adults, sharing responsibility, and making room for practice, work and ordinary life to happen close together.

At one point, they invited us to come and help build it with them.

It was genuinely appealing.

Not because Portugal had somehow solved life. No place has. Community includes awkwardness, disagreement, chores, money, tiredness, different needs and the whole mess of being human.

But it gave us a feeling we have not been able to ignore since.

What if we stopped looking for that feeling somewhere else and began building it here?

More connected, more alone

We have never had so many ways to contact each other.

We can message somebody in seconds. We can watch the lives of people we have never met. We can stay loosely connected to dozens, sometimes hundreds, of people at once.

And still, many of us feel isolated.

Not always because there is nobody around. Sometimes it is because we do not have enough places where we can be known beyond the polished version of ourselves. We can be busy all week and still feel that nobody really knows what life is like for us.

There are already people quietly responding to that around Ely, Little Downham, Soham, Newmarket and Cambridge. Village halls, book cafés, local hubs, men’s groups, community associations, volunteers and small gatherings are all doing the patient work of giving people somewhere to go.

We do not want to arrive pretending we have invented community.

We want to be part of what is already trying to grow.

Not a return to the past

When I talk about community, I do not mean pretending we can recreate some perfect old tribe.

Human beings have lived in close groups for most of history, and that has brought belonging, shared care and meaning. It has also brought hierarchy, pressure, exclusion and the expectation that people should live one way.

I am not interested in importing that whole world into Ely.

What interests me is a fusion between the things human beings have always needed and the things we understand more clearly now.

The old need to belong.

The old need to be useful to each other.

The old need to raise children around more than two exhausted adults.

Alongside boundaries. Consent. Emotional honesty. Space for difference. Respect for people’s autonomy. A willingness to apologise, learn and not turn spirituality into another hierarchy.

That feels more alive to me than either isolated modern life or a romantic fantasy about the past.

What this could look like

For now, it begins with the weekly yoga and meditation gatherings.

But over time, I would love for the practice to open into more shared life.

Meals after class or a simple community lunch.

Walks around the local area.

Days where people come together to practise, make things, eat, swim, talk and spend time outside.

A place for children to be around caring adults and other children.

A place where somebody can say, “I am struggling,” without having to turn it into a performance or a crisis before they are allowed to be heard.

A place where there is fun as well. Music, games, ridiculous conversations, birthdays, shared effort, people helping each other move house or cook a meal after a hard week.

This is not a programme I can sell somebody.

It only becomes real through relationship, consistency and the people who choose to bring something of themselves to it.

Why yoga matters

Yoga is a beautiful starting point because it asks us to arrive in the same room, in the same body, at the same time.

We breathe. We move. We sit. We notice what it is like to be here without having to fill every gap.

The practice can make us a little more available to each other. Not in a forced way. Not as some promise that yoga will fix our relationships. But by helping us be more honest about what is here, we may become less defended and more able to meet other people as they are.

That is why I do not see the classes as separate from the rest of life.

The mat is not the destination.

It is one place where the kind of life we want to live together can begin.

An invitation

If you are in Ely, Little Downham, Soham, Newmarket, Cambridge or nearby and this speaks to something you have felt too, you are welcome to come and practise with us.

You do not need to call yourself spiritual. You do not need to be flexible. You do not need to agree with every idea we have.

Just come as you are.

The class may simply be a class for you. That is completely welcome.

Or perhaps, over time, it may become part of something more human: a place to return to, people to know and a community we are all helping to build.

Sunday Yoga Book Here

Local research notes

• Cambridgeshire Community Hubs Network: Little Downham Book Club Hub and nearby hubs — https://cambsacre.org.uk/cambridgeshire-community-hubs-network/

• Little Downham Village Hall: regular activities and Book Café — https://little-downham-village-hall.com/page/activities

• Cambridgeshire County Council: Tackling loneliness and social isolation — https://www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/residents/adults/connect-with-your-local-community/tackling-loneliness-and-social-isolation

• Soham Town Council: community noticeboard and local groups — https://www.soham-tc.gov.uk/community

• Newmarket Town Council: Health and Wellbeing Policy — https://www.newmarket.gov.uk/publications/p20-health-wellbeing-policy/

• Cambridge Day: ‘A third space helped me find my community after moving to Cambridge’ — https://www.cambridgeday.com/2026/07/18/third-spacefindcommunity/