CALLI POPHAM

Passionate and playful, with an infectious childlike enthusiasm, Calli is obsessed with the moon, music, science, magic, the sea, the sunrise, words, movement, learning, connection and is often found barefoot, standing on her hands or rolling on the floor…

She had an unconventional childhood, spent‘on the road living in a red bus called Rosie,’travelling Europe with her wild child Mama, who sang in a reggae band, baked & sold bread at festivals and busked to make a living.

With fond memories of grape picking & busking on the cobbled streets of France by her mother’s side, this start in life gave rise to a unique way of seeing and being in the world, that comes through in all that she shares. Her ability to hold space and work on a deeply intuitive level is likely born from her way of being in the world from a young age.

Eventually Calli settled with her mother in Glastonbury, where she went to school and found a yoga practice in her very early teens.

Despite movement and yoga playing a huge part in her life from a young age, she fell down many rabbit holes and took many winding paths to find her way home to teaching as a career, from all night raves to high flying corporate jobs, a Degree in music, and attempts at ‘making it’ in the  music industry, it was always yoga and movement that brought her back to who she truly felt she was and she eventually took the leap to becoming a yoga teacher in 2010.

As someone who is passionate about non linear, non traditional ways in which to embody movement, never buying into guru culture, Calli has made it her life’s mission to carve her own path and do it her way. The first decade of her teaching career was spent at the inimitable Stretch London, (Now Waking Dreams) in Hackney, where she and Carl Faure (Stretch Founder & Senior Yoga Teacher) created a style of practice that evolved and grew and broke the rules of what had come before. They were some of the first teachers in London to move away from alignment and towards embodiment and an inquiry based style of teaching,

They trained 100’s of teachers in this style through their co-created Stretch Yoga Teacher Training, which only came to an end post lock-down, which saw Calli move to Brighton and Carl to Ibiiza.