Our team
Meet our team
FOUNDER, DIRECTOR, YOGA THERAPIST
Joanna Bogacz
Joanna Bogacz is a trained and qualified Yoga Teacher (500 hour Ofqual registered BWYQ Level 4 diploma). She has been teaching since 2013 and on a full time basis since 2016. In 2021 Joanna trained as a Yoga Therapist (550 hours BCYT accredited training with Yoga Focus), meeting the National Occupational Standards for the profession. She has registration with CNHC and adheres to their code of conduct, ethics and performance. She works in a trauma informed way and has specialist expertise in women’s health, older people’s health, chronic pain and mental health. She is registered as a Well Woman Yoni Shakti Yoga Therapist, Total Yoga Nidra Teacher & Facilitator, and a Gentle Years Yoga © Teacher (level 4 RQF/BWYQ). Joanna teaches the Professional Skills & Ethics Module on the two-year long Yoga Focus (BCYT approved) yoga therapy professional training course and is an examiner for this course.
Joanna met yoga and meditation in 1996, this meeting brought positive change and transformation to her life at a time when she was recovering from a chronic health condition. Yoga remains a transformative process for Joanna, she sees yoga as a psychosomatic technology which when coupled with compassion-based practice fosters healing, change and choice. She is committed to maintaining and building her range of skills and professionalism alongside continuing to deepen her own practice.
Joanna undertakes supervision with a senior Yoga Therapist and ensures her competency through ongoing professional development by and accredited CPD training. She continues to deepen, explore and maintain her own personal yoga practice working regularly with teachers in Wales (Swami SatyaDaya, Swami Krishnapremananda, Sophia Ansari, Padmasimha). Since 2017 her approach has been influenced by the yoga of Vanda Scaravelli and she has undertaken practice immersions with Scaravelli inspired teachers (including Monica Voss, Sandra Sabatini, Christine Borg, and Bill Wood). She maintains a daily meditation practice and has been significantly influenced by Buddhist teachings and practices from the Triratna Buddhist Order since around 2000. Since 2012 she has undertaken regular retreat at Mandala Yoga Ashram, Wales to further her own process, to study and deepen her experiential understanding of yoga, meditation and tantra.
Joanna has a background in holistic health, training in 2000 (IIHHT diploma Level 3) as a professional reflexologist & massage therapist and in counselling and nutrition. She has a legal background, training as a Solicitor in 2012 (College of Law) after obtaining her LLB (hons) degree in Law in 2010 (Open University). Through her legal background she has extensive experience of working skilfully and compassionately with a range of clients on a 1:1 basis, including in community mental health advocacy, mental health hospitals, secure/forensic services, in police custody and in prison services, through community outreach. She has worked at both the grassroots community level and for national charities. She has been a project manager and had strategic roles in the charity sector.
Joanna is a Founder Member of the Yoga Therapy Association. She is a member of the BWY, the national governing body for yoga and a professional network with over 5000 teacher members. Since 2021 she has been elected on a yearly basis from the BWY Wales membership base as BWY Regional Welsh Officer/Chair and has been an elected committee member since 2016. She has previously served as a trustee/non-executive director of Mind (UK mental health charity) and a board member of Mind Cymru (2009-2016). As part of her karma yoga practice she has had a range of volunteer roles working with adults and children in the community over the last 25 years. Jo is based in Cardiff, Wales, UK.
Joanna is qualified and experienced to work with a diverse range of conditions as a Yoga Therapist and works in a person-centred way. She is equipped to develop and deliver yoga programmes to support individuals and groups experiencing conditions including (but not limited to): long covid & respiratory illness, chronic pain/pain conditions, stress, burnout & chronic fatigue, cancer, trauma and musculo-skeletal conditions.
DIRECTOR, RESEARCHER, YOGA TEACHER
Dr Sheena Carlisle
Dr Sheena Carlisle is a professionally trained and qualified 375 hour Yoga Teacher accredited with the Independent Yoga Network (IYN) via training with Meni Farkash at the Agniyaana School of Yoga (2021-2023); a Somatic Movement Teacher (2020) with David Fleming and Amanda Franklin at Radiant Star Yoga, one of the first somatic movement training organisations established in the UK. Sheena has 30 years of personal yoga practice and is a member of the British Wheel of Yoga. Somatic Movement and Therapeutic Yoga techniques are a core element in her work as a yoga teacher working with a variety of health conditions including osteoporosis, arthritis, stroke recovery, hip and knee injuries including bursitis. Sheena is currently expanding her therapeutic yoga classes at Cardiff University as part of the Wellbeing programme for Staff and Sbectrwm Community Centre. Sheena is applying elements of therapeutic movement derived from her Higher National Certificate (HNC) qualification in Dance Movement Therapy (1999), Somatic Movement and Hatha Yoga training. Her interest in health and somatic and therapeutic movement originated in her 1-1 work as a volunteer with the charity Scope for people with physical disabilities, Womens’ Aid and applied dance movement practice with Women’s mental health groups in Bristol. Sheena also became acutely aware of community based health needs whilst working in the social housing sector in the 1990s which led to developing resources to support victims of domestic violence for housing officers.
Following three years working as a Head of Department in Tourism Management in a further education college in The Gambia, West Africa and achieving a Political Economy PhD in sustainable tourism development in 2006, Sheena worked as a senior lecturer in Tourism Management at Cardiff Metropolitan University for 18 years. Sheena completed a wide range of quality education enhancement and improvement projects to increase levels of quality assurance and sustainability skills development. This includes quality evaluation of skills and competencies and writing at a range of levels and creating new teaching courses and training resources for University, Industry, Third Sector and Welsh Joint Education Council (WJEC) A Level resource content. Sheena also acted as a senior advisor for the Qualification Wales Travel and Tourism Education Audit Review to integrate new digital and sustainability skills into Tourism Qualifications. Sheena has extensive experience of reviewing research proposals whilst working at Cardiff Metropolitan University and acting as a board member on the Research Ethics Committee and Research Development Committee. Through twenty four years of working in academia Sheena has also published in quality peer reviewed journals.
Sheena is now focusing on the development of YHC whilst working as a Research Associate at Cardiff University School of Social Sciences and developing links.
Other relevant Professional Qualifications include First Aid at Work Certificate [May 2024], Prince 2 Project Management Practitioner (2008) and PM4SD [Project Management for Sustainable Development] Practitioner accredited by APMG (2016). Sheena has worked on international and national projects and has extensive experience of quality management processes within project management, quality delivery, monitoring and evaluation.
DIRECTOR, NURSE, YOGA ENTHUSTIAST
Rowena Myles
Rowena Myles is a retired Nurse after a varied 40-year, professional nursing career within the NHS. She worked in a wide range of roles, from clinical nursing through to Planning and Management. Her clinical career has involved working in General Nursing, Mental Health, and Public Health Specialties.
Rowena qualified as both a general nurse and a psychiatric nurse. She started her nursing career in South Wales and then moved to London where she trained as a psychiatric nurse at the Maudsley Hospital, a post graduate teaching hospital. Following a period of time working as a ward sister on an acute psychiatric ward, she moved into nurse education, which involved spending time teaching undergraduate nurses.
A move back to South and West Wales followed which was initially spent in general nursing in acute medicine. Rowena successfully applied for a post in continuing education in a large Psychiatric Hospital in West Wales (which had been the subject of an adverse report on patient care) became available. During her tenure, standards of care improved and the hospital was once again able to provide clinical placements for students studying to become mental health nurses. Rowena returned to general nursing as a senior nurse manager in a District General Hospital in Swansea and then a small community Hospital in Pembrokeshire for a number of years. Rowena was successful in obtaining a post to work at Wales’s largest Health Authority level in Cardiff as a senior nurse in planning and she remained in Cardiff until her retirement.
Her role and responsibilities in the NHS changed over time as the internal market within the NHS was introduced. She led a team that was responsible for commissioning services for vulnerable groups; this included services for homeless people, special health services for the diverse ethnic minority communities in Cardiff, particularly the Somali community and services for people with learning disabilities.
At this time the Learning Disability Hospital at Ely was still open, although the number of residents had reduced significantly. The standards of care at the hospital fell far below what should be the gold standard for this very vulnerable group. Rowena was able to draft a letter on behalf of the Chief Executive to the Welsh Office (this was before devolution). As a result, the resettlement of residents into social care was achieved sooner than originally planned. Although some residents had to remain within NHS care but in smaller domestic type accommodation, with higher ratios of staff.
Following the dissolution of the Health Authorities in Wales in the early part of this century, Rowena worked in the National Public Health Service, now Public Health Wales. She coordinated the work of the All-Wales Child Protection Service. At the time this included supporting the drafting of guidance to the NHS following the publication of the Children Act 2004.
Rowena became a listening volunteer with Cardiff and District Samaritans while she was still working and this continued post-retirement. In total she spent 16 years as a listening volunteer, which included outreach work with schools and providing sessions on Emotional Health within the PSE part of the curriculum.
Rowena was a member of the Cwm Taff Morgannwg Community Health Council (CHC) for eleven years. For three of those years, she was the chair. This involved visits to local hospitals and GP practices in order to speak to patients who were in receipt of NHS care to obtain their views on their experience of the NHS. The role of the CHC was to reflect the views of patients and the public and reflect them back to the managers of the service. The CHCs have now been disbanded and replaced by another organisation known as Llais, which I understand has a similar role. More recently Rowena has become a volunteer befriender with Rhondda Cynon Taff Domestic Abuse Service. This involves telephone contact with a number of individuals who have been the victims of domestic abuse. It is intended to offer a friendly listening ear, as people try to get their lives back together.
Rowena has practised yoga for the last 10 years and finds it keeps her fit and flexible, which she says is always good as one gets older. She enjoys meeting other yogis at her yoga class.
DIRECTOR, YOGA TEACHER, ADMINISTRATOR
DIRECTOR, FINANCE PROFESSIONAL, YOGA ENTHUSIAST
Lynne Williams
Lynne Williams has been practising yoga for 35 years. She is a recently retired finance professional with over 40 years experience. During her career Lynne has held financial roles for both large corporations and SMEs across a broad range of industries, as well as running a book-keeping business for 14 years.
After an accountancy apprenticeship with GKN, she was employed in product and process costing roles, the latter with SASOL in South Africa.
Returning to the UK, Lynne joined an IT software house as the accounts office manager running a team of six staff. This position covered the supervision of the daily finance and payroll tasks of an SME. Lynne ran her own bookkeeping business in the Midlands, whilst bringing up her children.
After moving to Cardiff from the Midlands, Lynne was appointed head of finance for MLT Research (subsequently General-Probe Cardiff). This was a new position created after the acquisition of MLT by Gen-Probe Incorporated. She headed up the UK team which transitioned the finance function over to US GAAP. During her time at Gen-Probe, she managed the finance, HR, buying, facilities and administration departments. Her role included the production of the financial statements for 3 companies, along with consolidated accounts, overseeing the site budget process, grant applications and the set up of SOX compliance controls for the UK subsidiary company (turnover >£4million).
When Gen-Probe transferred the Cardiff operation to Manchester, Lynne joined Circle IT Limited as Financial Controller. She set up and managed monthly management accounts, cash flow, budgets and forecasts, financial KPI’s and introduced numerous process efficiencies during her tenure. She supervised the daily financial processes with two other accounts staff. Turnover grew from £2m to £9m over a five-year period. She was instrumental in securing the company a £300m grant from the Welsh Government to support growth.
Lynne joined Howells Legal Limited as Financial Controller and continued to work for them until her retirement. During her time at Howells she set up variance, time and financial compliance reports, along with producing the annual financial statements and forecasts. She created and produced tenant account reconciliations for Fitzalan House (Cardiff) Limited. A grant to sustain the growth in headcount was successfully gained for which Lynne maintained the post application compliance reports.
Clare Strange
Clare Strange is a trained and qualified yoga teacher having completed the 500-hour level 4 diploma with Wendy Teasdill, Andrea Newman, and Eve Douglas through the British Wheel of Yoga. She has been teaching regular classes in Whitchurch, Cardiff for the last 5 years, focusing on teaching slow, gentle yoga with an emphasis on creating a supportive, non-competitive environment. Clare particularly enjoys teaching beginners and is passionate about sharing the practice of yoga with those individuals looking for a more accessible practice.
Clare considers herself to be a yoga student first and foremost, and has pursued continuous professional development, including recently a 6-month Ayurveda course with Tarik Dervish and Cathy-Mae Karelse and a Prana and Pranayama course with Prasad Rangnekar. She is currently immersed in a year-long study of the Bhagavad Gita with Brenda Feuerstein.
As a teenager, Clare struggled with her mental health, which was greatly exacerbated when she was diagnosed with ME and fibromyalgia in her first year of studying Chemistry at the University of York. As a result, she was forced to drop out of university and move back home with her parents to focus on her health. To help manage her worsening physical and mental health, Clare bought a DVD which included a couple of yoga classes; it became clear straight away that a very gentle practice could still have potent effects. Over the last 10 years, yoga has been (and continues to be) a foundational pillar of Clare managing her health and wellbeing. Clare’s lived experience greatly informs the way that she teaches and the community at which she aims her yoga teaching.
Having worked as an administrator in various roles for the last 10 years in both the NHS and Higher Education, Clare is currently working as the administrator for the new HEIW-commissioned Post-Registration Foundation Training Programme in the School of Pharmacy at Cardiff University.
With her background, and direct experience of the myriad benefits that yoga can provide, Clare is looking forward to helping YHC flourish in its mission to grow the evidence base for yoga therapy, and provide accessible and effective yoga therapy in collaboration with the health sector to a range of individuals and communities.
