The Beginning
1996
YogaBugs was originally founded in 1996 by Fenella Lindsell, who was looking for a way to help her stepson deal with nervousness and anxiety. She found that through the use of Yoga based stories, her stepson was able to become more confident and was able to interact with her. Fenella’s nickname for her stepson was ‘Bug’ and hence the name YogaBugs was born!
The Dream
1996 - 2005
With the dream of helping more and more children, Nell started to teach yoga classes to children through a studio called Art of Health in London. During this time she noticed demand for the classes was increasing by the day, enabling her to operate community classes and begin working in nurseries and schools, whilst also offering teacher training.
TV starts calling….
2005 - 2006
Not only were the public starting to sit up and notice the YogaBugs story, but also so it seems were the TV executives. Following an approach from the ITV executives, YogaBugs were asked to appear on GMTV, allowing millions of young children to enjoy the fun interactive stories while having breakfast.
The success of this short but sweet appearance took the eye of the ITV team who then asked YogaBugs to appear on their channel on a more regular basis.
Realising the massive potential for growth YogaBugs decided to really put themselves out there and applied to appear on the BBC’s Dragon’s Den, looking for a financial investment for YogaBugs to grow across the country.
Enter The Dragon
2007
By the time Nell and her business partner Lara Goodbody had entered the den, YogaBugs had trained over 1200 teachers and an investment could help this and the number of schools and nurseries grow drastically.
Although described by Lara as “the scariest thing we have ever done” their pitch was fantastic and clearly impressed the Dragons, with Theo Paphitis, Peter Jones and Richard Farleigh all putting offers to the pair, however, as the viewers will know these offers were all rejected.
Even after the cameras for the show were turned off, Peter Jones made one final offer to Nell and Lara – offering to buy YogaBugs for £1.5million. However, this was again rejected as they were both committed to keeping control of YogaBugs and growing the business themselves.
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Franchises and Growing
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Children in YogaBugs Classes
Picking up the pace…..
2008 - 2009
Following Dragon’s Den, YogaBugs began to grow at a rapid rate by starting to develop a franchise network across the country with the number of classes, schools and nurseries increasing by the hour. In fact YogaBugs were to grow to over 50 franchises across the UK working with over one million children.
TV calls again….
2010
By 2010, Nell had been approached by the creators of CBeebies programme Waybuloo to help design the movements for the show! Waybuloo was to go on to become the BBC’s most successful children’s programme across the world.
A Goode time to change….
2010 - 2012
Having achieved all their dreams and now wanting to spend more time with their family an opportunity was to come knocking on the door…
Mark Goode, one of YogaBugs’ top performing franchisees decided that he loved the company so much that he wanted to buy it. After many an hour spent discussing just how far the business had come and how important it was to continue to keep giving children the opportunity to laugh and have fun, the handover was achieved.
With passion in his heart and a great team around him, Mark was to embark on a journey that would take YogaBugs to a global scale – including the opening of operations in Australia, China, Singapore as well as expanding all over the UK.
A spoon full of Sugar…
2012
Given that the Bugs Group profile of being a leading children’s health based business was now spreading across the world, it seemed only natural to get the call from Lord Sugar who asked YogaBugs to appear on an episode of the BBC’s Young Apprentice!
YogaBugs were asked to demonstrate a children’s activity programme to the Young Apprentice candidates, who were then tasked to create their own activity for children!
YogaBugs were absolutely delighted and proud to appear on TV for the third time and I am sure not the last!
Time to kick it...
2013
After another two years of rapid growth, Mark decided that he wanted more children to be able to access the benefits of YogaBugs programmes, but this time through a mainstream sport such as football – and that is how FootieBugs was born.
FootieBugs took the concept of YogaBugs, teaching children through storytelling and imagination, but placed it as a part of the most popular sport in the world.
FootieBugs began to run weekend classes giving children a fun introduction to football, whilst also following YogaBugs success in working with schools and nurseries.
With both YogaBugs and FootieBugs now firmly established, it was only time before the “Bugs” would become the ‘The Bugs Group’ of companies.
Everyone was catching the Bug….
2013 - 2016
Between 2012 – 2016, The Bugs Group’s number of weekly classes continued to grow, and likewise the number of children catching the fitness bug by participating in our sessions!
As children started to talk about the amazing adventures they had been on, parents started to talk about better sleep patterns and happier children.
Friendships started to develop, social skills started to improve and soon catching the bug was the best thing that could happen to a child.
No way you could dodge it…
2016
By 2016, The Bugs Group had further extended its range of classes across different sports and physical activities – and were proud to announce the birth of DanceBugs and MultiBugs.
With Dance being one of children’s most popular activities – DanceBugs started to allow 1,000’s of happy children to express themselves through imagination and dance, learning new styles and routines in a pressure free environment.
With MultiBugs the group was able to allow children to experience our story adventures not just through football, but also through a vast range of sports, which can include; cricket, golf, athletics, dodgeball and hockey to name just a few.
2017 - 2018
Under The Bugs Group banner, YogaBugs, FootieBugs, DanceBugs and MultiBugs continued to grow and operate around the country providing children with as many ways to get physically active as possible – through school PE and after school clubs, weekend classes, holiday camps and even birthday parties! We are committed to continue to grow and make a meaningful impact on children’s lives, improving their physical and mental wellbeing through sport and physical activity.
The Bug Mental Health & Well-Being Boom
2018
Awareness of children’s mental health conditions increases…
As the DofE set out a green paper to transform children and young people’s mental health provision, hundreds of schools seek YogaBugs’ expertise to help them implement strategies to support their children.
Using over 20 years experience delivering Yoga and Mindfulness into primary schools and nurseries across the country, YogaBugs offered even more classes in and trained teachers on how to deliver mindfulness to their children.
2019
The year YogaBugs Virtual was launched!
Due to increased demand for our classes, tightened budgets and the need for schools to support every child; YogaBugs set to work to develop an affordable and sustainable programme that would support the whole school’s mental and physical well-being …. YogaBugs Virtual was born!
Offering Pre Recorded Virtual Yoga and Mindfulness classes for every child from nursery to year 6, as well as mindfulness training and well-being resources for Staff and Parents, YogaBugs could now support everyone within the community at the click of a button and a fraction of the price!
2020-2021
During the pandemic, we continued to build our online business, expanding our catalogue of virtual lessons to well over a hundred videos of story based yoga sessions, brain breaks, visualisations and useful resources.
During this time we provided free online livestreams of story yoga and football skills training sessions to keep children occupied at home and give adults a welcome break from dealing with the stresses of the unknown.
2022
In 2022, we continued to provide a great virtual solution and as some normality returned we went back to work providing the best sports coaching sessions around designed to help children make up for the lost time and re-build any confidence that may have taken a knock during the pandemic.
2023-2024
In 2023 and up till the present day, we have worked diligently on expanding our holiday camps, with the addition of new venues and expanding our wide array of sports on offer.
We created online courses with helpful training on a range of SEND subjects and added these elements to our YogaBugs digital catalogue.
Over at our FootieBugs Academy we built on and expanded our sessions for girls after a great take-up and look forward to helping more children find a sport they love to part of.