Meet the workie teaching yoga in some of Scotland’s most deprived schemes.
Painter and decorator Mick Gallagher, 50, believes the ancient Indian exercise can transform lives – particularly in working-class areas with high rates of poverty and obesity.
Dad-of-one Mick first learnt about sun salutations and downward dog 12 years ago, when he tried to find ways to alleviate his sciatica.
He became so passionate about yoga that he trained to become a teacher in 2015.
His first classes – for men only – were at the Penilee Community Centre, Glasgow. Mick, who was raised in the neighbourhood, said: “They stood on the mats with their trainers on, so I knew they’d never done it before.
“When I first started it, there was a butcher, a taxi driver and a social worker. I could talk to them like guys on a building site.”
The self-confessed “bad yogi” now teaches mixed classes and has expanded to Glasgow’s Easterhouse.
To make them as accessible as possible, classes are taught in community centres – and costs are kept as low as a fiver for block bookings.
Mick, who still does his day job, said: “You don’t get many working-class men doing yoga. Most people’s perception is that it’s a ladies-who-lunch thing.”
But for him, yoga is a social tool that can help relieve the pressures of badly paid jobs or unemployment, stress, depression and anxiety.
Politicians, including local MSP Ivan McKee, who has attended some of his classes in Easterhouse, are backing his work as Mick hopes to secure lottery funding.
He said: “My drive is to make yoga accessible for working-class people.”
