Beyond the Mat

Beyond the Mat is the Azulfit commitment to living our mission – to realise and enable positive change in the world outside the yoga studio – where it counts most. We believe that each movement, however small, made with purpose and positive intent can ripple outwards, and that they have the potential to make a big change within our networks, our communities and for our planet.

So far this year the Azulfit community has:

Funded the Khusi Hona Women’s Empowerment Project for the entire year – a venture that empowers and educates women and provides a sustainable, living wage, employment and training for women in Goa, India.

Fed 300 families in Eastern Ghouta for 10 days when they were shut off from aid and medicine via our hero, Rami the Hope Smuggler and his organisation

Funded Beit Ashams community center in Bethlehem rent for the year to help them keep their doors open to offer Palestinians, Israelis and refugees a safe space for wellbeing, training and access to immediate needs such as food.

[We] feel totally overwhelmed by your continued support for our projects in the Middle East… the generosity of your recent donations have made an amazing difference…” YogaBeats Conflict

…thank you so much for all you have done to help secure this women’s empowerment project in Goa. We simply could not have done it without you…”Khusi Hona

Our current partner charities (2020)

We have selected charities that are really important to us, that we know are making a difference through sustainable initiatives. We work closely with each charity, to ensure transparency and accountability for all donations. In sharing these charities with you, we hope that we can venture beyond the mat together to build a connected global community, united under common goals.

Khusi Hona

Our head teacher, Rachel has been personally committed to our Beyond the Mat initiative by being involved with the charity for two years, and has first-hand witnessed their incredible work. Our retreats provide a non-profit sales outlet for their LovetreeCo jewellery line – a venture that empowers and educates women and provide a sustainable, living wage, employment and training for women in Goa. Find out more and make a donation

Healing Hands Foundation

The Healing Hands Foundation promotes sustainable change by supporting initiatives that alleviate extreme poverty, improve quality of life, and ensure basic human rights. This includes initiatives such as women’s empowerment, anti people-smuggling and global health. Find out more and make a donation.

The Toy Smuggler of Aleppo

Rami Adham, known as ‘The Toy Smuggler’ has crossed the Syrian-Turkish border to Aleppo, every two months for the past five years. Taking with him 175 pounds of donated toys and immeasurable joy. During this year’s month of Ramadan, he gave 700 toys to children living in a refugee camp near the northern town of Atmeh. Find out more and make a donation.

Charity and community

In this ever expanding ‘yoga’ industry, it’s more important than ever that we recognise our privilege to practice and see our yoga practice as so much more than just what happens on the mat, or as time for just ourselves. Charity and community are actually large components of a well rounded yoga practice and without our tribe or support network, our practice can easily lose direction or become stale.

Our ongoing beyond-the-mat projects include:

Giving back to the local community, especially by supporting animal welfare and animal rescue charity work on the island.

Making our retreats and operations more sustainable.

Supporting our team, our guests and the wider yoga and Pilates community to get involved. See more on how we do this below…

Bringing the Azulfit community together…

At Azulfit we encourage every member of the Azulfit community be a part of Beyond the Mat. Join us and celebrate being part of this ever growing and supportive network of yogis, Pilates folk and positive people from across the globe.

This celebration takes place each week at the retreat in the form of a charity dinner evening. We designate a charity each quarter and all funds raised are donated to them. Of course, this is not a compulsory meal and every guest can opt out without judgement or drama. We provide our team and ingredients as our donation and together it has been amazing how much we have collectively raised.

We also support many charities through hosting fund raising classes. Open beach classes and events such as International Yoga Day, allow an additional platform for us to encourage the community to come together and celebrate mindful movement, whilst giving back to those in need.

Our owner and founder, Jamie, is also actively going beyond the mat with his Pilates Flow DVD sales. The DVD soundtrack is by Internationally acclaimed musician Moby, who joins Jamie in his charitable support, with each DVD sale supporting the Humane Society USA and the local Fuerteventura Dog rescue charity.

Other areas where Azulfit has enjoyed supporting charitable causes, has been by donating the use of their retreat centre to the Yoga Beats Conflict cause, providing a safe space for yoga teachers to come and finish their training, away from the war torn zones that they reside in.

With special thanks to…

…the wonderful Yogi Bare company, who not only provided us with yoga mats for our 10 year anniversary retreat, but also went beyond the mat by giving back by donating used mats to homeless charities.