Meet Cat Meffan Mary Bremner meets yoga teacher and wellness blogger Cat Meffan and her dog Simba Active: Can you tell me what your job entails? Cat: I have been a wellness blogger for six years, starting out with my blog ‘imperfect matter,’ which helped me motivate myself and got me back into a wellness state of mind. It grew from there and I now have a YouTube channel with 87,000 followers. On this I do free yoga tutorials, along with creating other wellness content such as recipes, recommendations and videos talking about mental health. I feel it’s important to give something back, hence the free tutorials, as traditionally you never paid to do yoga. It used to be a form of free enrichment in India. Since launching my own online yoga membership platform, I now do two free tutorials a month. All the flows are on my site so anyone from beginner to experienced practitioner can find something to suit them. My mum is my biggest fan and does yoga every morning; I’m working on my father but haven’t been successful yet! I also teach classes in London and have private clients, particularly in Stamford.
How did all this come about?
I have been a gymnast since the age of 5 and had dreams of competing at the Olympics. At the age of 14 I started dancing – ballet and street dance – so planned to go to a dance college. A week before the auditions, at the age of 17, I snapped my anterior cruciate ligament and had a knee reconstruction. Because of this, and my hypermobility, I was told I’d never dance again and possibly end up in a wheelchair suffering from arthritis. So that was that. It left me feeling very bitter and unhappy and as someone who was already struggling with body image and eating disorders, this news only made it worse. I had to rethink my whole life so ended up as a PA in Bond Street working for a private equity firm, which I loved as I met some very
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interesting people. I then moved into fashion PR working in jewellery for the likes of Links and Garrard. My father is a goldsmith and I had designed pieces for him so I was in an industry I knew a lot about. But I still loved movement and fitness and was keeping fit, mainly to control my weight, which wasn’t the healthiest of reasons, initially. At the age of 26 I decided that I hated working at a desk; it wasn’t what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I had been practising yoga for a few years as a hobby, so decided to train as a teacher. I never thought I would teach it, it was just a way of learning more about it and sharing my knowledge; I was also putting it on my blog and on social media. Adidas contacted me out of the blue asking me if I would teach some sessions at a pop-up they were hosting. I had just finished my training, and literally a week later I ran six sessions for them and got the bug.
You have a huge presence on social media; how did you build your following?
Three years ago I took my teaching to YouTube and started using Instagram when it first launched. I realised that people liked looking at images and reading shorter captions, rather than reading blogs, so documented my own fitness – and my jewellery – to start with. I also reviewed fitness gear and published recipes. I had got to 5,000 followers, and still had a full-time job, when Nike invited me to a press weekend event. I wasn’t sure they had the right person when they asked me! After this I was approached by Sweaty Betty who paid me to do a blog post, which was really exciting. After this other brands started to take notice and it grew from there. It was a hard graft but I loved it. I was basically running an online diary. I was able to go part-time in my job and then four years ago left to work for myself.
May 2019 / theactivemag.com
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