The Long Argument Co-founder YogaPros at twenty
He has made one argument for twenty years: teaching yoga is a profession. And he built the body that proves it.
01 The Six
Answer to come — from the sitting, in his own words.
Answer to come — from the sitting, in his own words.
Answer to come — from the sitting, in his own words.
Answer to come — from the sitting, in his own words.
Answer to come — from the sitting, in his own words.
Answer to come — from the sitting, in his own words.
Everyone on these pages answers the same six, unchanged — read sideways, not down. Bruce's answers arrive from a recorded sitting. Until they do, the questions stand open: nothing on this page is written for him.
02 The arc
1999
Yoga, posted. An online retailer before Amazon reached the mat.
Open →
2003
The Edinburgh studio, co-founded with Brian Cooper. The observation deck.
Open →2006
The professional body, founded with Brian Cooper — because nobody else was building it.
Open →
2016
'Professional' enters the name — then the industry's vocabulary.
Open →2025
Three names. One continuous body. The standard never changed.
Open →2026
10,000+ teachers. 100+ countries. The argument continues.
Open →
03 The landmark
In 2016 the body he co-founded became Yoga Alliance Professionals — the first time the word stood in the name of a British yoga body. The industry has been borrowing it since. YogaPros is what the word looks like built out: standards, insurance, a verified record, a body that answers.
04 The practice underneath
A register that asks teachers to evidence their hours is kept by someone who spent five decades logging his own — in rooms with no audience, no certificate at the end, and no one watching.
He has practised since childhood; he could hold his breath through a long retention by seven. The deeper training came the old way. Ashram life in India, inside the lineage rather than reading about it. Repeated long Vipassana retreats. Many extended fasts — one of forty-one days, alone in the jungles of Thailand. And the medicine traditions of the Amazon basin — ayahuasca with the shamans who hold it, in the mountains of Peru; Kambo, in ceremony, in the jungles of Costa Rica — in the countries where those traditions belong and are lawful.
None of this appears on a certificate, and none of it is a recommendation — his history, not the body's syllabus. It is told plainly because a portrait owes the truth: this is the life the argument came out of.
Ceremonial, abroad, lawful where practised — and never a recommendation. His record, told plainly.
05 The unseen hours
Twenty-seven years does not fit in a gallery. These frames are studies — honest stand-ins holding the shape of the record while his own archive is gathered.
06 Beyond the mat
The drummerSemi-pro to pro across five decades. Rhythm, repetition, craft — the first discipline, and the one that taught him how bodies learn.
The entrepreneurThe Yoga Shop in 1999 was the first. Seven-figure ventures since. The body runs with an operator's discipline because its founder is one.
The analystProject leader and senior analyst before yoga was a career. The published-standards, audit-trail instinct comes from somewhere.
The cityThe shop, the studio, the body — all built from the same city. Twenty-seven years, one home ground.
Off the matTo be filled in his own words. This is the tile that makes it a portrait.
One surpriseEvery founder has one. Ask for it directly — it is what readers repeat.
07 The voice
Twenty years of saying the quiet part out loud — on standards, on hours, on what teachers are owed. Six conversations he does not give stock answers to.
“Bruce Mackay has practised yoga since childhood and taught it for more than two decades. In 2006 he co-founded what became YogaPros — the professional body behind ten thousand teachers in more than a hundred countries. He's also been a drummer since he was eleven.”
For the microphone · awaiting his sign-off08 Speaking & media
He speaks where the profession's interests are decided — conferences, media, institutions, partners. Invitations are read personally. Yes is rarer than no.
On stage
Conferences · institutions · industry
The state of the teaching profession, twenty years of the register, and where the industry goes next.
Long form
The deep conversations
Two hours on standards, practice and the economics of teaching. Any topic above runs forty-five minutes on its own.
On the record
Journalists on deadline
Verified positions, a host-ready biography, and a direct line. Comment given as the professional body, on the record.
09 Invite Bruce
Your mail app has opened with everything in place — press send there. It lands in the body's own inbox, is read by the team, and is put in front of Bruce. You will hear back either way.
The body was built by two — and both clear its Sage bar themselves, the honour no one can buy. His entry stands on the Sage Register, verified like every other. Brian Cooper's portrait — fifty-six years of practice, The Long Practice — is the other half of the record.