The committee this year has been focused on MAINTENANCE.
This has been a matter of necessity as we are so few in number (6). Our emphasis has been on maintaining the range of events for our members and yoga practitioners and on using our energy well to serve the continuance of the work of DHIY.
To this end we have;
Rationalised the library contents
Moved t-shirt sales to an online platform
Organised fewer events than in our anniversary year 2025, but high quality and well spread through the year with one two-day event.
IYUK with its new Chair has been much discussed in our meetings and there is great change in process. An Extraordinary General Meeting has been called on 15th November to discuss a £5 increase in non-teacher membership fees. IYUK is under pressure to increase its income. In addition, IYUK is very keen to hear from and engage with all its members on proposed changes and scheduled events.
As mentioned in 2025 at the AGM we have formed a sub-committee to put in place a process for dispersing the DHIY funds that sit in balances beyond a certain level to the causes of; Reaching out to groups of people who cannot easily access Iyengar Yoga, Encouraging community in our area through Yoga, and Supporting the teacher mentor process.
It has been my first year as Chair this year and we have welcomed Monika Karwacka as a new member to the committee. Monika is a photographer as well as a Yoga teacher (and many other things!) and has been profiled in our blog, Yoga Prajna: https://substack.dhiy.org/p/teacher-interview-monika-karwacka.
The blog has been managed, formerly as a newsletter, by Ingrid Masters who is leaving us this year. We are very grateful for all the work Ingrid has done for the committee. Her current role is as recording secretary.
Only one person on the committee is coming to the end of their term of office and that is Semra O’Reilly, who does a tremendous amount of work for us all as EX rep, attending the meetings run by IYUK for all the Iyengar Yoga Organisations in the country. Semra is happily prepared to stand for a further term of office and although she will not be present at the AGM we shall be voting to elect her to stay on the committee for a further term of office.
The blog, Yoga Prajna, needs writers ! In addition to my duties as Chair I would like to form a group of people who are willing to write occasionally for the Blog. This may be personal reflection, reflections on philosophy, practice, poems, stories, cartoons or artwork. We can even send music out to our readership via Substack.
So if you have something to say that you would like to share with others in Yoga Prajna, please let me know at admin@dhiy.org. Don’t be put off by thinking you are not wise enough. We are all sharing the same journey towards articulating what our life in yoga means.
Our events this year have been successful though we drew fewer attendees in February, perhaps because of the time of year. Most recently Sheila Haswell drew 35 attendees in Botley and we hope Sheila will return to us in 2028. We remain grateful to all our visiting teachers for the quality of their teaching and their kind regard for us all at DHIY. We are offering two Exchange of learning Days this year on the theme of Pranayama as last year we had so many in attendance that debate was hard to facilitate within the day. This so far has proved a success.
For our National Iyengar Yoga Day in 2027, on 16th January we will be devolving the opportunity to offer free classes to teachers in the region, rather than organising free workshops centrally. We will put out more information about this very shortly.
We are proposing an amendment to our constitution this year at the AGM so that the date of the Financial year end should be April 5th according with the bank statement instead of 31st March as currently stated. We also owe a big thank you to Zoe Hobbs for year on year reviewing our accounts on an entirely voluntary basis.
Finally we thank you all, members for your commitment to DHIY. With Ingrid Masters leaving the committee we will be down to only five members in total. The maximum we could be is 10! This means already members are holding multiple roles and find themselves torn because they would like to do more for you as members, but are pushed for time and energy. Many of you have served nobly in the committee over the years. However the more of us there are the more we can do! It’s simple. So please consider playing a part, however small, in the committee. You will find, I hope, that we are a friendly lot and that we will not expect any more than you are willing to offer.
Best wishes for the coming year,
Libby Lee,
Chair, DHIY Committee