Yoga, Chai and a Dog is a fantastic podcast recorded, produced and edited in Oakley by the lovely Deepak and Archna, who have been married for over 30 years.
Deepak is a business consultant by day and a technology/music enthusiast and an amateur photographer by the evening (and weekends); whilst Archna is a yoga and mindfulness practitioner who was also perplexed about the amount of misinformation being spread through social media, TV and print on the subject.
The podcast was Deepak’s idea; who is a ’non-yogi’ and wanted to start a podcast to air their views sharing what they practice and sincerely believe in. Whilst they are no experts, they are both over 50, and with a lot of life experience they are perhaps slightly more informed on the serious topics they discuss.
When they started, they didn’t want their dog Lulu to be locked up whilst they recorded so they decided to include her in the name and endorse her canine interruptions in their dialogue. Chai (tea in English) is a means of relaxation, hence the name Yoga, Chai and a Dog.
Yoga, Chai and a Dog were named one of the Top 20 podcasts of 2021 by beststartup.co.uk which is an incredible achievement and Archna and Deepak told us how it felt, “It was a complete surprise; we did not nominate ourselves, nor do we know of anyone who has done so. Obviously, it felt great; in fact, we had paused our episodes for 2 months as we were thinking on some other ideas, so it definitely kick-started the launch of season 2 of our podcast.”
They started the podcast in 2019 and they told us, “The overwhelming sense of gloom and dread of the pandemic was a key motivating factor for us to carry on. We were aware of a number of people (mostly Archna’s clients) who were going through a very difficult phase in their lives and we wanted to help and assure them that we are all in it together and we will overcome this phase.”
Most of Deepak and Archna’s audience comment on the authenticity and sincerity of the podcast as to why they continue to listen and enjoy it.
They told CommunityAd about their fantastic audience, “Most of the time, the measure of your success is by the number of downloads that your episode had; we do ask our readers for their comments and feedback. We are lucky that we receive a good number of responses (much more than the industry average) on our podcasts and have encouraged our audience to share their experiences in some of our episodes(e.g., May 8th, 2020: “Courage: the dare to do different?”) and they have responded enthusiastically.”
Since recently moving to Oakley, they have received wonderful encouragement from the community online, “We would love to invite some residents from our community in our future episodes; while they are most welcome to record in our home, if required they could record them remotely too.”