Mike Van Cauter

Mike Van Cauter is a Brussels-based yoga teacher, movement specialist and retreat facilitator, and the founding teacher of Pop Up Yoga Concepts. He has more than ten years of professional experience helping people understand how their body is designed to move. His work centres on functional movement: yoga in service of how the body actually functions, with a focus on spine health, injury prevention, holistic mobility and long-term physical resilience. Where many teachers focus on form, he focuses on function, and on explaining the reason behind each movement.

Mike founded Pop Up Yoga Concepts in 2016 on the belief that yoga belongs in your life and not only in a studio. Before teaching, he spent ten years in an international corporate career. He lived with stress, emotional trauma and severe asthma, and he was referred to many doctors for his asthma and other inflammatory conditions. After he left that career, he took his health into his own hands through yoga and movement, breathwork, nutrition and daily meditation. He has kept a daily meditation practice since 2014 and has practised a variety of yoga styles since 2002.

His training is documented in some detail. Mike is a 500-hour RYT Yoga Alliance certified teacher and a trained health coach, and he works as a mindfulness and breathwork practitioner. He trained as a vinyasa instructor in Thailand under Lucas Rockwood's method, with an emphasis on anatomy in the poses and on public speaking. He also trained in traditional hatha yoga in Southern India with monastic Indian scholars, studying yoga philosophy and its link to asana practice. He continues to take trainings and workshops every year. On Insight Timer he describes his teaching as a mix of Hatha, Vinyasa and mindfulness, with fun, adventure and curiosity about the "why" behind the practice.

Mike teaches functional movement, hatha yoga, wall yoga and restorative yoga. He has taught more than 4,000 classes. Pop Up Yoga Concepts offers live classes in person and online, a digital studio of pre-recorded online classes, and customised private and company yoga. Company programs include online sessions, in-person workshops on mindfulness and meditation or on mind-body work for desk-related stress, and bespoke events. They are offered in English, French or Dutch.

Retreats are a large part of his work, and he has led more than 45 sold-out international retreats. They combine movement, somatic work, mindfulness meditation and good food, and they bring in certified life coaches, holistic health chefs and other yoga teachers. Past and current locations include Tuscany, Sicily, Puglia, Zeeland, Cadzand and a farmhouse in West Flanders. At Yogabee Retreat Centre in Domburg, in the Dutch province of Zeeland, a weekend includes workshop-style functional movement classes, wall yoga, mobility and Kinstretch, a breathwork workshop, a silent morning, a cold sea immersion and guided coastal walks. The centre has an indoor pool and a dry sauna. In Thailand, his Embodied Homecoming retreat on Koh Phangan is rooted in his years living there and in the spiritual influence of his Thai mother.

His classes suit people who sit at a desk all day, people recovering from injury, and people who want to age well and stay active, and they are open to beginners. A student from Belgium, Lana, writes on his website that he has "the talent and patience to teach beginners". Students leave with practical tools for moving more efficiently in daily life. The values behind the work are kindness, community and adventure.