Voices in Health and Wellness
Voices in Health and Wellness is a podcast spotlighting the founders, practitioners, and innovators redefining what care looks like today. Hosted by Andrew Greenland, each episode features honest conversations with leaders building purpose-driven wellness brands — from sauna studios and supplements to holistic clinics and digital health. Designed for entrepreneurs, clinic owners, and health professionals, this series cuts through the noise to explore what’s working, what’s changing, and what’s next in the world of wellness.
Voices in Health and Wellness
Finding Balance Through Practice: A Yoga Master's Journey
What happens when decades of yoga practice meet entrepreneurial reality? Matt Gluck, founder of Pransana Yoga and teacher with over 30 years of experience, reveals the delicate balance between business demands and spiritual authenticity.
Starting with his childhood battle against severe asthma and guided by his yoga-practicing mother from the 1960s, Matt's journey wasn't planned but emerged from personal suffering. After realising corporate life wasn't nurturing his sensitive soul, he found refuge in martial arts before eventually building his yoga practice. This pattern—health challenges transforming into healing vocations—appears repeatedly throughout the wellness industry.
The conversation explores how the wellness landscape has changed dramatically over Matt's career. Where once there were fewer instructors and less market saturation, today's practitioners face overwhelming competition and consumer confusion. Matt offers a refreshing counterpoint to this complexity, emphasising that true yoga isn't about accumulating techniques but finding simplicity. His teaching philosophy centres on being "a channel" for wisdom that flows both from external knowledge and internal insights gained through consistent self-practice.
Particularly fascinating is Matt's perspective on digital teaching, sharpened during the pandemic. While acknowledging nothing replaces face-to-face instruction, he discovered "energy can be transferred over the screen" in ways he never expected. This balanced view suggests different formats serve different needs – some students thrive online while others require physical presence.
Looking forward, Matt hopes to publish more teaching manuals and expand his retreat offerings, creating those sacred spaces where community bonds form and practices deepen. Despite occasional worries about business sustainability in a crowded marketplace, his emphasis on self-care serves as protection against entrepreneurial stress – a powerful reminder for all wellness practitioners to truly embody the principles they teach.
What challenges are you facing in balancing business demands with spiritual practice? Join the conversation and share your experience.
📬 Connect with Matt Gluck:
Website:
🌐 Pranasana Yoga
Email:
✉️ matt@pranasanayoga.com
Social Media:
Okay, so welcome back to Voices in Health and Wellness. This is the podcast where we dive into honest conversation with practitioners, founders and leaders shaping the future of care. I'm your host, andrew Greenland, and I'm thrilled to be bringing you. Today's guest Joining us is Matt Cluck, a longtime yoga teacher and the founder of pransana yoga, a london-based practice known for its deeply human and heart-centered approach to both face-to-face and online teaching. Matt's presence in the wellness space is rooted in decades of teaching experience and a real commitment to helping students connect inward without overwhelm, without noise, just presence, practice and peace. Whether you've joined one of his live classes, followed along on youtube or simply come across his thoughtful online presence, you'll know he brings something rare to the table clarity and calm in a fast-moving world. I hope that is a fair introduction of you, matt, and what you do. Please correct me if I've said anything which is untoward.
Matt Gluck:Not at all.
Dr Andrew Greenland:I'm impressed, I'm honoured and I'm impressed, I'm impressed, I'm honoured and I'm impressed not with me, but with what you've shared there, what you've remembered, and thank you no worries.
Matt Gluck:So let's start at the beginning. Can you maybe share a little about your journey and what led you to start Pransana Yoga? Suffering A life of suffering? I tend to fall back on a lot of the Buddhist and the Taoist teachings. I think suffering causes all of us to come to something like yoga, martial arts, alternative health.
Matt Gluck:Young boy with really terrible asthma, chronic asthma and allergies, hay fever, eczema, but the main thing was really bad asthma. I was very fortunate to have a, a mum who was practicing yoga back in the 60s, who introduced me to to what yoga is and how it could help me, and I never thought that I would. Um, you know, I I didn't plan my path, which is so often the case. I just fell into it because I found that I had fallen into a life that was following the machine, you know, and the corporate machine, and it wasn't for me, and so it affected me. I'm a very sensitive soul and it affected me very negatively and I I realized that I fortunately I had been doing martial arts since I was a teenager and that was always in the background, and so I realized that I had something to fall out into and I decided to teach martial arts professionally back in my late 20s.
Dr Andrew Greenland:I'm now 57, so it's been a while yeah, interesting because there's a recurrent theme in doing these, having these conversations that a lot of people have some kind of challenge, a health challenge, whatever, which drives them to go into this space. And you're not the first person that said that. I just find it an interesting pattern about you know what you just said about the health challenges and the way that you've found this, um, and it just seems to be a recurring theme and it's not just indeed.
Dr Andrew Greenland:I think you'll hear it again and again, and again yeah yeah so what does a typical day or week look like at the moment for you, as a sort of teaching, managing the business, connecting with students, or all of the above or anything?
Matt Gluck:else, all of the above and um and writing and self-practice, um and the self-practice is. It's all important, but the self-practice is where it starts and how you maintain what you're doing, and there must always be some kind of self-practice. It's very easy to get lost in, you know, in any machine, once you start doing teaching professionally, whatever you're teaching, even if it's your passion, it's not true that you'll never have to work a day in your life. If you forget that it's your passion, it it becomes a chore. So every day there's some form of self-practicing meditation and I do a lot of that on my own, I do a lot of it with my other half-dawner, and that keeps one sane and basically you're a channel and it keeps you open to bringing in information that you need in order to be able to share useful information with people. The information comes from outside, but, most importantly, talking yogically is allowing information to flow from within allowing information to flow from within.
Dr Andrew Greenland:So what's the sort of split with terms, the sort of the, the teaching, the connecting, the self-care and running the business for you at the moment?
Matt Gluck:what's the? Do you say the ratio, sort of percent?
Dr Andrew Greenland:yeah, the split just get some sense of how your week pans out in terms of where you have to prioritize and where you put your time I'd like to think I could say 50 me and 50 you.
Matt Gluck:You know, um, it tends to be more. I think the older we get, we become more selfless and we enjoy working and helping people more and more. So, you know, there's usually a few sessions a day and that changes from week to week. I do some school work, I do private work, so people are coming and going, people are going on holiday, people are getting ill people, people come to Sears because they're ill, so one week can be really busy, you know, and then the next week can be quite quiet and it's up and down every day. As I said, there has to be time for for self. And then, you know, business side of it is something I've always enjoyed the, the admin and keeping things together and looking ahead. You know, where are we going? Pipeline, that kind of thing. I think a little bit. I try to juggle all of those plates a little bit every day and how long have you been in this space for all together?
Dr Andrew Greenland:professionally yeah, professionally 1996, not non-professionally.
Matt Gluck:I started teaching very young, um, because in martial arts we started teaching even before we were teachers. So I've taught since I was 20, which means nearly 40 years, and then started my own classes and I've done that now for more than 30 years. To think well, what forms our profession since 96, and that followed trauma. It was. It was really, as I said earlier, it was because of of grief, loss of my mom. I'd lost my father a few years before and you just stop and you think what am I doing? What's this all for? The big question, why?
Matt Gluck:and I just thought that's it. I, I looked to the thing that I knew I could rely on and that was, you know, at that time, martial arts. And that pulled me back into yoga wasn't that wasn't planned, but teaching, teaching martial arts classes. I was approached, asked if I could teach some yoga, and I said, well, I've got experience from childhood, let's give it a go. And the yoga, actually it snowballed and took over.
Dr Andrew Greenland:So I mean, you've been in this space long enough with that for being doing this since 1996 to probably see a lot of change, and especially post-pandemic and this is something I'm particularly interested in I just wonder what shifts you're noticing right now in how people are engaging with yoga, but perhaps um wellness more generally how they're engaging with yes, how things changed, I mean. But I'm particularly post-pandemic because we're before this call. We were just alluding to the pandemic, but just interested to know what you're noticing and how people engage it's a difficult question.
Matt Gluck:Nothing is coming immediately. I think one of the problems is the general thing that comes is that, compared to the 90s and then the 80s and the 70s before, because we have internet, there is so much choice and people are. Therefore it creates so much desire and people don't know where to go, what to do and how many reviews and who's the best, which is the best website and who's the best practitioner. So there's more confusion and there's maybe less. It's talking very generally. There might be less commitment. Things have become more complicated, but they need to remain simple and does that, see, is something you pick up.
Dr Andrew Greenland:When, when people are contacting the studio or contacting you to find out more information, are you getting that sense of confusion or overload?
Matt Gluck:I get the sense that, yeah, people are overloaded and they don't even know they're overloaded, they don't even know they're confused, they don't even know that their mind is distracted. You know and I say this with respect to everybody because I'm part of that society there is so much distraction that it's when we can understand that it's not about a hundred different things and techniques, but it's about simplicity. And we've lost some of that and that's where the kind of work we do, we try to simplify and that's a lot for people's minds to grasp, because there's not, you know, there's so much choice and with all that sort of confusion and so much choice, I mean, is that sort of impacted lead flow through your business?
Dr Andrew Greenland:is that something you've noticed? Because people can't make a decision, they feel overloaded, or they're just kind of forever shopping around or trying to find the lead flow through your business? Is that something you've noticed? Because people can't make a decision, they feel overloaded, or they're just kind of forever shopping around or trying to find the perfect thing?
Matt Gluck:Yes and no.
Matt Gluck:I mean when I started teaching. When I started teaching, there were far less teachers. There were far less male teachers. There was far less demand for yoga tuition. But obviously the market world has changed. Markets changed there's so much more. Saturation has changed. Markets changed there's so much more saturation. Um, what I'm trying to say is that I never had to concern myself with how many students. Where are they coming from? They just they just came. It was like I'm going to teach a class and I'll put a flyer up somewhere or I'll tell someone, and students just came. Maybe that was a bit of ignorance is bliss and beginners luck. But as the years have gone by, more and more people are teaching and people are asking more and more questions, and also with internet and YouTube, for example, that has impacted people like us. And YouTube, for example, that has impacted people like us. That has made things sometimes difficult, because a lot of people are happy to just get some intuition from YouTube rather than that personal from someone who's done it for a lot longer.
Dr Andrew Greenland:That's actually going to be my next question asking about the digital offerings from someone who's done it for a lot longer. That's actually going to be my next question, asking about the digital offerings and what people are trying to do from their living rooms in front of a screen and what you thought of that in terms of quality of experience and it's very For sure.
Matt Gluck:It's very personal. People are different and it depends upon their individual need. If I have someone living in new zealand who can, who relates to me, connects with me and they've got some kind of disability or debilitated disease, as long as they connect I can teach them. Um, there is nothing like obviously face-to-face in the same room, but I was amazed when COVID arrived and we started teaching online. I was actually amazed at how much can be transmitted over the screen. You know, the energy can be transferred. I was aware that students are consciously or unconsciously aware of when I'm looking at them. Um, there is definitely an exchange. So it's really more about the individual connection than they're just two different mediums and they both work for some people. For me, I love both, and for some people you know they definitely they can't do the online thing. For some people, it's perfect.
Dr Andrew Greenland:Interesting. So I was going to ask you whether you feel it's a challenge and opportunity for a business like yours. But from what you're saying, you're doing some of it yourself. But I just wondered whether it's reduced interest in the live lessons that you would otherwise do and you're having to resort to this as another means of of you know, getting people through the door, as it were trying to think of an expression.
Matt Gluck:You know, don't have all of your eggs in one basket and just it's good to. I love teaching from home studio and I also like to be out and about and meet people face to face, and I think that they both play a very important role amazing.
Dr Andrew Greenland:So, um looking at where things are now, what's working really well for you in in the business? Um of the yoga and the things that you do. What's sort of really um, given the fact that there is all this sort of competition online and what have you, what's really working for you?
Matt Gluck:Being true to myself. So again, it refers back to your previous questions and my previous answers is that it's about really learning to centre yourself and spin your own spin, as I was taught many years ago by a great Tai Chi teacher. You know, you need to understand that you are a planet, you're a star, and that you've got this gravitational force and that you spend your time nourishing your own, what we call nourishing your own spirit and your own chi. And then, basically, you, you radiate, you magnetize and what you need, with some effort. Of course, energy has to go outside, but things do come to you and it's amazing how, when you compare the difference between you know, thinking and worrying and planning and getting stuck in the next step and just being here present. I'm going to do my practice. This is what's happening today. There's no bookings, all right, and then the following week, things. Where does it all come from? It just all came out of thin air and it all, it always will come out of thin air so I, we, both of us here, we very much.
Matt Gluck:It's about self-belief and trusting that you're part of something, you're part of an ecosystem, you're part of a collective consciousness. You know you're not separate and so, vibrationally, things come, things go and we just, we just trust that we've got what we need when we need it. And you know that takes a lot of, especially since covid. I personally went through a massive paradigm, if they could paradigm shift. You know, I used to travel around North London and Harps, 400 miles a week. I was traveling around a small circuit teaching between 25, 30 classes a week, doing so much, you know, doing, doing, doing. And then the pandemic COVID.
Matt Gluck:Covid, we were very busy online but then after that calmed down. Then the online thing calmed down and I had to adjust myself to thinking about going back out into the, the, what they call the real world out there, and it was a big, big shift for me and it was. I really found my space, my center, my, my. I've been in my retreat cave for a while. It was good, it was heaven on earth really for us here, and I had to then get to grips with, you know, going out again but remembering what I found whilst I've had all that time here, which is that we're living in a world where people are told everything comes from what you need.
Matt Gluck:You're going to get it on the outside, but what we're teaching is when we're true teachers, we're actually not going to put ourselves out of business. But I want to teach teachers. I don't mean that I'm teaching teacher training, I mean that I, a true teacher, is someone who lets you, let's you, self-empower yourself, so we, we've got information, we've got experience, and it's about sharing that to the community so that people essentially don't need us. That takes a lot of faith and a lot of trust in something higher amazing.
Dr Andrew Greenland:And on the flip side, is there anything that's particularly frustrating, or just plain energy draining in your business, or is your sort of self-care and your ability to deflect um something that kind of sees you through?
Matt Gluck:yeah, good question, and it that's the day-to-day. You just have to the word that comes. There is mindfulness, um, I won't name a website, but the number of times that I've unsubscribed and I keep getting this stuff coming through and it's not. We send out a newsletter to our subscribers once a month and but I get stuff every day, two, three times a day, and I can't unsubscribe and it's infuriating and you just have to learn how to manage your energy. And they say in buddhism that which arises passes away and don't let the spam get you down let it come, let it go, get on with it.
Matt Gluck:What's next? What's next? People do get them. I, I hear every day and you, I think we all hear. You know the the amount of time we have to spend in erasing rubbish and dealing with rubbish, but that's part of it's part of it don't let the spam get you down.
Dr Andrew Greenland:That's what I say absolutely Are there any sort of specific areas in your business you're trying to streamline or improve, whether it's operations, student engagement or just freeing up more of your time so that you can do your self-care and keep yourself balanced.
Matt Gluck:We are, I think, within my heart. I know there's still a lot of work to do. I know that I, I, um, I've still got a lot of work to do. I still feel that I have a lot of people to reach, um, there's a lot of people we can help. The way that we work is slightly different from psychotherapy, from, you know, working with herbs and it's it's it's like a it's not a niche, but we work with the yoga and tai chi and my personal blend of both of them.
Matt Gluck:Um, I know that there are so many people who need mind body workers, like, like ourselves, so I, I just would like to especially this is where online is amazing that we know we've recently seen a resurgence in the online student attendance. I'm not talking about anything massive, but I'm talking about a shift in the curve which reminds both of us here that the online work still. You know, you can still reach the world, and that's what we're happy to expand now, because we've had such good training in working with larger numbers of people, smaller groups, one-to-ones, and so we just want to keep helping. It's not my only desire is kind of really is to help.
Dr Andrew Greenland:It's pretty, pretty amazing. I think all of us in this space are trying to do our best to help people and reach out um really, really important. So if we fast forward, I know six, twelve months. Where would you love to be with Prasanna Yoga? What would it look like for you?
Matt Gluck:I. One of my passions and personal needs is to get a few of my books out there. I'm manuals and then books. It's more. It's more manuals on what? On the practices, I've written a little bit. I'm still writing is to continue to write, because writing for me is a very, very, it's a great healing modality and I'm it's a I express myself very well when I write, so I I hope that I can get some within the next sort of, do you say, say, five years or?
Dr Andrew Greenland:a year. Six 12 months, just thinking short term.
Matt Gluck:Six 12 months I'd like to get another manual or two published and get that or those manuals to reach a much wider audience. And we teach workshops and retreats, as do most established yoga teachers. I'd like to be running more retreats, as do most established yoga teachers. I'd like to be doing running more retreats. We do two a year. I'd love to be doing four or five a year, because it's fun. It's wonderful for us to be with our students. It's a really good way for people to deepen their practice. It's amazing at community building. Let's be honest, it helps our business as well. It helps to keep everything for us moving, flowing as a business where do you have your retreats?
Dr Andrew Greenland:are they sort of locally, or do you?
Matt Gluck:yeah, we do a uk one and we try to do one abroad each year and I'd like to double up on both of those. At least we've been to Europe, we've been further afield. Um, and it's just, I was brought up, my parents were in the travel industry, so I've got that in my back in my past and I just most people love to travel. It's just mixing the travel with with yoga and deepening your own practice and eating nice food and sharing that space Retreat space is something quite sacred.
Dr Andrew Greenland:It's real community, isn't it Real community?
Matt Gluck:It is and you build a certain bond that you might not ever see that person again. But if you build something inside, when people on retreat see each other again, my throat's getting dry. Cheers. It's very, very fortifying, nourishing, as was that tea.
Dr Andrew Greenland:Good.
Matt Gluck:And if you could, Sorry, carry on. No, excuse me, good, and if?
Dr Andrew Greenland:you could, sorry, carry on. No, excuse me. Um, and if you could wave a wand and solve one challenge in the business at the moment, what would that be? And maybe you don't have any, but I just always put put the question out, because usually we're all juggling with various things that affect business. What would that be thing be for you?
Matt Gluck:the personal thing would be worrying about future business. That would be it, which sounds like I'm contradicting myself, that I've maybe got very little faith and very little trust in something higher comes. That's pretty much always what it's thinking about. I've had personal challenges because I've taught for so long of wear and tear on my body, but that's something that's even not so much of a challenge as I think that survival instinct of will I be okay? Will I have enough for the future, especially as one gets older and there's more and more people being trained to teach. Having said that, we're in a business whereby the older we get, hopefully people recognise that you have more and more wisdom.
Dr Andrew Greenland:Matt, this has been such a rich conversation. I'm really grateful for your time this afternoon and sharing your journey so openly um and um. People will really be interested and resonate with your messages and your approach to what you do, and this thing about self-care I think is incredibly important. You have a real um strong element of looking after yourself so you can deliver and help other people, and it's a real thing that you've kind of emphasized on this call and I think it's a really profound message. But I really like to thank you for your time this afternoon. Um, we'll put your um details in the bio that will go up with this. If anybody wants to contact matt or his studio um, we'll put the information up. But thank you once again, matt likewise, andrew.
Matt Gluck:It's a pleasure talking with you. Enjoy your weekend thank you.
Dr Andrew Greenland:I'll switch the thing off and I was just so stop recording now. It's just for me to thank you again for your time. Really interesting conversation. Um, this is exactly what I'm looking for really just people having an honest conversation with a fellow business owner, hearing about how you operate, the things that you're dealing with at the moment, the things that we all worry about. I think it's really good information, so I'm really grateful, thank you.
Matt Gluck:I assume you can relate to a lot of it.
Dr Andrew Greenland:Yeah, I mean there's nothing. There's lots of things that resonate and we always worry about where the next clients are coming from. Um, we always worry about keeping us looking after ourselves in the face of all the things that we have to manage in a business and all the stresses that face entrepreneurs. So I completely get it. I just think I'm very impressed with your um emphasis on self-care as your kind of your teflon coating to try and deflect some of this stuff and protect yourself from all the things that stress does to in a negative way.
Matt Gluck:And then it's very good to voice it, because of course it helps me to keep checking that I'm I am walking my talk yes, you can't.
Dr Andrew Greenland:Yeah, you have to. You have to walk your talk in this game, because people will see through you if you don't.
Matt Gluck:For sure.
Dr Andrew Greenland:Yeah, so I'm very, very grateful. So thank you for that. I will send you as soon as I've got this up and running. I will send you all the links and things so you can, if you want to share it. You're more than welcome.
Matt Gluck:Thank you very much.
Dr Andrew Greenland:This is exactly what I'm looking for, and I'm really grateful for your time on a Friday afternoon.
Matt Gluck:A afternoon a pleasure.
Dr Andrew Greenland:Nice to meet you, andrew. Likewise, stay in touch, thank you. Yeah, absolutely, cheers, cheers, cheers. Bye for now, bye, no-transcript.