Inner Embassy - Support our non-profit yoga school!

Hi, we're Jurre & Claudia from Inner Embassy, a non-profit yoga school in The Hague right across from the iconic Peace Palace. You might also know us as the founders of a community-led yoga organization that has risen from the ashes of another well-known commercial yoga chain previously in the same location.

Inner Embassy is a yoga school offering 60+ classes a week in a wide variety of yoga and meditation practices with highly-experienced local and international teachers such as:

Our unique space offers three serene yoga rooms, a spacious community area for gathering and connecting with others before and after class, two large changing rooms with showers and toilets, a private treatment room, a small meditation garden, and free tea and water.

Why are we fundraising?

Maybe you’re asking then, why are we here on GoFundMe fundraising for Inner Embassy? It's quite simple really - we knew when the previous yoga studio closed its doors in summer of 2023 that we needed to keep this very special space from being lost to the community and repurposed into yet another high-end furniture design studio (no offense to furniture designers of course!).

Together with a core group of highly-dedicated yoga teachers and students, and some initial community support, we dove immediately into taking over this space. We started in August of 2023 on a shoe-string budget, a clear vision for what we wanted to build, and many helping hands from dozens of volunteers, community members and teachers because we deeply believe this space in this unique location should remain for sharing the benefits of yoga with the greater community. We need a place where all can see that yoga, at its heart, is NOT a commercial path, but runs deeper than that, and what better place to do that than right across the street from such an emblem of peace!

If you've ever walked inside Inner Embassy's space you can feel that it's not just any studio - it breathes a peace and openness that is so unique and precious in the middle of our bustling city and modern lives.

Taking on the challenge of preserving this space, along with our mission to preserve and share the ancient roots and benefits of yoga with as many people as we can, doesn't come without tough realities and circumstances. We dream big, but still with our feet very much on the ground. For example, what we didn't get when we took over this space was the database of all the hundreds of students and members that had been practicing yoga in this very same space for more than 10 years already.

We’ve been building this community up from nothing for almost 1 year!

Our Goals

That's why, while we've had other options for bridge financing, we do not want to become a commercial yoga studio - we are 100% committed to our non-profit status and growing a deeply-rooted yoga community in this special space. We want the greater community to know Inner Embassy is not an exclusive high-end studio for only the few that can pay for membership fees - more on that here if you're curious.

We want to ensure that we can keep Inner Embassy's doors open, lights on, and floors heated long enough for us to reach out to all those students who do not yet realize that we're here, who we are, and that we're ready to welcome them (back) with open hearts to help guide them (again) towards more balance, and better health and wellbeing.

We need to raise a minimum of €40.000 to ensure that we cover the operational cost gap we currently have (about €4k/month) necessary to continue for at least one more year and to give our community the chance to grow and thrive!

How can you support us? It’s easy and not all the ways cost money!

We’ve done the math, and if every current member at Inner Embassy could bring one more member through our doors, we would also reach operational break-even! We’re that close to our vision of making this space a sustainable yoga community! So even if you aren’t in a position to give, but know someone who would love to support our mission by also becoming a member, that would already help us enormously towards our vision.

Where will your money go?

With €40k we can:

With €50k we can…

With €60k we can…

Donations & Rewards

We want to repay the good karma of your donation with a little good karma of our own:

Option A (100 available):

Option B (30 available):

Option C (25 available):

Option D (100 available):

Option E (10 available):

Option F (10 available):

Option G (unlimited):

Loans

Since we’re basically looking for bridge financing, we’re also open to accepting loans under the following conditions:

Thank you for your support (of any kind or amount!), taking the time to read about our campaign and mission and we wish you all the blessings.

Namaste,

Jurre, Claudia and the whole Inner Embassy team.

A little more about us

Jurre Twijnstra is an experienced Ashtanga Yoga teacher, the Founder of Inner Embassy and one of the head teachers of its Mysore program. He came to yoga by doing a year-long Ayurvedic course in 2006 with Dr. Anil Mehta. With more than 15 years of experience teaching, he specializes in teaching the primary series to students of all levels. Jurre has studied anatomical alignment with Ken the Rolfer, with whom he also co-taught as an apprentice. He participated in intensive trainings with Richard Freeman in Boulder, Colorado USA, and was authorized by Sharathji in 2019 to lead Ashtanga Mysore. Jurre continues to practice Mysore with various senior teachers of the Ashtanga tradition. “Open slow, stable breath, deep and relax,” is the foundation for how he guides his students and his life.

Claudia Dijkkamp Vento supports managing Inner Embassy's yoga studio and is originally a Dutch-Spanish photographer and documentary filmmaker. She studied journalism in Utrecht, with a specialization in foreign affairs. In Africa she worked on different stories such as forced house evictions in Accra (Ghana) and the empowerment of civil society in Cape Town (South Africa). Besides social injustice, Claudia’s ongoing source of inspiration is the so-called other, and what's in a meeting between different beings or worlds. Her intrinsic interest lies in exploring man’s inner world and the universality of the human condition. She brings this same passion for building connections and community to her work at Inner Embassy today.

In the media:

Teacher Saves the Largest Yoga Studio in The Hague From Destruction with the Help of Students

Delight Yoga, which was unable to recover from the corona pandemic, went bankrupt.. However, teacher Jurre Twijnstra did not have the heart to let this beautiful studio go and has now taken it over with the help of his students. “For me, the focus is not on making money. I want to keep the old traditions alive." Full article here [in Dutch].