Happily Ever After

He's known for his unconventional style, but behind the Kilted Yogi's public persona is a life shaped by love, routine and quiet devotion

- GAYLE RITCHIE

F you've ever wandered across a Scottish hillside and thought you saw a flash of tartan doing an impressively balanced backbend, there's a fair chance you did.

For many people around the world, Scotland's beauty is now inseparable from the image of Finlay Wilson, the “kilted yogi”, whose cheeky, tartan-clad routines in beautiful locations turned him into a global phenomenon.

His outdoor videos, bestselling books Kilted Yoga and Wild Kilted Yoga, his Kilted Yoga app, plus his much-loved calendars shot in beautiful locations across the country, have all helped introduce yoga to audiences who might never have tried it otherwise.

Whether he's perched on a rock formation, flowing through a sequence beside a loch or setting up a shoot in a quiet glen, Scotland's landscape has simply become part of the visual language surrounding his work.

But as striking as the outdoor images are, Finlay's glow these days comes from something more personal.

The Dundee-based yogi is, in his own words, deliriously happy. He and his husband, fellow yoga teacher Alan Lambie, recently marked five years of marriage - and Finlay can't stop smiling about it.

The pair have just returned from a trip to Italy, though they haven't yet found time to celebrate their anniversary with the friends and family who missed the wedding.

Five years ago, the couple's big day looked close to collapse. The plan was simple and full of sentiment: marry on June 7, 2020, exactly one year after Finlay proposed to Alan during a Pride parade in Washington DC. They had spent time transforming their Dundee garden into a space perfect for an intimate ceremony of 30 to 40 guests.

“We’d been doing loads of work on our garden and hoped to use it as our wedding venue,” Finlay says. “We were really disappointed when we thought we’d have to cancel and we posted on Instagram.”