Hi, I’m Margaux

I’ve always been active, athletic even. As a child, I was a competitive gymnast, but because my dad was sporty, he played all the sports with me. I danced, played volleyball (despite my height) and competed in track in junior high school, rowed (despite my height) in university and beyond.

I first tried yoga nearly 20 years ago. Much of the asana felt easy. But the breathing and the mindfulness was not. I pushed too hard too fast and injured myself. That shoulder injury sidelined me for a year and taught me my first lesson in yoga: listen to your body, not the instructor guiding your practice.

Though the pain from the injury lessened, it never fully went away. When I hit menopause, it came raging back as a frozen shoulder. In all my years of falling off balance beams and uneven parallel bars in gynastics, I’d never had an injury. The frozen shoulder was the worst muscoluskeletal pain I’ve ever had.

I took yoga teacher training because I know I’m not the only former athlete or yoga practitioner who has had an injury that made it hard to practice yoga. As a yoga teacher, more mission is to lead slow classes that focus on easing pain and neuro-somatic stress so that students can heal faster and live longer with better mobility.

You won’t get an aerobic workout with me; you might not even break a sweat. What you will get is:

• practice paying attention to how your body moves and responds to movement
• discovery of the ways your body compensates when it’s movement is restricted
• techniques to loosen those restrictions to free your range of motion free of pain

I’ve been trained in Roll Model® Method self-massage therapy ball techniques, yoga for ageing populations, neuro-soma yoga techniques, kinesiology-based yoga for pain-free movement, yin yoga, restorative yoga, and chair yoga. I will be starting a certification program in yoga therapy at VSOHA in April.

My classes take into account the needs of participants and can incorporate a combination of techniques, including breathwork and meditation.