Hello!

Active Background

As a child, I was a competitive gymnast, serious double-dutch jumper, and top-3 dodgeball player. My dad taught me how to throw a football, how to play one-on-one basketball, and how to overhand serve in tennis. I played intermural volleyball in junior high, rowed in university and beyond, then coached rowing for years.

I love being active. Throughout all that, I had one major injury—an ankle sprain in volleyball—which I didn’t think about after it healed.

Yoga

I took my first yoga class on a cruise ship in 2005. It was another three years until I took my second class. But when I did, I started taking classes nearly every morning, and within a month, I signed up for yoga teacher training.

I also injured my shoulder in a five-minute downward dog challenge. That was my first lesson in not treating yoga as a competition, even with myself.

The first (of three!) teacher trainings expanded my understanding of yoga (mainly from the Ashtanga lineage) and the yogic traditions. But however much I learned, I was aware of how much more there was to know.

Over the next 17 years, I continued soaking up knowledge and wisdom from teachers from or visiting Toronto (see the long list under Professional Development).

Yoga Therapy

I started out in human biology in university and was always interested in applying it to movement, fitness training, and sports coaching.

As my parents aged, I became more interested in applying what I learned to helping them slow down their physical slowing. Then, I achieved my perimenopause badge, and everything that didn’t used to hurt became constantly sore and achey.

Because I was never interested in teaching effort-ful yoga, transitioning to yoga therapy was inevitable. Seventeen years of learning about the wide-ranging benefits of yoga has shown how effective it is to improve overall well-being and healthspan, no matter what age a person is when first introduced to it.

As a therapeutic yoga teacher, my 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.

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I’ve been attracted to teachers like Susi Hately, Jill Miller, and the faculties at VSOHA and Functional Synergy (Mona Warner, Kirsten Richardson, Amy Yap) because of their evidence-based and trauma-informed approaches to healing through yoga. I have so much gratitude to Delia Brett, Andrew Fredericks, Jennifer Clarke, and Daniel Clement for their wisdom and guidance back into yoga. Learning from all my teachers past and present has been a gift. Dhanyavādaḥ.