Exhale.

How it started:

My experience with yoga started over 12 years ago. I had just started university and was looking for a way to multitask my wellness (Oh, the irony!). I wanted to work out, but I needed to calm my scattered and active mind. My mother had practiced yoga in our household, so I had been exposed to it before, but never experienced it myself. I started doing a 20 minute instructed yoga podcast daily, and it quickly became a profound connection. 

I  became fascinated with the intricate elements that make up each Asana (pose) and found the yogic philosophy to be a refreshing perspective. I began to apply these teachings to my life and slowly, it put me on a path to self acceptance, self discovery and most importantly, self reliability. My practice also helped me manage health symptoms that once governed my every decision, living in constant fear and anxiety of how my next move would affect my physical health.

Yoga helped me understand myself better. It gave me the tools to balance my mind and body. It did not discriminate. No matter how I felt, I could always roll out my mat and find space for myself. That itself – just showing up – was an act of self love and increased my confidence.  Mental clarity and a calm nervous system are only a couple ways that yoga helped me heal myself – and this health autonomy is what I want to share with others.

Taking it farther:

I incorporated yoga into all of my school projects. Luckily, this meshed with the Sports, Leisure and Tourism undergrad program I was taking. It felt like I finally had a direction for my career at this point, but I still had no idea where I’d end up. 

10 Months after undergrad, I flew to Costa Rica to complete an intensive 200 hour Hatha & Yogic Therapy Teacher Training Course. This was the pinnacle of embracing yoga as a philosophy for me. It allowed me to go deep into the practice for the first time and as cliche as this may sound, it transformed me.

It has all lead me here:

A few months later, I started working full time at a beautiful wellness centre in my hometown of Moncton, NB. I taught weekly yoga classes and also had an administrative roll that exposed me to the wellness space as a whole.  I learned a lot – including about Ayurveda.

After some time, the call of travel was too loud not to ignore. I decided to leave Moncton to travel for 7 months. Eventually I made my way to the West Coast of Canada in 2019. I taught yoga rarely during the next 4 years because of the pandemic, so I used this time to work on my personal practice and to brainstorm how I was going to make my goal of studying Ayurveda a reality.

When I first moved to Big White, I thought it was only a 6 month gig – and it was. Until I came back the next season. That was 2 years ago, and I’ve been here ever since! I’ve recently started an Ayurveda course and am taking all my courses online so that I can continue to have the best winter ever – time and time again.