Namasté Friend,
Welcome!
I’ve been actively teaching in Vancouver, BC,
for over 25 years.
Here’s a link for
Spring 2026 sessions
with me, Sandra Leigh.
UPDATE 2026:
Over the past few years, I’ve been taking a number of adult flexible learning courses through BCIT, working towards associate certificates in both Music Business and Radio Arts & Entertainment.
I’ve been writing tons and learning to produce and record, both music and spoken word, at home. It’s an ever changing world, and since it’s a world of sound, I’m learning more skills and ways for radio and recording arts to help reach more people, too.
I’m also pleased to share sound & vibrational practices with you, using music, rhythm and mantra meditation. If you’re interested in subtle energy and sound, I’m here to share my harmonic music and sound healing practices with you.
Read my article about the role sound plays in subtle energy body awareness and the interesting effects sound healing practices have on trauma, brain health and the body.
My own wellness, a longer story…
It could be that my yoga journey was inspired by the television shows of the day. I grew up in Calgary when TV programming included a CTV exercise program called ‘Kareen’s Yoga’, hosted by ever-fabulous Kareen Zebroff. I remember following along in the living room with my mom, and us both wearing one piece (itchy) nylon bodysuits paired with thick, (equally scratchy) leotards, just like D and E below.
In my teens, I had strong interests in music, dance, art, drama, all highlighting my school experiences.
After school, I planned to go on to art college, but unfortunately, I developed a health condition. I became quite ill with an inflammatory disease that would worsen and require multiple surgeries from the ages 18 – 24. I would experience this condition as life altering, yet back in those days, we just got on with life.
After I fully recovered, I trained as an esthetician, specializing in skin care, massage and European spa treatments. 3 years later I moved to Vancouver!
I was living and working in Vancouver for almost a year when the health condition I had at 18 returned. I spent another year recovering from emergency surgeries. By now, I was living on my own in Vancouver. I also started receiving grief and loss counseling as I struggled with depression due to the grim reality and outcomes predicted for my health condition. It was a sad time for me, but I kept going.
The counseling became a safe place for me to begin looking at the more delicate roots of my health problems: a strong theme of unprocessed inter-generational family trauma. I grew up in a home where I witnessed a lot of fear, violence and alcohol abuse, and so my outer world experiences developed from our family history of violence, abuse, along with strong patterns of generational addiction and alcoholism.
I pulled through and as part of my own recovery, I found exercise programs to attend at my local community centre. I returned to the gym and I registered in yoga, not expecting any kind of life changing experience.
Instead, I met an exceptional teacher, Lilian Bianchi who guided me with her vast experience and honed awareness. I was intrigued by Lilian’s interpretations of meditation and yoga philosophy and I began attending sessions as often as possible.
I attended yoga with Lilian for many years and at that time, I had no idea that I would become a teacher, myself. All I knew was that I had landed on a mat and was in a process of recovery. Yoga was interesting and fun and Lilian’s classes were challenging!
Then, in 1995, my impulsive decision to marry my childhood sweetheart and pen pal backfired and I ended up fleeing domestic violence. An uncontested divorce came relatively quickly. I was left mostly in shock, but once the dust settled, I realized I needed more space for my own recovery. Yoga was the direction I was ready to explore.
That summer, I visited Yasodhara Ashram, near Kootenay Bay, BC, and participated in a 10 day workshop that included ‘The Hidden Language of Hatha Yoga’ as taught by Swami Sivananda Radha, the original pioneer of the ‘Divine Light Invocation’ as well as Hidden Language. These would become my first practices, beyond the prayers I grew up with, preparing me for the next step on my healing journey.
I ended up staying on at the ashram work program for about a year after completing the yoga development certification course (YDC) and receiving a Hatha Yoga Teacher’s Certificate.
I returned to Vancouver and went to work in the restaurants. I saved my tips and bought my first harmonium. I had already been subbing for Lilian and I was also hired to teach yoga exercises at the YMCA, both downtown and in South Vancouver.
Lilian introduced me to her dear friend and local teacher, Sandra Sammartino who offered a complete modular teacher certificate course at her Kairos Studio in White Rock, BC. I was intrigued by her very vocal approach of recognizing yoga as a therapy. Her trainings worked with subtle armoring and letting go processes, and with various success, layers of traumas trapped within ourselves were given a safe place to process. Yoga time with Sandra became a healing sanctuary.
Sandra Sammartino was also the original pioneer and heart behind BC’s ‘Yoga Outreach’ programs. My first Outreach teaching experience was 1:1 therapeutic session for a home bound trauma survivor. Another placement was with adult women at a drug and alcohol treatment facility in South Vancouver.
The Yoga Outreach program also sponsored an after school program called “The Avengers”, where I taught children and youth with Autism.
Through Yoga Outreach, Sandra also mentored me to teach men’s yoga to young offenders who were being held at the Willingdon Youth Corrections Centre in Burnaby. Looking back, I’m sure these incarcerated young and vulnerable men were themselves bottling up the effects of unprocessed childhood trauma. They lapped up the yoga and deep relaxation.
Aside from Yoga Outreach, I also led a women’s yoga program at St. Paul’s Eating Disorder Clinic. Although “trauma-informed yoga” would not become a buzz word for more than a decade, we focused on breathing techniques to balance restore the nervous system and again, deep relaxation became the favourite yoga pose.
In 1999, I met a visiting yoga group and became interested in an energy based style of yoga, called Dru Yoga, based out of the UK. Drawn to Dru’s de-traumatization techniques, we still practice Dru energy block release sequences or EBRs in our classes today. I would first complete a 3 year course of Dru Yoga Teacher Training modules in Vancouver BC, Canada. I would also travel to the Dru Yoga Centre in North Wales, UK, visiting London, Scotland, The Netherlands, and India, attending conferences and retreats. I later earned a Dru Sound Healing & Mantra Certificate and a Dru Meditation Teacher’s certificate. More recently, I’ve was certified as a Dru Breath Coach. Dru Yoga is popular in the UK, Europe, Australia and parts of India, and specializes in sound and mantra. Dru Yoga is natural, suitable movement, helpful for processing trauma, it is sensitively incorporated into all of my classes.
In 2001, after an entire summer in North Wales, UK, I took a job at Banyen Books, a local independent “metaphysical” bookstore where I trained as a cashier & eventually became a part-time floor manager. It was an excellent job and I loved being there. In the early 2000’s, yoga (as an industry) began to really expand, too. In the bookstore we’d get a new yoga book, yoga video, or DVD arriving on a near daily basis. The section for yoga books eventually outgrew itself, from one small shelf of the classics, to into an entire room, dedicated to both traditional and western influenced yoga media. Banyen then moved locations to bigger, permanent premises. The yoga section expanded, yet again. I worked part-time, scheduling at the bookstore and then, I’d teach a few weekly yoga classes. The yoga industry (books, studios, and all) continued to grow full to capacity with no signs of slowing down.
Chapter 2: a life long fascination with music, I’ve also always had the courage to sing, although strictly speaking, I’m not “a good singer”,
a great big LOVE led me to begin producing my own music now available for your listening pleasure! (coming soon)
We are grateful to live and work on the unceded, ancestral territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil Waututh Nations.