I’ve often been asked how I got into yoga. Here’s my story.

When I attended my first yoga class in the early 1990s at Ancaster, Ontario’s The Discovery Centre, it felt like a homecoming. Prior to discovering yoga, I had been attracted to jazz dancing, particularly the stretching exercises one would do before learning a particular choreography. While the performance aspect of dance was something that always felt unattainable, moving my body to music always made me feel alive and connected to something deep within myself. But Yoga was so much more than the simple joy of moving the body. It felt more like a sacred activity, like prayer through movement, as if connecting to something within myself was essentially connecting with the Divine. When Lynn Storey, the owner of The Discovery Centre, moved to Barbados, her departure left a void, which I sought to fill by taking ballet and Pilates classes, both of which I thoroughly enjoyed. Still, neither activity enabled me to access the core of my being as yoga had done.

About three years later I followed up on a newspaper article I had read a year earlier by attending an Ashtanga class at The Yoga Centre of Burlington. The moment I walked into the studio, I was once again stopped in my tracks by an overwhelming feeling of having come home to myself. A month later I enrolled in their 500-hour Teacher Training Program from which I graduated in 2003. The Yoga Centre introduced me to the world of Iyengar Yoga, and gave me a strong foundation in both practices. I owe a debt of gratitude to my teachers Nesta Falladown, Susan McClelland and Francois Raoult of Open Sky Yoga in Rochester, for being major sources of influence and wisdom. During this period I also developed a deep curiosity about the phenomenon of Jewish Yoga, a subject on which I wrote a major paper as part of my teacher training.

In 2006 I discovered Anusara yoga®, a powerful hatha yoga system created by John Friend, that unifies a Tantric philosophy of intrinsic Goodness with Universal Principles of Alignment™. Applying these principles had a profound impact on my own practice and my desire to share my discovery with my students motivated me to immerse myself in this brilliant yoga system. In August of 2009 I acquired the official designation as an Anusara-Inspired™ yoga teacher, and I feel blessed to be part of a global community of like-minded individuals who have been inspired and called forth by this beautiful practice.

I believe that, among its many benefits, Yoga, at its essence, can help to ground us in our true nature and help us to greet whatever circumstances the universe presents to us with equanimity. I feel privileged to be in the position of sharing the joys of this practice with you.

Namaste,

Wendy