About Us
Living and working in metropolitan Toronto, we have had an ongoing conversation about how to better address physical discomfort. Especially the discomfort we begin to feel in our body as early as in our 30's or 40's. Through our work with clients and our own bodies, we have found that what has been most helpful is reducing the stiffness that hinders how well we move and rest.
It is that stiffness that accumulates slowly and seems to creep up over the years until it hits us out of nowhere when we are in our 30's or 40's. We have observed - and felt ourselves - that much of this stiffness seems to be a side effect of movements and positions that we do and hold all the time.
We coach you to find and reliably reduce patterns of stiffness in these movements. We also guide you to perform your movements with greater ease to reduce this stiffness even more.
When your body finds ease, you rest more fully. Our philosophy is that your strength at finding ease in your body governs the lifelong sustainability of your strength as a whole, both physical and mental.
In twenty years, we would like to see that a focus on strengthening our ease of motion and rest becomes popular in health and strength programs.
Vanessa’s Story
Of all the courses I have taken and the experiences I have had in my study of the body and mind, there are few that shaped my outlook and the course of my teaching and personal practice as sharply as this one:
5 years into teaching weight training and yoga, I was enrolled in the Teacher Training program at The Yoga Sanctuary in Toronto, Canada. That particular weekend was led by a guest teacher - Menaka Desikachar, wife of T.K.V. Desikachar, of the Krishnamacharya lineage of yoga. Watching this woman in her 60's tell stories, instruct and demonstrate, I was awestruck by her youthfulness. She had greying hair and her skin had clearly been around for a while, but there she was, looking vibrant and, dare I say, young! How she did this: it was the way she moved.
She could get down and up from the ground without pause or grunting. She could turn her head quickly to address a comment made behind her. Her face was mobile and expressive - free to show what she was feeling and free to return to a peaceful neutral face once the feeling was gone. I saw freedom and skill embodied and it was beautiful.
The second defining experience was more personal. Having suffered for 10+ years from multiple head injuries and whiplash, I was looking for tools to not just manage pain but to resolve it. It was during yet another bout of debilitating neck pain that I discovered the work of Anat Baniel, now called “NeuroMovement”, and I was able to enjoy actual resolution of long-held patterns of pain and stiffness. No matter what age we are, nothing can make one feel ‘elderly’ like pain. It was through my introduction to the study of micro-movement and cultivating a felt sense quality of “ease” in motion that I experienced a recovery of a feeling of youthfulness in my body and mind.
This pursuit of ‘range of ease’ and the development of ‘high quality motion’ within movement patterns in daily living (walking, getting up and down, breathing and speaking) and specialized movements (dancing, sports, work-related, singing, etc.) is the heart of my teaching.
It’s not about how big we can make a movement or how fast or how hard. Those come later. It is about the moment that we begin a movement, do we begin it well? Do we begin it in the most efficient way according to our design? Or do we get in our own way? Can we engage with our body and mind in a way that keeps us on a path of increasing freedom and skill?
The answer is an absolute YES! And it is my mission to be an example of this and to coach my clients to develop a state of mind and motion that delivers on this claim, repeatedly and dependably, life-long.
Justin’s Story
One of my strengths is how much I can tense. One of my weaknesses is how much I can relax my tensing.
This started before I was fifteen. I was strong enough at ignoring pain and pushing through the pain I could not ignore until I was in my late twenties. Compared to many other people, this is one of my weaknesses. And a blessing in disguise.
I began practicing yoga from that time. I also completed certifications in Shiatsu, Yoga Teacher training and Personal Trainer certificates and three out of five years of osteopathy. What has influenced me the most is the daily practice that I have engaged in to reduce my pain and stiffness while not giving up on regaining my ability to do the activities I most enjoy.
I have found, in myself and in my clients, that there is a significant amount of tensing that happens from our face to very deep in our hips for which I have been developing and continue to develop yoga stretches. Much of my work involves applying these yoga stretches to address the slowly increasing “ageing” stiffness that results from workout activities and everyday activities. This kind of stiffness seems to get less attention than the more dramatic aches and pains and the stiffness of shoulders, arms, legs and hips.
What keeps me going on this path is my idea that ‘85 could be the new 25’. As utopic as it sounds, I am putting that idea to the test.