Bio

Christine started her yoga practice in 1980 while attending the school of Architecture at UofT. After receiving her degree, Christine practiced architecture, worked on films and television shows and designed a CDRom game with a friend. After fifteen years of yoga practice and study with her guru, she decided to leave her conventional life behind and venture full time into the world of yoga. Christine’s extensive teacher training includes courses with Richard Freeman in Colorado and Downward Dog Toronto, in addition to countless workshops throughout North America with the likes of Pattabhi Jois, Chuck and Maty, David Swenson, Mira Metha, Sharon Gannon and David Life, and many, many others.

Christine’s core expertise is in the practice of Ashtanga Vinyasa yoga, but her commitment is always to further her knowledge and expertise across the entire range of yogic expression. Practically speaking, her appreciation of the relationship between alignment and breath allows her to treat each posture as a moving meditation. She is also certified in Thai Yoga Massage, which adds to her extensive knowledge of yoga postures and the body. All these skills, combined with her experience as a yoga student and teacher, give Christine a unique perspective on how we relate to our bodies and help her create a dynamic blend of body, mind and spirit in a yoga class.

Christine believes that Eastern wisdom and approaches to yoga can be best brought to our culture by understanding how to distill its insights into the lexicon of the West. An enormous aid to Christine in facilitating this process is the combination of her three-years of training as a Transpersonal Therapist and her ongoing meditation practice.

Ultimately, Christine’s goal is to pass down the knowledge of liberation and awareness taught by her teachers and the Great Masters, yogic and non-yogic. For her, Hatha Yoga is about cultivating a quality of mind and presence that extends past the mat and the yoga studio into everyday life and the community. With Shama-Bhakti Yoga Centre, it is Christine's intent to create a safe, loving and lighthearted environment where the self can be explored within the practice.

Her far-reaching experience of the practice, her deep knowledge of the influence of yogic postures on the body, and her great compassion as a teacher, make both her classes and her massages a wonderful experience.