Samantha Farruggio - Founder

I had just finished my last year as a part-time student at the National Ballet of Canada and was set to begin my performance dance program at George Brown College, when a choreographer I was working with had suggested I try yoga. They suggested it to me to improve my flexibility, little did I know this would change my entire career path and way of life.

I would love to tell a story of love at first practice with yoga, but this wasn’t the case. It presented a change in philosophy to what I was accustomed to working within the competitive/fasted pace world of dance and for that reason wasn’t hooked immediately. As I continued to put in the work by taking more classes in different yoga disciplines I realized that the yogi lifestyle was right for me and enrolled myself in a teacher training course. I chose to do my teacher training in Ashtanga Yoga at downward dog yoga center. Funny enough Ashtanga yoga was the discipline I had taken my very first yoga class.

As I learned more about the Ashtanga practice, I couldn’t help but think that this was the perfect transition for me going from ballet to yoga. What I loved most about it was that I could follow a set sequence and know that there were endless possibilities to each posture and yet still room for creativity of movement to add to my practice.

 So if yoga and dance show so many similarities then how could I pick one over the other you might ask. As much as I loved dance and wanted it to be my life, It had been slowly wearing me down mentally and physically for many years. I knew that I needed to make a change to be healthier and maybe that’s why I kept coming back to yoga in the first place. This much healthier yoga way of life was necessary to break up the mentally and emotionally crippling trajectory that I was taking. I soon found myself coming to the conclusion that Yoga was a new path for me. My body and my mind needed this change.

As yoga started to slowly replace dance it awoke some real serious issues that I had going on in my life that I was just completely ignoring or had repressed away. It begins as a sickening feeling within yourself, one that you think maybe I should stop or else I’m going to be sick. However, before I knew it all these issues had surfaced and I found myself with only one course of action. I would need to confront these emotions.

 Today, that is what yoga continues to do for me. It keeps me honest with myself. It allows me to feel again. It gives me to courage to listen to my heart and work through things instead of pushing everything below the surface. This practice fills me with that same fire dance did years ago. It is truly a gift to be able to share that passion with so many people now.

 I strive to make my classes a safe and creative place for people to find themselves within this practice as I have. Pushing ourselves physically, mentally, & spiritually to our edge.