Hi, I’m Chantal 

I’m a Yoga Alliance-certified 500 hour therapeutic yoga teacher with over 1,000 hours of trainings in a wide variety of styles, including Yoga Nidra, trauma-informed, yin, restorative, and vinyasa, and the founder of Naturespacepractice.

I’m a cancer survivor, and have healed myself holistically from a wide range of symptoms that doctors told me weren’t possible to change, and suggested I’d just have to live with. I didn’t accept that, and began on a journey to learn more about health and wellness that has led me to this work!

I was also lucky to really love and find value in what I studied in University: I have a degree in Environmental Studies, with minors in Economics and Technology, Society and the Environment, and I worked in environmental activism, outreach, and fundraising for a few years in my twenties.

Then, I took an adventure to Australia to study in a Master’s program on Social Change and Development, with a specialisation on Community Capacity Building.

Full disclosure: I graduated that program halfway through with a certificate, because I didn’t want to be involved in research, which is the way my profs wanted to me to go!

I also was getting much more into my yoga studies and wellness at that point in my life and decided to focus more on that. It was when I was living in Newcastle, Australia, attending school, that I first encountered Yoga Nidra!

I dove into regular practice and attended a weekend retreat with Yoga Nidra, and I was amazed at how it allowed me to connect so much more deeply with myself and my heart and soul’s desires, and unwind from some unhelpful patterns I was holding on to- as well as to slowly let go of an unhealthy romantic relationship.

For the next couple of years, I started to learn more and more about health and wellness and created a blog called Travel with Celery and doing online writing work for a variety of clients, while travelling in Australia and Asia. Then, a series of events brought me back to Canada - first an incredible career opportunity at a wellness and social justice centre in remote British Columbia, and then, shortly after, the sudden and unexpected death of my best friend.

I found myself back in Ottawa, completely unexpectedly, and deep in a heavy grief. I was lucky to have an amazing community, and knew that I had already developed many tools to support myself through this hard time. I dedicated myself even more to yoga, and did my first Yoga teacher training in Costa Rica in January 2015. It was firmly grounded in principles and practice of ecopsychology, along with Yin, Restorative and Vinyasa yoga. I started to teach and continued learning right away when I got home to Ottawa in a school program for youth at a high school and with individuals in their homes. I have since offered sessions in a wide variety of settings, including for inpatients at Ottawa’s mental health hospital, at yoga studios, community centres, outdoors, in offices and homes, and at the Odawa Native Friendship Centre.

I understand yoga as a practice in awareness of and acceptance of our selves, and offer nourishing, trauma-informed classes that invite you to get to know yourself better, honour your needs and desires, and cultivate self-compassion.

I think a lot of what we need to do to connect more deeply with ourselves in these ways involves a gentle unwinding from our habitual patterns and all the cultural conditioning we’ve taken on.

My approach is focused on releasing tension and balancing your nervous system so you feel safe enough to examine and release beliefs, behaviours, and ways of thinking that don’t allow you to connect to life in a way that feels true for you. My systems-based teachings draw on elements of several yoga lineages learned from practice and teacher trainings around the world, as well as on principles of ecopsychology (fostering a connection to the earth), and have a strong focus on nurturing the nervous system.

I have led Yoga for Sleep, Restorative and Reiki, and Yoga Nidra workshops and supported students in healing from PTSD, anxiety, insomnia, and sciatica in Canada and internationally.

I have also written for Yoga International, Elephant Journal, and other publications about how to apply tools and bring lessons learned through yoga into practice in everyday life.