CHRISTOPHER GILLETT

I got into yoga because friends told me I needed it. I figured they meant I needed to get more flexible.

From the first vinyasa class, I loved it, but for some reason I kept drifting away. My favourite teacher would move on, I'd get bored, tell myself I could live without it, and move on to the next thing that caught my attention. Sooner or later, after a few days away from yoga, I'd start missing it, big time. Eventually I'd find myself back on the mat, feeling like I arrived home.

My practice started in Vancouver, in the middle of a life that otherwise looked like one of reasonable success: good job, accumulating credentials, buying the things I wanted, dating, traveling. Unlike all those things that I thought made me feel and look good, yoga was one thing that truly helped me in ways that I didn't quite understand at first. By the time I landed in London, yoga had evolved into more than a personal practice. I started teaching, and was fortunate to be mentored by some of the top teachers in the city picking up my favourite elements of their style, and ultimately finding my own. My time in the UK was capped off with a Master's in Entrepreneurship from UCL, proof, if nothing else, that the two paths could coexist.

What started as a way to get flexible and blow off stress turned into something much deeper: breaking mental and physical limits I didn't know I had, ending up in poses I never imagined my body could do. The further I went, the more I understood it was never about achieving the pose. It's about the journey, and staying in the moment. Yoga became a tool for presence, for moving through uncomfortable thoughts and emotions instead of away from them, and the other powerful techniques I picked up along the way became tools for something bigger: Self-discovery. Not calm for its own sake, but the capacity to meet resistance deliberately instead of managing it away.

I'm a 200-hour certified Vinyasa and Yin teacher with trainings in Rocket Yoga, 4Beat Yoga, and practices rooted in Dharma Yoga, traditions built as much on tradition and consistency as on progressive movement. I teach on YouTube and studio classes in Toronto. I'm also a CFA charterholder, which has nothing to do with yoga and everything to do with why I take precision seriously.