0:04  
Hi, I'm Gabriela. And I'm one of the owners at Mocha Yoga Etobicoke. I started my first time on the mat was sometime in 2003. I was in Australia as an exchange student. And at that time, it was a very challenging time in my life, and I was struggling with an eating disorder and so some mental health issues with that. So I came back to Toronto and told my mom, I was struggling with some things and got some, some help. But what I fell into was the yoga practice and I was motivated by physical reasons, thinking, Oh, I'm going to sweat and this is going to be good for me, you know, weight wise. But in the end, what I ended up learning was that it helped transform how I talk to myself, in my mind.

1:01  
My name is John Fortayn, and I am an owner as well as one of the teachers here at Power Yoga Canada. And my practice started from as a physical compliment to training for an Iron Man. And as I started to do my practice, on a more regular basis, I found that it went from being a quote, physical practice into one, which shifted all of my other training mentally. So if I have, if I have cues around me emotional cues that, that at one point in my past may have triggered me, through my practice, I'm aware, I'm more aware as those start to arise and be able to being able to manage them more proactively rather than reactively.

1:49  
Hi, I'm Donna sellers. And I offer therapeutic yoga, and I had been been doing been in the corporate world for a long, long time. And it was extremely stressful, very painful on an emotional level. Because I felt that there was always a disconnect that I was going through the motion of going through, going to work, getting a paycheck, putting food on the table helping to put food on the table for for my kids. But there was always a disconnect. I didn't want to be there. I and so when  I finally reached a stage in my life, where I really started to ask whether I wanted to die like this, whether this way, you know if I died tomorrow? Is this what I wanted to be doing? And the answer was a resounding no.

2:54  
My name is Laura McLean, and I'm both a therapeutic yoga teacher and a registered yoga teacher. I was actually diagnosed with an autoimmune disease called rheumatoid arthritis and I couldn't do a lot of physical activities, so I started with chair yoga, when I started and realized I could do a lot more than I expected I could do, especially the fact that it didn't have to get down on the floor. I felt really, really good. The meditation and breathing techniques also helped me a lot. Because when you're diagnosed with something like that, often your self esteem goes, you wonder where am I going to be in five years.

3:36  
In society today, we are so caught up in the need to look good, the need to be good, the need to go fast. The need to we're working, we're working to fit this this industrialized, commercialized society, that yoga is a practice in your yoga mat size of 24 by 72 inches just allows you to turn inside and let go of needing to be a certain way at all.

4:04  
When you start to move with awareness, something called interoception. So you're bringing your awareness into the body into what's happening in your body in your mind. When you start to bring that awareness and practice with that awareness, it actually changes the nervous system it has it's a very beneficial practice if you're suffering from anxiety or depression, if you have chronic pain, because in those states, the nervous system is ramped up. It's like it gets super excited. And so how do you bring that down? Well, yoga, encompassing breathwork, encompassing meditation, and the movement as well all helped to bring the nervous system back into balance.

4:51  
We all struggle with something and we can all beat ourselves up and talk negatively to ourselves. The negative self talk regardless of if you're struggling with that particular disorder or not, is common. And so what the practice did is over time, is that that voice started to become kinder and kinder. And so when I'm kinder to myself, I'm not going to be mean to myself for you know, doing x, y, and z.