About Shauna
I'm a trauma-informed yoga mentor, Buddhist practitioner, and holistic guide with over two decades of experience working with women across Canada. My practice was built not just from training — but from living.
I've navigated complex trauma as a survivor of crime. I've sat with cancer, and found my way through it. I've practiced yoga since 1996, began teaching in 2003, and I haven't stopped since — because I've seen what it does for people when it's offered with real intention and real care.
What I bring to every session is not just a certification list. It's twenty-plus years of showing up for my own healing, and channeling everything I learned into showing up for yours.
My Story
I came to yoga in 1996 — not as a trend, but as a lifeline. Before yoga, I was a personal fitness trainer specializing in women's weight training. I understood the body as something to strengthen, to push, to perform. Then yoga arrived and showed me something else entirely — a practice that could hold grief, process trauma, and restore what no amount of physical training could reach. I began formal teacher training in 2003 and have been teaching ever since.
As a survivor of crime navigating complex trauma, all my tools were need to navigate the physiological changes within i witnessed and didnt feel i had control of. Top down or talk therapy only gave me a looping of the trauma. I needed more movement and shared authentic experience. I needed to feel safe in my own body again. Trauma Informed Yoga teacher training gave me this and altered my teaching style. Yoga, Buddhist practice, breathwork, and meditation are the path back to myself.
When I was navigating cancer, I found myself leading Maitri meditation at the Cancer Wellness Centre in Montreal — offering to others the same practices that were sustaining me. That experience confirmed something I had always sensed: healing is not something one person does to another. It is something we witness, hold space for, and practice together.
I am also an artist. In my darkest times, expressive art became a container for what words couldn't reach — which is why art therapy is woven into the Maitri Collective approach. I am an introvert who lives rurally and quietly, and it is precisely because of that grounded, private life that I now teach virtually — so that women anywhere in Canada can access this work without having to travel to find it.
My Buddhist practice since 1996 shapes everything — the stillness, the compassion, awareness of the potential in a moment. Maitri means loving kindness. It is the foundation of every session I offer.
