After Kathryn Downton founded Lifesong Yoga, Fredericton's first yoga and wellness centre, and spent years teaching classes, she felt a change was needed.

Now she teaches one-on-one classes from her private studio on the Nashwaak River and is also experienced in prenatal yoga.

She recently spoke to reporter Molly Cormier about the ancient traditions of yoga, her views on running a yoga studio in a city like Fredericton, and the rewards she has received from teaching her students.

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Q: If you weren't doing this what would be your chosen career?

A: So far, Lifesong Yoga just keeps evolving. Ten years ago I was teaching pretty standard yoga classes. Then I opened Fredericton's first yoga and wellness centre in order to be able to work with an interdisciplinary holistic team on a larger scale.

Then, when our lease was pulled, it was an opportunity to move Lifesong home. I have a beautiful retreat space on the Nashwaak.

This year I became a full-time social work student at St. Thomas University. I realized I wanted to be able to work more within institutionalized settings, especially in palliative care/hospice work. It's not like I've had a traditional career plan. I think about this kind of evolution as responding to "call", or living on purpose.

If nothing else, it keeps things interesting.

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Q: Tell me about what brought you to the world of yoga and holistic healing?

A: I got really sick. Throughout my 20s, I was strong and flexible and tried many different traditions of postural practice. Nothing really stuck.

Strangely enough, my work at that time took me twice to Nepal and India, and while I was working on literacy issues with local teachers, I was soaking in these ancient knowledge systems without even knowing it.

It's too bad that in the West, yoga has become so identified with only the physical postures. Its roots, and its potential for us Westerners, lie in its holistic wisdom. It's meant to be a whole life philosophy.

The physical postures, it's true, are absolutely necessary to maintain health throughout our lives regardless of our life stage. The ancients saw them as essential daily hygiene.

In my early 30s, I got really sick. What you get in most yoga classes would not have helped me at that time. I could not have done it. But I knew because of my other exposure there was something else.

I was lucky enough to be living in Québec where the tradition I now teach, Viniyoga, is well-established. It's sometimes referred to as stage and age-appropriate yoga. Or now you'll see words like restorative, or contemplative. They are all ways of saying it's more than just postures.

I was told it would be 12 pills a day for me for life, with serious side effects as "normal."

At 32, that doesn't sound like much of the future. I began to study and practice seriously and as I got better and learned more, I began to teach.

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Q: Is it difficult to run a yoga studio or complementary wellness practice in Fredericton?

A: Yes and no. On a beautiful sunny day, it's me and the retired folks out on the Nashwaak walking trail during business hours because I have that flexibility.

But financially, it can be frustrating. The truth is, it can be another one of those, "it doesn't matter if you're not making enough money to live" jobs for women, the idea being you're doing it because you care so much.

That sounds cynical but sometimes it would get me down in the beginning when someone with a regular pay cheque and benefits and a good living wants a discount because they'll be absent a class or two! People don't understand that your expenses are all year and your activities must pay for that.

But when I took Lifesong home, it helped to diversify my income and freed me to get off the class treadmill, to focus on the things I loved about these studies in the first place, like the depth trainings, and the mind/body counselling. So there are definitely good things too.

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Q: Would it be different in other cities?

A: I think it's even harder in other cities. Yoga studios run on a business model - that's ethically tricky.

Owners don't make money unless they are, to some extent, exploiting young teachers, so you get teachers literally running from place to place in a city getting $20 a class for teaching inner peace and wellness!

Think about that. They would have to teach 20 classes a week to make $400. That's slave labour and it's happening right now in Montréal and Toronto and Calgary.

So far, I'm the only one offering advanced trainings. I only take eight students maximum per year.

This year, they come from three Maritime provinces. I'm careful not to flood the local market so to speak. And the tradition I teach values lifelong study. It doesn't tend to attract people who want a quick certificate.

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Q: What are you favourite parts of your job? Any favourite memories?

A: When I meet people through yoga, they are saying yes to change. The favourite part of my job is that it's very real. You are walking with people at important moments in their life, and that's an incredible privilege.

Sometimes I'll get a note from someone who sat in the back row of the class and said nothing for 10 weeks. They tell me they were hanging on by their fingernails amidst the loss of a divorce or a family member or a diagnosis and the words I spoke in the class were deeply meaningful to them. That is a good day.

Or I remember my first counselling client. He had suffered a breakdown, complete nervous exhaustion and was unable to even get out of bed. We worked together for two years. It was deeply moving to see these ancient but simple tools and techniques assist someone in transforming their situation.

Last I heard from him he had completed the last six months of work required to retire with a full pension and was planning a very ambitious trip to Italy!

And of course there are the births that I have attended.

To accompany a human being into the world - now that's amazing! Coincidently, when I began to read books on death and dying, I found that it's not uncommon for hospice workers to have had experiences with both birth and death, the two great transitions.

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Q: What do you do for fun?

A: Yeah, I know, death and dying can sound a bit grim. But it's the same for any intensive "people" work. You've got to get your head and your heart out of your work.

I love to walk. My dogs have been a source of great joy and comedy for me. I was at a kitchen party recently where we sang our hearts out. It was great!

Novels, a good chick flick, good food, dinner with a friend, a getaway to Grand Manaan - to me this is all the big Yoga.

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Q: What would you say to people who are unfamiliar with yoga?

A: There has been tremendous progress even in the 10 years I've lived in Fredericton in people's familiarity and comfort level with health solutions outside the medical model.

I think most people know these days that a pill may take away one symptom, but it will almost certainly leave three more.

So the openness is more there to problem-solve with the resources we were born with - the healing potential of the body, the incredible resourcefulness and resilience of the mind, not to mention what might be the spiritual agenda in any given life question or challenge.

I am so pleased to see physicians and counsellors and physiotherapists referring people to these ancient wellness systems.

The work still to be done is to take yoga out of the small box called exercise, out of the studio, and to begin to apply it more widely and deeply as the ancient knowledge system it is.