Our Founder's Story

The Birth Of DoYogaWithMe

In 2008, I started DoYogaWithMe for a very personal reason: I wanted to see if there was a way to spread the gift of yoga to everyone. I had just graduated from McGill with a degree in Environmental Biology and was working as a massage therapist and yoga teacher in Vancouver. Back then, the only online yoga resource that existed was myyogaonline.com, which was co-founded by a colleague at the studio where I taught. She and I frequently discussed the trials and tribulations of creating video during the early years of YouTube. Streaming video was incredibly challenging! As I saw her paid-access website grow, I was driven to create something different - a global yoga resource that was free for everyone.

The Early Years

The photo above shows Jeff and I filming on a beach, but as recent as 2015, you could find me at the local park setting up my cameras all by myself. Because I was alone, and only had a few hundred dollars in my name, I went to the one person I felt I could depend on to help me get it off the ground: my brother, Sean, who was a recent IT graduate. He excitedly said ‘yes’ and built our first website.

After moving to Victoria from Vancouver, I was lucky to find myself in an amazing yoga community full of passionate teachers and students. As many of you know, Fiji was one of the first to join the team, and over the following years I brought in a couple dozen more to join the vision. During that time, our traffic kept increasing, as did the gratitude from so many who loved our mission. Today, DoYogaWithMe is the only online yoga resource that features 500+ classes that are completely free. 

Our Teachers

One aspect that brings me great joy are the friendships that have developed naturally from this labor of love. DoYogaWithMe has brought together many incredible people and this tiny community has had an immeasurable, positive impact on my life.
When choosing teachers, my credo from the beginning was to find people who are real, approachable, caring and highly experienced and skilled. Of those, being able to develop a connection with your students is key. There is a magic that happens when you connect with a teacher who is able to reach you on an intimate level and encourage you to live fully. We are all here to be transparent and supportive and, in our small way, inspirational.

Our Community

The support that a community provides is at the core of our value system and business model. We do our best to encourage you to be curious about your life and be open to sharing your story and helping others. I am so proud of the growth of our community and am encouraged when I read through class comments and forum discussions. We all want to feel loved and supported and I feel that’s really happening here!

The Present

One of our biggest challenges is to maintain the values that the business was founded as we grow. My original mission and values remain as the framework from which our team operates. DoYogaWithMe is a social-purpose, community driven global yoga resource that operates based on the needs of our planet, its people and our profit. And it’s difficult for me to express how much this means to me, and how much it means to our community. We continue to be driven by your needs and we hope that, above all else, we can support you as you also grow, learn and adapt.

If you have any questions about my founder’s journey, send me an email through our Contact Us page.