My Story

How I got started in yoga, my goals and approach to yoga.

My name is Raymonde Worsfold, I’m the owner of Le Yoga, a yoga practice based in the town of Gibsons on B.C.’s beautiful Sunshine Coast. I made the decision to become a yoga teacher because of an amazing woman I met in December 1995.

It happened at a yoga ashram in the Bahamas. My husband had been a yoga student for approximately one year and he kept telling me how wonderful he felt from his practice. He was more relaxed, could feel his flexibility coming back and I could see that he was enjoying the experience and was feeling much better.

When my husband showed me an ad for a one-week Christmas holiday at an yoga ashram in the Bahamas I decided to go for it mainly because of the sun. I also knew that one of my clients, the president of a major financial institution, had gone there a several times and had enjoyed the experience. I was curious.

Frankly, I was miserable for the first couple of days. The sun that I had looked forward to was not happening. The yoga classes and meals were outside and although I was enjoying the vegetarian food and the friendly people, I was preoccupied with the cold.

Then on day three my beginner group got a new yoga teacher. Although it was obvious that she was an older woman, she demonstrated the yoga postures with such grace and ease that I became very intrigued. She was also the calmest and most serene person I had met in a long time. Later I learned that she was seventy-five years old and had started yoga when she was fifty. I said to myself "I want to be like this when I am seventy-five." At that time I was the ripe old age of 46. She inspired that one could grow old without feeling old or looking old in the conventional sense.

Although she was 75 she was physically more able than people in the class who where half her age including myself. One of the things that I realized after discovering yoga was that I could see myself doing it for the rest of my life and that it would be the best health insurance I could get.

One of my personal goals on that holiday had been to decide on my future career direction. Currently I was a management consultant. I had been travelling all over North America and internationally for most of the last five years. I was enjoying good success in my work and earning a very good income but was getting tired of having no home life and I was neglecting myself physically, emotionally and spiritually. They used to call me the "Energizer Bunny" I just kept going and going and going. But inside I was wondering how long I could keep it up and at a deeper level why I was doing this to myself.

Up to that point I had not given myself the luxury of really thinking about a change. The timing never seemed right. But that yoga week gave me the opportunity for many hours of reflection. I became aware that my inner voice was saying - "become a yoga teacher." Talk about a change in direction! Talk about a quantum leap! On a practical level my mind was saying this is crazy. But my heart was saying go with what feels right. It felt scary and it felt exciting. Most of all it felt right! Although I knew nothing about what was involved in becoming a yoga teacher I had made up my mind by the last day of the program that I was going to make the change and nothing was going to stop me.

The day before our departure I told my husband about my idea and not surprisingly he was completely supportive.

Back home when I announced my decision to my firm, the senior partner tried to dissuade me with every incentive he could think of. Even though I had doubts and was concerned about my drop in income, I managed to maintain my resolve. In the fall of 1996 I enrolled in the two-year yoga teacher - training program at Sheridan College.

The training gave me a solid platform from which to begin what will be a life long learning process. Since then I have deepened my knowledge of yoga by training in various styles including classical Hatha yoga, Ashtanga yoga, YogaKids, and Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy.

There is a quote that I have focused on from time to time in my life and it goes as follows. "Whatever you vividly imagine, ardently desire, sincerely believe, and enthusiastically act upon...must inevitably come to pass." by Paul J. Meyer. In May 2008 my husband and I visited the Sunshine Coast in B.C. to explore the area and see if we could imagine ourselves living there. We did and in September 2008 made the big move from Ontario to our new house in Gibsons, B.C.