Teachers
Our teachers are skilled and passionate humans who have studied the tradition of yoga for many years. Each one has a unique expression of this art form, and live their yoga in a truly inspiring way. If you have questions of what to expect in any of our teachers’ classes, please reach out to annex@mykula.ca for more information.
Olivia Hill (she/her)
Olivia is the Owner and Director of Kula Yoga, but her journey started years before. Olivia has a background in Hatha Yoga (Yoga Alliance Certified), Pilates (Pilates Alliance Certified), and a BAH in Philosophy and Eastern Religion. Her personal journey with Yoga has taught her how to help heal her scoliosis (curvature of the spine) with holistic movement. More than a physical practice, Yoga is deeply rooted in philosophical wisdom, which is explored during class.
Olivia’s classes are alignment focused and designed to move the body and quiet the mind; there are deep stretches, strength building sequences, and often an optional guided meditation at the end. Her classes can be challenging and rewarding. Her wish is that you carry the benefits of your practice off the mat with you; so if you trust her to take you on a sweaty journey, your body and mind will thank you after.
Olivia believes that yoga can be practiced by everyone, and she wants to provide a welcoming space in her classes where students feel free to try new things without comparison to others.
Olivia Hill is one of the asana instrctors of Kula’s 200hr YTT faculty.
Tracy dePass (she/her)
Tracy quickly adopted a daily practice and was fortunate to learn various styles of yoga with several wonderful instructors before finding Ashtanga. In 2014 she met her teacher, Emma O’Neill, Mysore Toronto who continues to help Tracy to deepen her practice and understanding of asana, yoga principles, meditation, and mindful movement.
Ever a curious student, Tracy has had a committed Mysore style practice and incorporates hand balancing, strength and flexibility training, meditation, and laughter in her daily routine.
Under her teacher’s guidance, Tracy completed a two-year Ashtanga yoga apprenticeship with Mysore Toronto and became a registered teacher after completing her 200-hr teacher training. She continues to practice, learn, and assist at Mysore Toronto.
Tracy is passionate about community-building and sharing both her practice and learnings from her mat. She strives to make her classes inspiring and accessible to all and enjoys helping students better connect with their bodies and cultivate a steady and focused mind.
Tracy is one of the asana teachers in Kula’s 200 hr YTT program.
Linseed Toner-Calmusky (she/her)
Linseed’s class environment is 2SLGBTQIA+ positive with over 13 years of teaching experience. Her dad taught her yoga growing up and when he died in 2005, she sought out her first formal training through the Yandara Institute. Since then she has completed 750+ hours of training with local and international teachers.
Linseed prioritizes a consent based practice and tries to make her classes as accessible as possible. She often leaves space for free movement to playfully listen to the body before inviting it into more formal structure. She emphasizes the importance of listening to the more subtle parts within us and around us as a practice on and off the mat. She is currently studying to become a Registered Herbalist.
Kiran Sohal (she/her)
Kiran is Kula’s YTT Philosophy & History Teacher. She has been a full-time Yoga teacher since 2001 conducting classes in Hatha, Vinyasa, Core, Restorative, Pilates, and Meditation. Her personal approach to teaching is rooted in a passion for creative movement, mindfulness, and personal transformation. Kiran’s extensive training includes teacher certifications from the Kripalu Yoga Centre (US), Sri Sri Yoga (Germany), 500-hour Advanced Yoga Studies at the Downward Dog Studio (Canada), Relax and Renew Trainer (Judith Hanson Lasater), and Stott Pilates Matwork. As a volunteer teacher, Kiran taught Youth Empowerment courses with the Art of Living Foundation, an internationally recognized humanitarian and educational organization known for its powerful breathing techniques, meditation, and wisdom teachings. Her academic background includes a BA (University of Western Ontario) and MA (University of Toronto) focusing primarily on South Asian Religion. She currently lectures on Yoga Philosophy for various teacher trainings across the GTA, including Kula!
Kiran Sohal is the philosophy and history teacher in Kula’s 200hr YTT program.
Laurelle Fullan (she/her)
Laurelle is a yoga and meditation teacher, while also a lifelong student of yoga, meditation and astrology practices. Laurelle considers herself a forever student, living, learning and exploring through this journey of life. You can almost always find her enrolled in new movement, meditation or astrology courses.
Her hope is to inspire those who may find yoga intimidating. Her classes place emphasis on how the poses feel in your body, as opposed to how they look. Each class is accompanied with a curated, optional playlist, and offers an opportunity for breath awareness and exploration of movement. She aspires to encourage self-acceptance and personal growth through movement, meditation and astrology offerings. With a regular movement and meditation practice she believes you can begin to integrate what you learn on the mat into your everyday life.
Laurelle first started practicing yoga when she was 15 years old, eventually leading her to complete her 200-hour yoga teacher training with Zuna Yoga in Bali. Those three weeks of intensive Yoga Teacher Training forever changed her life and allowed her to come back home to herself. Not a year after returning from training she was diagnosed with Endometriosis. The next two years would test her in ways she would have never been able to cope with without the practice of yoga and meditation. While experiencing chronic pain for the first time, she was able to find comfort in movement and stillness.
Bryn Jennings (they/she)
Bryn Jennings (they/she) is a yoga practitioner and instructor based in Toronto, Canada. Bryn has been practicing and studying yoga since 2015. They have completed nearly 500 hours of teaching certifications in various modalities, as well as countless workshops and trainings in subjects ranging from anatomy to philosophy to the intersections of yoga and social justice.
While asana, pranayama and chant all play a significant role in their practice, jnana yoga (the “path of knowledge”) is what truly calls to their heart and leads them deeper on the yogic path. Bryn is currently engaged in a deep study of the Yoga Sutras under the guidance of their primary teacher, Karin Carlson, a process that will take about five years to complete.
Prior to teaching yoga, Bryn worked as a youth worker in youth shelters and drop-in centres. From this experience they bring a strong foundation in anti-oppression and trauma-informed practice, as well as a deep concern for equity and justice. They believe it is our responsibility as yoga practitioners to dismantle systems of oppression that keep people unwell. While there are no easy answers, yoga offers us the tools to show up, do the work, and hold the complexity of it all.
Ada Dhali (she/her)
Since 2016 Ada has taken on yoga as a committed practice and obtained her first 200hr certified training in 2017. Since then she has taken other trainings such as Restorative Yoga and Pilates.
Her style can vary, but is based upon a foundation of focus, alignment, strength, grace and curiosity.
Outside of yoga she currently enjoys copious times for reading, stretching, preparing and eating food, napping, and creating.
*Ada is taking a leave of absence to become an RMT.
Geeta Wadehra (she/her)
Geeta grew up in a traditional Indian home where the yoga lifestyle and practice was a natural way of living. After taking a restorative weekend session with her sister in 2014, she took her first yoga teacher training with an online session for restorative yoga. At the time it was just to go deeper into her own practice without knowing that she would one day be teaching full time. But by 2017, Geeta traveled to Costa Rica to complete her 200 hour YTT and then her 50 hour Yin certification. Also trained in shamanic breathwork, and plant medicine facilitation, Geeta is passionate about living her practice both on and off the mat and tries to share the both the mindful and physical aspects of yoga with her students. Paying extra attention to the body/mind/spirit connection Geeta strives to lead inclusive classes that leave her students feeling supported, strong, recharged and peaceful.
Fernanda Cano (she/her)
Learning and teaching is what moves Nanda. Mindfulness, Meditation, Sound Healing, and Yoga have been the centre of her life for over 20 years. She now works at Kula as our Mediation Teacher.
Nanda ran her own yoga studio in Brazil for 11 years. She has experience leading yoga & meditation teacher training courses and dozens of retreats!
Teaching full time since 1999 made her embrace life and people in a more profound, compassionate and resourceful way. Her passion for Meditation & Mindfulness pushed her to study, practice more and teach in Brazil, US and India, Nepal and China, Japan and now Canada. She has accomplished over 2k h REY Teacher Training, 300h in Yoga Therapy/Ayurveda and more than 1k h of training and 12 years studying and teaching Meditation Fundamentals and Mindfulness all over the world.
She’s happy when she’s teaching as that’s also when she learns the most about herself and practice. Come share the space she holds at our studio and let’s keep growing together!
Fernanda (Nanda) is the creator and teacher of Kula’s 100hr + 20hr Buddhist Meditation Teacher Training programs.
Nya Daley (she/her)
Nya was first introduced to Yoga after moving back to Toronto in 2013. No stranger to movement Nya played college basketball in the United States for 4 years and has been active and involved in sports her entire life.
Drawing on her experience with high intensity athletics Nya incorporates fitness infused elements in her yoga classes. She hopes to provide students with a soulful, energy charged environment that is accessible and welcoming to both new and experienced yogis. Nya’s intention is to support students in finding the balance between strength and ease on and off their mats. When she is not teaching yoga, Nya is a Service Coordinator at Surrey Place and pursuing her Master of Social Work degree at the University of Windsor.
Nya is the Anti-Oppresive & Sequencing teacher in Kula’s 200hr YTT program.
Andrea Bogdanovic (she/her)
Andrea completed her 200 RYT training here in Toronto and teaches mostly Vinyasa flows and gentle/restorative yoga. Her classes emphasize creative sequences and fluid movements aligned with breath. She views yoga as a way to dig deeper and gain more insight into our being and the world around us. She believes the ability to create space within the body, that’s free from current life obstacles is a gift.
Andrea is Kula’s current assistant manager.
Laura Hache (she/her)
Laura is a yoga and meditation practitioner and guide. She loves to encourage others to get curious about what’s subtle and what’s felt and known yet unseen. She is a certified yoga instructor, with over 500 hours of training under her belt. Her offerings include hatha and vinyasa-style yoga, meditation guidance, and restorative yoga.
Laura is led by a passion to support her student’s journeys of self-discovery and exploration of mind-body connection, to uncover wisdom and insights to bring off the mat and into their everyday lives. Her classes offer an opportunity for deep personal exploration through body and mind, and she prioritizes creating a safe and welcoming space that encourages play and curiosity. Laura believes that the body is a resource of wisdom and care, and that we can learn to listen closer through mindful movement to celebrate pleasure, comfort, ease. Because joy is not made to be a crumb.
In addition to facilitating yoga and meditation, she is also a full-time beekeeper and environmental educator and lives a life fueled by her curiosity of the natural world, which is a common thread and theme throughout her offerings.
Patricia McPherson (she/her)
Patricia is the creator and teacher of Kula’s 40hr Yoga Nidra Teacher Training program.
Anne Chan (she/her)
Anne is a yoga teacher and a lifelong student of yoga, meditation and science based movement practices. Her classes emphasize how poses feel in the body while integrating novel movements that challenge the body and mind. At the heart of her teaching is a passion to celebrate and honour all bodies and individual abilities. Anne took her first yoga class in 2003 and her yoga journey led her to complete her 200-hour yoga teacher training through Kula Yoga Studio in 2018. She has since completed a certification in Inclusive, Trauma-Informed & Anti-Oppressive yoga teacher training, over 50-hours of yin yoga teacher training and a 20-hour children’s yoga teacher training. Anne is also a certified pain-science informed yoga teacher and a Functional Range Conditioning Mobility Specialist (FRC®ms). Learn more about Anne here.
Tarik El Assal (he/his)
Tarik is a yoga instructor (RYT®200) from Morocco who began practicing yoga in Sept 2013 and started teaching classes 6 years later immediately after completing his 200hr intensive teacher training in Mallorca, Spain with Green Yoga International.
Tarik empowers his students a yoga practice that helps them gain awareness the body and its sensations, reinforce the body-mind connection and grow physically and mentally. His classes are rather “spicy” yet safe and inclusive of beginners and intermediate students with pose modifications. In his thematic yoga classes, Tarik incorporates breathwork, meditation, asana, alignment, yoga philosophy and science to make the class a holistic experience where students learn more about themselves. He enjoys leading classes that blend the vigorous style of Vinyasa/Power yoga with Yin yoga, the fountain of youth.
Tarik is fascinated by the human potential and he aims to guide his students unlock theirs one breath at a time with the right mindset. During his previous athletic journey, Tarik discovered his untapped potential after participating in many triathlons
(Sprint, Olympic, Half-Ironman Relay 70.3), ice swimming competition, open-water swimming marathons of 30km, climbing Mount Toubkal at 4,167 m and living like a modern monk at a Vipassana meditation retreat. Although these sporting events came with a collection of injuries and tendonitis that affected his health, it allowed him to gain body awareness and learn more about nutrition, anatomy, recovery, healing and injury prevention. Prior to moving to Toronto, Tarik completed his first 10-day Vipassana Meditation course as taught by S.N. Goenka in Marrakech, Morocco. This silent meditation retreat consisted of living like a modern monk, meditating about 10h per day without any form of visual, verbal or sensory contact with other meditators. After such a deep introspective experience, Tarik’s life was impacted so profoundly that he adopted Vipassana as his main meditation practice and incorporated some aspects of it into his yoga classes.
The lessons learned from all these experiences, books and a continuous yoga education and practice fuel his yoga fire and inspire him to design yoga classes where students stretch their physical and mental comfort zones.
Shaneeka James is an all levels yoga instructor who received her 250 hour certification in early 2020. Shaneeka encourages students to stay present on the mat with breath-work, affirmations & strength building asanas. Shaneeka strives to make her classes accessible to all and reminds her students that showing up is the reward.
Susie Saliola (she/her)
Through yoga, Susie cultivates the connection between mind, breath, and body and believes that a challenging, judgement-free, and playful practice can show each yogi what they’re truly capable of, both on and off the mat. In an effort to find a balance between strength and ease, her classes often involve creative flows, strength building sequences, and inward reflection. Her hope is to create a positive space and wishes everyone leave their mats feeling connected, grounded, and strong in body and mind.
