Karma
Karma loves to laugh and those around her sense her inner joy. She powerfully embraces communicating and integrating her passion for lifelong learning with inner growth, family, travel and adventure.
Karma was born in England and came to Canada as a little girl. This move was her first great adventure and life-changing event – crossing an ocean, then a continent to settle in the first big forest she had ever experienced and she never lost the wonder of it. After some time, the family moved to Vancouver where she completed her schooling. Karma began her post-secondary studies in Victoria and continued taking courses wherever she was, throughout her life. As a young adult, Karma moved to Yukon thereby magnifying her sense of adventure. In this awe-inspiring land, immersed in wonderfully ancient yet evolving culture, she married and started a family. While in Yukon, Karma met Rangjung Rigpe Dorje, the 16th Karmapa, head of the Karma Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. This immeasurable impact expanded her worldview, which developed her inner life and outer behavior. Later on, Karma moved to the Queen City of the Kootenays, where she remarried and raised a large family. Karma loved her life in the mountain community where she and her growing family had the freedom to play, garden, have horses and dogs and to be involved in sports, arts and travel. It was while traveling during one of these trips to what Karma calls “The Southlands”, that she sustained a spinal cord injury. It drastically changed her life’s outward trajectory as it had paralyzed her. Since there was no adequately accessible housing available in the Kootenays, Karma had to establish a living situation in the city, reinventing her life and creating a community. As soon as physically able to negotiate with her altered mobility, she set up an apartment, gathered with new friends and embarked on new endeavors. She went sailing, and kayaking and learned to drive an adapted vehicle. It thrilled her to venture up the mountain to ski. Savoring the feel and sounds of winter, once again as she negotiated a black diamond run – this time, on a sit-ski. Early in her rehabilitation, Karma began practicing yoga and with invaluable encouragement from her yoga therapist, Bobbie, and shortly afterward embarked on a two-year Yoga Teacher Training Program with the ARKAYA School of Yoga. She has been teaching now for two years. It was through the experience with ARKAYA and the relationship with her beloved Yogacharini, Maitreyi, that the film Karma: Song of the Breath came about. It is Karma’s fond wish that the message and practice of yoga be recognized as the truly integrative modality that it is.