The Story of Three Winds...

Three Winds is an outpouring of pretty much everything I have come in contact with through the years so far --- from an ecclectic mixture of studies, to multitudes of people and experiences... My sense of what I hope to share and make available to people through Three Winds is both an offering and invitation to play with words like essence, foundation, fundamentals, as well as resonance, intent, heart, Source, life... These are words that are the inquiries that fuel the work at Three Winds... I have been fortunate to have found other like-mindeds to work and play with as students, teachers, friends and colleagues.

Below I have attempted to weave a bit of the fabric that makes up Three Winds... There are integral threads in this tapestry that are missing --- many of the people with whom I have wandered as fellow-explorers, colleagues, and intense personal companions... While my words convey the general directions and surface of what has happened through the years to bring Three Winds into being, these persons hold the deeper stories, and have witnessed and been a major part of the weaving of this tapestry. I hold both gratitude and respect for all they have supported, created and made possible.

So, here you find me and the development of Three Winds...

At 17 years old I began to study astrophysics and also to meditate. Somehow, these felt like old friends who belonged together. At 21 and 22, with the birth of my sons, I became interested in herbalism and yoga. While I still pursued studies in sciences (physics, ecology), my career chose me when my yoga teacher asked me to sub for her one class. I was nervous, horrible at teaching, and loved it. It took that first year of trial-by-fire to find my heart and feet as a teacher and settle into what I have been doing ever since. A year and a half into teaching, I took a teacher-training (somewhat ass-backward, but so seems to be my path in life...).

In 1998, I was approached by several students to offer yoga teacher training. I requested 6 months to develop something, and in the fall of 1998, offered the first teacher training program. Half way through the program, I began to realise the responsibility I had really taken on. I spent a month contemplating and inquiring into what we were doing --- what was the essence of what we were studying and exploring together? This was the birth of Yanumoja Yoga, which has had its own history both as a style of yoga and an association of students and teachers.

In the meantime, I was working with clients individually. Again, this work found me --- mostly it grew out of students who wanted to work more intensely and directly with things they were encountering in class --- whether it was physical, emotional or spiritual issues. I was offering therapeutic yoga and a mixture of other modalities I had studied, but felt called to work more "hands-on" with clients --- I just didn't know what that might look like.

One day, while looking through a Kripalu course calendar, I came across a description of a Thai massage course being offered by Kam Thye Chow. I looked it up on the internet, and discovered that Kam Thye actually lived in Montreal, very close to where I am. I had never recieved a Thai massage, but knew in my heart this is exactly what I had been seeking. Off to Montreal I went, somewhat ignorant of what I was getting into.

Kam Thye's teaching carried me deeply into a practice that has become an integral part of my spiritual expression --- the communing with another through touch and heart, the deep relatedness with life... Interwoven with the coming together of all the other studies and practices I had encountered so far, Thai massage also become an integral part of my work life.

It was also through encountering Kam Thye that I grew an interest in studying Ayurveda, which brought me to both divergent and harmonising places in my life, professionally and personally.

I struggled deeply with Ayurveda --- despite studies and travels, there was something missing internally in the connection of Ayurveda and Thai massage. Certainly Ayurveda took on a completely different flavour and depth when I was in India --- living more fully in the encounters with people, their struggles and their stories, than it did in the text books and theory...

Upon return to home, I knew there was also something to be found in understanding Thai massage and Ayurveda in context to Thai culture. I had already been approached by students and begun to offer course work for Thai massage training. But to be more effective and to be true to this tradition, I wanted to offer something more than what I had put together at that time. This is where I approached Tao Mountain and Pierce Salguera.

When I first spoke with Pierce, it was over the phone. His easy manner and his sincere and diligent interest in preserving the integrity of traditional Thai massage and medicine as a system in and of itself was compelling. I signed up for the teacher training last fall (2005).

Completing this training has filled in holes I didn't know were there in my work and teaching of Thai massage. It feels like lakes of knowledge have now been connected by flowing rivers, where I had been previously struggling to dig canals with a small shovel. My relationship with Thai massage has opened and expanded exponentially, and I also feel like I am truly just at the beginning of this journey and exploration. I am ever grateful to Pierce --- both for his diligent work and studies in this field, as well as his genuine and easeful presence as a teacher and fellow-explorer...

In university I wrote a thesis exploring traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and Western science and developing guidelines for how to "manage" co-mangement policy... Bottom line, it became clear that the integrity of each system (as defined by the peoples who develop/live it) needed to be maintained and supported while also recognising that each could complement the other in the management of natural resources on shared land.

It is this philosophy, combined with lived-inquiries into spirit and essence that form the basis of Three Winds and the systems we explore.