About

Do what makes you come alive. The world needs more people who have come alive.

Welcome!

I invite you to come alive with me. Play with your body with yoga, your mind with meditation, your soul with healthy, delicious vegetarian food. Come alive with yoga to heal your mind, body and soul.  Learn quick and easy tips to get your body tuned up in shape with simple yoga poses you can do anytime. Learn easy ways to meditate to bring a sense of alive and calm centered focus to your daily life. Learn amazing ancient Indian vegetarian cooking tips in a modern Canadian context. Learn to use spice to spice up your life, activate your body and breathe new life into dull food.

My ongoing attraction to yoga started early on, with my childhood upbringing in a southern Indian Brahmin household. Growing up a Tamil girl in the cosmopolitan capital city of Delhi, I tasted the light & subtle flavours of my Southern background and and also sampled the hearty mixes of Northern influences. I hope to share loads of colourful stories in each of my posts. I was also fascinated by gentle living. I wouldn’t want to touch meat even though my parents allowed us the opportunity to taste and sample, I just couldn’t. The idea of cutting up an animal and cooking it was unpalatable. Later as an adult, I realized many health benefits from a veg diet.

Fast forward to my move to Canada. As a young bride in a foreign land, I had an unusually hard time. Lots of experiences that tried me which I will share another time. Life threw so many challenges at me, I kept fielding them one after the other, balancing home life, my working life and all the many difficulties thrown at me with cheer. At some point, something had to give. I ended up with high cholesterol. I left an abusive marriage with no roof over my head, no money, just my positive attitude. I relied on that positivity time and again. I looked around and saw that there wasn’t much of that food anywhere. And started thinking, “What was it that I had developed, that helped me sustain, that helped me believe in myself, that helped me get the job of my dreams, the house of my dreams, the work of my dreams, the passionate teaching of yoga that is my life’s calling?”

The answer is not one, but many tools that I used. This is what I love to share with others. My experience is not unique. there are so many out there who also have major life challenges to face, be it physical trauma or emotional or mental issues. On my website I want to share my experiences with you to inspire you to come alive. So you too can go into that space within you, that quiet, constant, steady, unchanging space that you can always rely on. That will tide you through good times and bad, through happy and sad, through high and low.

Charu Shankar