Susi is the owner and principle instructor of Functional Synergy Inc. She started yoga in 1995 after becoming frustrated with her recurring injuries as a teenage athlete. She credits yoga with getting her back running - with training her breathing, her awareness, her patience, and her body so that within 4 months of starting yoga she was able to run a 10 km race pain free.
During this time, Susi was working as a registered kinesiologist in a multi-disciplinary rehabilitation clinic, treating people with a wide range of acute and chronic injuries. Having experienced the benefits of yoga, she began showing her patients the postures (yoga exercises) and breathing techniques that had helped her. She noticed they were getting better faster. Curious as to how yoga worked in a therapeutic way, she became certified as a yoga instructor and has been teaching since January 1999. In May, 2000 she traveled to India to study with Dr. Karandikar at Kabir Baug, an institute dedicated to teaching Yoga therapy.
Susi believes that many of the problems that we face in our busy lives can be overcome by developing a sense of awareness, and by cultivating a source of relaxation. Yoga enables you to be balanced, connected, and inspired - to feel the flow of body, mind and soul. She uses her training and experience in kinesiology, yoga, iRest (yoga nidra), rehabilitation, ergonomics, and modern mind-body science to develop yoga books, dvds, cds, streaming video and audio clips for people who are stressed, injured or sick.
Susi’s clients come from a variety of backgrounds and levels of fitness but what they share in common is what initially brings them to this site or to one of Susi's workshops or retreats. They initially come because the stress, injury, pain or fatigue they are suffering from is keeping them from attaining their goals and living out the rest of their lives pain free.
Susi’s Guiding Principles:
- Customized for you. The impact of your injury, illness, tightness, or strain is unique to you. Susi’s approach is to understand your background, assess your movement and design a yoga program specific to helping you get well.
- Your body can change. It doesn’t matter how old or how young you are. With the appropriate combination of exercises, movements and breathing techniques, every body can experience an improvement in function and a reduction or elimination of pain.
- Don’t force. The less you force the faster you will get well. I promise. I started teaching people how to get out of pain in 1994. Since then, those who “let go” of forcing are the ones who not only get out of pain the fastest - their strength and stability also improve the quickest.
