The Inner Practice-Stories of Healing from the Yoga mat into Life

Cassie Doucette didn’t just find yoga—she felt it. From her very first class, something shifted. The connection between breath and movement offered a new way of being—one that traditional addictions counselling hadn’t fully provided. Over the past 11 years as co-owner of The Loft Yoga Studio, Cassie has cultivated more than a yoga space—she’s built a sanctuary for authenticity in a community where emotions are often left unspoken. In this episode, Cassie shares how yoga helped her move throug...

Healing rarely fits inside a ten-minute appointment or a prescription pad. In this episode of The Inner Practice, we sit down with Dr. Jill Bailey, a physician whose career has evolved from the front lines of small-town family medicine to the deeply emotional terrain of mental health, addiction medicine, and mindfulness. After fourteen years of walking alongside patients through their most ordinary and extraordinary days, Jill felt called to look beneath the illness to the humanity of the per...

In this episode of The Inner Practice, host Jackie Vandertuin sits down with Dr. Amy Wheeler—yoga therapist, educator, former varsity athlete, and sports psychologist—to explore what it truly means to live the practices we teach. Amy’s path began in high-performance sport at the University of Northern Iowa, where she developed a deep understanding of discipline, resilience, and the intelligence of the body. Her journey evolved into sports psychology, working with elite athletes, and later int...

In this episode of The Inner Practice, host Jackie Vandertuin sits down with Stacie da Ponte for a thoughtful and expansive conversation on spirituality, yoga philosophy, humanism, and the courage to question inherited belief systems. Raised Roman Catholic and surrounded by cultural and religious diversity, Stacie shares a pivotal moment after 9/11 that prompted her to step away from dogma and begin a lifelong journey of inquiry. Through existentialism, philosophy, and consciousness studies, ...

In this second conversation with Cailea Davis, The Inner Practice moves deeper into the lived experience of PTSD within a family system. Together, we explore what it means to witness trauma up close, especially through the lens of of someone who lives with a caregiver who is experiencing PTSD. Building on our previous episode, Cailea reflects on her father’s life as a Chief Paramedic and the subtle, often misunderstood ways PTSD showed up at home. We talk about recognizing trauma witho...

In this episode of The Inner Practice, we speak with Cailea Davis, a yoga teacher, multidimensional healer whose journey through grief reshaped her life, her work, and her understanding of healing. Raised in a family devoted to caring for others, Cailea felt called to support people from a young age. But everything changed in 2017 when she lost her father to suicide. That loss sent her on a deeply personal journey inward—one that challenged her identity, her capacity to give, and her relation...

In this episode, athletic therapist and yoga teacher Amanda Halls shares her powerful journey of navigating chronic illness and rediscovering her identity through yoga, Pranayama, and self-compassion. Amanda first encountered yoga at fourteen, learning from a family who lived their yoga—teaching her early lessons about spirituality, connection, and embodied wisdom. Her path led her into Athletic Therapy, where she worked with high-performance athletes, Field Hockey Canada, box lacrosse teams,...

In this episode, Mel Grime shares a courageous and deeply personal story of growing up in England with an alcoholic father, navigating a culture of “stiff upper lip” expectations, and learning to survive by becoming the good, people-pleasing girl. A move to Australia gave her room to breathe—to drop the mask, build a life with her husband, and reconnect with who she was beneath the conditioning. But a later move to Canada brought new challenges: losing her career role, lacking community, and ...

This episode was recorded on November 20, 2025, at the beautiful Bodhi Tree Yoga Resort in Nosara, Costa Rica, during a week immersed in practice, nature, and community. Join Sabine and Michele as they share a heartfelt, honest conversation about life before yoga, life after yoga, and the transformational power of going on a yoga retreat. They explore how yoga shifted their outlook, their daily habits, and their ability to find calm and clarity in the middle of real-life challenges. Together,...

In this episode, I’m joined by Mark Macleod—CEO coach, musician, and devoted practitioner of Kundalini yoga. Mark offers a thoughtful and deeply philosophical conversation about how yoga influences both his personal life and his work coaching CEOs of multi-billion-dollar companies. Mark shares how he first discovered yoga, how Kundalini practices transformed his worldview, and why learning to listen inward is one of the most powerful tools for leaders navigating high-pressure environments. Th...

In this episode, I speak with Shelley Wishart—a lifelong entrepreneur, passionate mover, and the heart behind GoYoga. Shelley shares her inspiring journey through business ownership and the challenges that come with high-stakes decision-making. We dive into how her meditation practice became a powerful tool for staying grounded during a potentially difficult business transaction, transforming stress and uncertainty into clarity, comfort, and calm. Shelley discusses how mindfulness supported h...

In this episode, I read The Gift of the Magi, a story that has stayed with me since the first time I heard it. My husband and I had just gotten married. We were living in our first little house, stretched thin on one income while I was in graduate school, and trying to make Christmas meaningful without much money to spare. Hearing this story in that season of our lives was like being handed a quiet truth: Christmas was never really about the gifts. It was about the gift of being together. The...

In today’s episode, I’m joined by Tracy Armstrong, a retired school administrator and yoga teacher from Orangeville, Ontario, who shares a powerful and deeply honest story of anxiety, insomnia, perfectionism, eating disorder recovery, and alcoholism. Tracy opens up about growing up with chronic anxiety and the pressure to appear “perfect,” and how these early experiences gradually manifested into disordered eating and later addiction. With vulnerability and clarity, Tracy reflects on the mome...