Janice Bosley

From the first class Janice attended at a YWCA in Winnipeg in 1974, she immediately became aware of how much stress she held in her body and the need to breathe more deeply.  She not only had a very stressful job that involved continual change and learning, but also found personal relationships very stressful and struggled at times with depression. The release provided by the breath work along with the asanas was the hook that put her on the yoga journey.   When she moved to Vancouver in 1978 she researched yoga programs and committed seriously to a more regular yoga practice with the Iyengar Yoga program taught by Maureen Carruthers.  This very active Iyengar yoga community gave her the opportunity to study with excellent, well-trained local teachers and attend weekend workshops with many international yoga masters including Aadil Palkhivala, Felicity Green, Julie Gudmestad, Judith Lasater, Geeta Iyengar, and Dona Holleman. As well as learning yoga asanas, she saw the positive impact that yoga had on their lives.  In 2011 she was introduced to Purna Yoga and subsequently added Savitri’s meditation techniques to her practice.  (Purna Yoga is based on alignment-based asana from the Iyengar lineage; philosophy from the Yoga Sutras and Sri Aurobindo and The Mother; nutrition and lifestyle education; and Savitri’s Heartfull Meditation.) In 2013 she graduated from the 200-hour teacher training with Brad Waites at the College of Purna Yoga Vancouver and in 2015 completed the 500-hour teacher training with Aadil Palkivala and Savitri at the College of Purna Yoga in Bellevue.  Although her initial interest in taking this training was to deepen her own practice, she has been enjoying teaching since 2013 and is finding that the students are wonderful teachers.  The result of this journey to date is that her physical strength and flexibility and mental health are better in her 70’s than they were in her 20’s! In her alignment-based teaching, Janice wants to inspire active seniors to have fun with yoga while retaining their strength, flexibility, balance, and posture in order to age gracefully and live independently as long as possible.   Prior to retiring in 2005, Janice provided technical and project management support for 32 years at IBM and was an instructor at a community college for six years.  Since retiring, she has been assisting with fundraising for a local Rotary club and doing their bookkeeping.  She also enjoys gardening, hiking, and dabbling with photography.