Stephanie Trepanier

I first made contact with yoga in my early 20’s. I had a few enlightening classes, but in most occasions the pace was too fast for me, leaving me out of breath, and the lack of prop use and variation cues left me feeling like my stiff body was inadequate for yoga. Overall the experience was often dysregulating to my nervous system, though I didn’t understand that concept at the time. I took classes here and there over the years, but I never stuck with it, preferring to practice Pilates instead.

By my mid-20s I started working in film festivals and distribution. I was very passionate about the work, but it also left me with very little time and energy to put towards my physical wellbeing. It didn’t really matter to me at the time, as my film career was my main point of focus. In 2008 I founded my own boutique film distribution company, Evokative Films, which gave me the gift of doing my own thing, releasing films I felt were underseen and travelling the world through a multitude of film festivals. Its distribution operations only lasted a few years, the business being hard to succeed in for small independent companies. It felt like a failure, but I had little time to dwell on it, as my work with the Fantasia Film Festival grew in importance, founding Frontières, an international co-production market within the event. A few years later I decided to focus on genre film project development in Los Angeles, until a dream job in film distribution brought me back to Montreal. By that point I was at the end of my ‘30s, and overwork, stress and maladaptive coping mechanisms were starting to take a real toll. Symptoms of burn-out were getting more and more prevalent, triggering fibromyalgia flare-ups that became debilitating.

I first experienced symptoms of Fibromyalgia in childhood and then as a teenager and young adult, but the illness was little-known at the time and no links were made between the episodes. It’s only once I really got sick that I connected the dots and understood what I had been dealing with. By that point I was in an extreme state of exhaustion, in constant pain with a myriad of symptoms, living in a very stiff body and a depressed mind. I had to stop working and went back to California to heal. What I thought would just take a 6-months sabbatical ended up taking many years, with small improvements followed by setbacks. It took me time to realize that I had been living in a state of chronic nervous system dysregulation for most of my life, resulting in my current illness.

Almost 3 years ago I felt a calling to get back to yoga, and enrolled in Teacher Training at One Down Dog. Through the training, I learned of the variations I could take and the props to use to make the practice feasible for my body. I learned the styles of yoga that were beneficial to my conditions and got more confident adopting the slower pace that was fitting for me. The regular practice helped me feel better in my body & mind and I have kept improving since. I now wish to share what I have learned with others who are dealing with burn-out, chronic illness and mental health challenges, to hopefully help bring some relief to conditions that are only becoming more widespread.

Evokative

Evocative: “Bringing strong images, memories, or feelings to mind.” “Making you remember or imagine something pleasant.” “Evoking or tending to evoke an especially emotional response.”

16 years after I founded Evokative Films (on an Earth Rat year, just as Pluto entered industrious Capricorn), I am now repurposing the name as Evokative Yoga (on a Wood Dragon year, just as Pluto entered revolutionary Aquarius). This is a symbol of rebirth, of taking something that was part of me but felt like a failure and applying it in a novel direction that aims to be healthier and more sustainable, for myself and others. It is also fitting to my approach to yoga, where theming is key and the processing of feelings is an important component.

Yoga Teacher Trainings

200hrs Yoga Teacher Training – One Down Dog

55hrs Myofascial Release – Yoga Medicine

40hrs Accessible Yoga – Accessible Yoga School

30hrs Traditional Chinese Medicine – Yoga Medicine

20hrs Yoga for Chronic Illness – Accessible Yoga School

20hrs Sequencing with Purpose – Yoga Medicine

18hrs Engaged Yin Yoga – One Down Dog

18hrs Restorative Yoga – One Down Dog

18hrs Mindfulness – One Down Dog

18hrs Yoga Nidra – One Down Dog

18hrs Pranayama & Energetic Anatomy – One Down Dog

18hrs Adjustments & Advanced Asana – One Down Dog

18hrs Refining Cues & Purposeful Sequencing – One Down Dog

18hrs Understanding Common Conditions & Pain – One Down Dog

18hrs Pranayama – Yoga Medicine

15hrs Somatic Movement – Soma Yoga Institute

12hrs Sequencing for the Nervous System - Subtle Yoga

10hrs Therapeutic Private – Archetype Yoga