all the ways life brought me here..

get to know krystal

I believe our passions and purpose emerge from the many chapters life writes for us. Every experience, every detour, every heartbreak and unexpected beginning shapes the story we eventually become.

I’m grateful you’re here, and I’d love to share a little of mine.

My journey has been shaped by three themes that continue to weave through my life and work: self-worth, mental health, and yoga.

learning that i was worthy all along

In my early twenties, I felt a deep need to prove my worth.

I believed that in order to be valued, heard, and seen, I had to succeed. And so I looked outside of myself for the things I thought would finally make me feel enough: education, career, achievement, acceptance, respect, financial stability.

I didn’t have the grades in high school to apply for the program I initially wanted, a Bachelor’s in Nursing, so I decided to work my way in by taking additional courses.

I applied four times.

Each time brought a whirlwind of excitement, followed by disappointment and a deep sense of unworthiness. After the fourth rejection, I decided to try one last time.

On my fifth attempt, I was accepted.

Everyone around me told me this was the right path. But somewhere deep down, I knew it wasn’t.

I was also in an unhealthy relationship and struggling to make it through nursing school. I studied for hours, pushed myself beyond my limits, and even drove to exams on almost no sleep because some part of me believed I had to keep proving myself.

I was living in a constant tug-of-war between perfectionism and self-sabotage. I wanted so badly to succeed, while simultaneously struggling to believe I was capable of doing so.

By the end of my second year, I was held back due to circumstances I felt were deeply unfair. I fought the decision and eventually took my case to the union, but it didn’t work out in my favour.

I tried to return.

But my anxiety had become overwhelming.

Eventually, I quit.

At the time, it felt like my greatest failure.

For years, I carried shame, guilt, and embarrassment around that chapter of my life. I thought quitting meant I had failed.

I didn’t yet understand that sometimes, what feels like the end of the road is actually the beginning of finding your own.

the years of searching

For a long time, I felt lost.

I cleaned houses. I went back to school. I explored different careers and pursued programs that I thought might finally give me what I was looking for: something short, something successful, something respected, something that would make me feel like I had arrived.

Eventually, I enrolled in the Health and Safety program at BCIT and graduated.

And yet, I still felt unfulfilled.

Over the years, I held countless jobs and explored many different fields of study that ultimately led somewhere unexpected: nowhere I had planned, but eventually, exactly where I needed to be.

Looking back now, I don’t see those years as wasted.

I see them as stepping stones.

Every job, every relationship, every wrong turn, every person I met along the way gave me something. Each experience helped shape the woman I am today.

And for that, I wouldn’t change the path.

the one thing that stayed

I’ve always had a creative side.

As a little girl, I loved to write poetry, draw, dance, and sing. I also found a lot of comfort in solitude. It was where I felt safest.

Throughout my childhood, teenage years, and into adulthood, there were many periods when I felt disconnected from myself and the world around me. I learned to shut down, retreat inward, and survive by disconnecting from what felt too painful or overwhelming.

Anxiety followed me through much of my life.

I developed habits that helped me cope in the moment, but ultimately pulled me further away from myself. I struggled with self-abandonment, unhealthy relationships, and feeling disconnected from my own needs, desires, and truth.

And through all of it, there was one constant:

yoga.

For more than 15 years, yoga has been the one place I could return to.

It connected me to the playful, creative, innocent part of myself that still existed underneath everything. The part of me that simply wanted to feel safe, loved, and free to be herself.

Yoga gave me a place to feel.

A place to breathe.

A place to listen.

A place to come home to myself.

It held space for me when nothing and no one else could — sometimes not even me.

It supported me through insomnia and helped me move away from relying on sleeping pills. It gave me tools to navigate anxiety and the pain of an emotionally abusive relationship. It taught me how to sit with uncomfortable emotions rather than constantly running from them.

Most importantly, it showed me that I could come back.

Again and again.

And each time, a little more whole.

the unexpected path to yoga therapy

In February 2020, I travelled to Goa, India, to complete my yoga teacher training.

The timing was almost comical.

I had originally planned to complete my training in Canada and had already put down a deposit. But after experiencing one of the most difficult chapters of my adult life, I cancelled those plans, booked a trip to India, and decided I needed to get away and find my centre again.

A few weeks later, the world shut down.

Looking back, I can see how perfectly imperfect the timing was.

And it was in India that I discovered Yoga Therapy.

What began as a personal practice slowly became a calling.

My years of searching, struggling, studying, healing, and learning began to make sense in a completely different way.

Today, I’m a certified Yoga Therapist, bringing together years of personal practice, professional training, self-study, and lived experience.

I am still a student.

Still learning.

Still unfolding.

And I think that’s part of the beauty of this work.

and then, life asked me to slow down

Fast forward to March 2025.

For the month leading up to my diagnosis, I knew something in my body wasn’t right.

It started subtly: blurry and red eyes, difficulty focusing, then weakness, tremors, itchy skin, and petechiae appearing across my chest.

I wondered if I was experiencing the effects of long COVID. I tried to make sense of what was happening, but eventually I knew I needed answers.

I went for bloodwork.

First came a diagnosis of thyrotoxicosis.

A few days later, I was diagnosed with Graves’ disease, an autoimmune condition affecting the thyroid.

The timing felt almost surreal because my father had been diagnosed with the same condition the year before.

I had been one of his primary caregivers — taking him to appointments, supporting him through the uncertainty, and walking alongside him through the frightening process of getting a diagnosis. At one point, his symptoms had even been mistaken for cancer. He experienced significant eye involvement from Graves’, while thankfully, I did not.

But beyond the physical similarities, the experience brought up something much deeper for me.

My relationship with my father had always carried challenges around communication, expressing needs, and saying what was truly on my heart.

In some spiritual traditions, the throat and thyroid are symbolically connected with communication and self-expression. Whether or not we look at that through a spiritual or simply personal lens, the timing stopped me in my tracks.

Because I knew I had more listening to do.

More speaking up to do.

More honesty to offer myself.

I had spent so much of my life disconnecting from my needs, overriding my intuition, and trying to become who I thought I needed to be.

And suddenly, my body was asking me to stop.

To listen.

To slow down.

To pay attention.

this is the work i’m here to do

Since then, I’ve continued to look at my life through a different lens.

I’ve become more honest about what I need. More willing to use my voice. More committed to living in alignment with what feels true rather than what simply looks good from the outside.

And this has brought me back to what I now believe is my soul’s work:

helping people reconnect with themselves.

The people I feel most called to support are those who have become disconnected from their own truth.

Those who are tired.

Overstimulated.

Always doing.

Always thinking.

Always caring for everyone else.

Those who have forgotten what it feels like to feel good in their own mind and body.

I want to help people learn what I have had to learn myself:

That slowing down is not falling behind.

That rest is not something we have to earn.

That our bodies are constantly communicating with us.

That healing doesn’t always mean fixing ourselves.

Sometimes, it means finally listening.

My work now weaves together yoga therapy, Yoga Nidra, breathwork, nervous system support, nature, rest, movement, and the wisdom of the body — creating space for people to come back to themselves.

Because I have lived the disconnection.

I have lived the searching.

I have lived the anxiety, the self-abandonment, the striving, the burnout, and the feeling of not knowing which direction to go.

And I have also experienced what it feels like to slowly find my way home.

That is why I am here.

Not because I have everything figured out.

But because I know what it is to be lost — and I know how powerful it can be to have someone gently remind you of the way back.

After all those years of trying to prove my worth through achievements, careers, education, and external validation, I finally understand:

I was never something that needed to be proven.

I was worthy all along.