LAURA ARPIAINEN

Laura Arpiainen, RYT-500, Vancouver British Columbia, Canada

I have been practicing yoga for well over 15 years and teaching since 2006. I love it!
So far, I have taken over 2000 hours of teacher training and am adding about 50 - 100 hours to that every year.
I am registered with the Yoga Alliance as a RYT-500, and at 2000 hr with the College of Purna Yoga.
All my training has been in the United States, with a teacher from India (Aadil Palkhivala). I am so grateful to have been able to study directly with a true yoga master. My meditation teacher is Aadil's amazing wife, Savitri.
The yoga I teach is called Purna Yoga (Purna means: 'complete'). It is a form of yoga that includes alignment based asana (Iyengar tradition), as well as meditation, yoga philosophy and nutrition and lifestyle studies. It is not only a physical practice.

Outside of my work as an architect, I teach yoga at the False Creek Community Center on Granville Island and at The Artspace in Burnaby. I teach a weekly early morning class at the Fraser Health corporate head office as well.

As a yoga therapist, I give private sessions (particularly therapeutic / restorative yoga), teach yoga workshops (on asana, nutrition, lifestyle and yoga philosophy),  and provide retreats (normally 1-3 days, both in or out of town). One of my restorative specialties is Yoga for Better Sleep.

I have been assistant faculty at the Yoga Journal Conference in Boston and three times at the Vancouver Yoga Conference.  I have been training yoga teachers as part of the College of Purna Yoga, and was also one of the assistant teachers at the Professional Yoga Therapist Training Program in Bellevue Washington in 2013.

I am originally from Helsinki Finland and I speak six languages (Finnish, Swedish, English, French  - all of those well - and Russian and Italian - really badly!)

Please note I am a yoga specialist and do not teach other fitness disciplines.

You can view my website here: www.maitriyoga.ca

I have been doing very enjoyabe and successful Fitness Pro placements as follows:

Dreams Puerto Vallarta (Juan Gigante) April 2013 and February 2014

Dreams Huatulco (Pepe Muller) December 2014

Amber Now Puerto Vallarta (Rulo / Rafael) April 2015