What We Do
Asana at your own pace
Perched on the second floor of a heritage building in Victoria’s Chinatown district, Ashtanga Yoga Victoria is the city’s longest standing yoga community, and the only Victoria yoga studio delivering a full schedule of traditional Ashtanga and the sought-after Mysore Method. Our classical program is supplemented by contemporary vinyasa classes and educational workshops. Our new location (2022) was custom-renovated offering everything you need for practice – a clean, bright and open practice space, sunlight quality lighting, eco-friendly cork floors, showers with purified water, change rooms and gender neutral toilets.
With the most experienced teachers in Victoria and one-on-one guidance, you’ll flow through asanas at your own pace and experience true transformation with every yoga class.
Our Team
Kimber
Kimber
Specialties
Mysore, Vinyasa, Beginners
Kimber is the owner of Ashtanga Yoga Victoria and has a deep love and passion for traditional yoga. She first found yoga through injury. After completing a 6 month hike of the Appalachian Trail in 2007, she was pleasantly surprised that not only could she heal her body with yoga, she also found the same peace she could find while hiking mountains – all through the power of asana.
Kimber completed her teacher training in 2011 in Thailand studying Ashtanga Vinyasa with Larry Schultz. She has spent many years traveling between the US and Canada studying many styles of Vinyasa and teaching both in the US and in Canada.
It wasn’t until Kimber came to Ashtanga Yoga Victoria that she really started feeling passionate about staying true to the Ashtanga lineage and the tradition of the practice. She loves the Mysore method and couldn’t imagine life without it.
Michele
Michele
Specialties
Mysore, Vinyasa, Yin
Michele is a dedicated daily practitioner with over 10 years experience as a teacher. She has immersed herself in the traditional Ashtanga Yoga system for the past 7. Michele’s approach to yoga is rooted in the belief that the practice should be accessible and inclusive for everyone, regardless of age, ability, or background.
Michele believes that yoga is a transformative practice that goes beyond physical fitness, offering a path to self-discovery and spiritual growth. Her classes are characterized by a safe and supportive environment where students are encouraged to explore their own limits and progress at their own pace.
In addition to teaching, Michele attends workshops, festivals, and retreats to continue her education. When Michele is not teaching, she can be found practicing yoga, crafting, and spending time with her family.
With a warm and nurturing presence, Michele welcomes you to the mat and invites you to explore the transformative power of yoga. She is passionate about sharing the benefits of yoga with others and helping students cultivate a lifelong practice that enhances their well-being and connects them to their true nature.
Michele has completed the 20-hour foundational training in Trauma Sensitive Yoga with the Centre for Trauma and Embodiment.
Carolyn
Carolyn
Specialties
Mysore Method, Flow
As a former gymnast, physical health and wellness have always been an integral part of Carolyn’s life. Though a routine practitioner of various styles of yoga, Carolyn was first introduced to Ashtanga Yoga while living in Australia and instantly felt a strong connection to the practice. Since then, her commitment to Ashtanga has been at the forefront of her daily routine.
She has been fortunate enough to live and experience Mysore with many accredited teachers around the world. Including Elena DeMartin in Italy, Tim Miller in California and Zoë Slatoff in New York City where she received her Teacher Training. In 2020, Carolyn returned to Canada and moved to Victoria, BC where she found her AYVic home.
Her approach to teaching remains in the respect of her lineage and yoga philosophy, as well as her own personal experience with Yoga. She believes that Yoga is more than a daily practice but a way of life. Learning how to cope with daily challenges both emotionally and physically on and off the mat. She believes, by finding the stability and commitment in the asana, allows the space to deepen one’s understanding of the core yogic principles that serve as a compass for living a meaningful and purposeful life.
Tiaga Prem
Tiaga Prem
Specialties
Mysore Method, Yoga Philosophy
Tiaga Prem has been practicing and studying yoga for over 25 years, beginning with his first teacher, Bhagavan Das. He explored classical raja yoga meditation with a focus on Buddhist, Vedic, and Yoga Philosophy at the University of Saskatchewan. Motivated by musical passion he traveled as a DJ and immersed in hip hop and punk rock culture. Tiaga’s spiritual exploration remained unwavering, even as he struggled with addiction, which ultimately propelled him deeper into his healing journey.
He found a love and dedication to the yog’asana limb of practice under Tina James, a seasoned Ashtanga practitioner (48 years) with direct lineage to Sri K Pattabhi Jois, Manju Jois, and Derek Ireland.
His journey continued with influential teachers like David Life and Sharon Gannon of Jivamukti Yoga. Inspired by T. Krishnamacharya, he studied extensively with Srivatsa Ramaswami and Father Joe, a devout senior Iyengar teacher. Years of practice led him to study and assist the living master Sri Dharma Mittra in NYC. Tiaga found lasting sobriety and embarked on a life-changing pilgrimage to India through the guidance of another of his primary teachers Guru Singh.
Tiaga co-founded Dharma Temple, a successful shala alongside his partner Sara Jade. Tiaga shares Ashtanga Yoga as a form of research, recovery, and therapy – free from dogma. His holistic approach views all yogas as part of Hatha Yoga, emphasizing healing, humour and spiritual growth. His Mysore program, Life or Death Ashtanga Yoga Club, has flourished in Vancouver, and continues to serve as a dynamic online hub for a global community of yoga students and a vehicle to share his passion for yogic wisdom and lifestyle practices.
Tiaga draws inspiration from nature, diverse movement traditions, yoga scriptures, Bruce Lee & Martial Arts films, Ayurveda, and various wisdom traditions promoting compassion, longevity and devotional discipline.
He is honored to be part of the team at Ashtanga Yoga Victoria. He cherishes his love for yoga, sobriety, music, films, tattoos, and basketball, and shares his life with his partner Sara Jade, their 12-year-old daughter, and their Dachshund Dolly (named after Dolly Parton).
Arielle
Arielle
Specialties
Mysore Method, Fascial Science, Somatics, Biomechanics, Pranayama
Arielle is the former owner of Ashtanga Yoga Victoria. After completing a degree in Exercise Science, Arielle spent 15 years training professional athletes, running fitness centres and leading a yoga school in Asia. She has seen the system help thousands of students and knows it has the ability to make a positive change in people when practiced consistently and intelligently with self-compassion.
Arielle has been blessed with the opportunity to spend significant time of study over 18 years with senior teachers Richard Freeman, Paul Dallaghan and Sri OP Tiwari and has made several trips to Mysore, India, the source of Ashtanga Yoga to practice with Paramaguru R. Sharath Jois. Because of that, her teaching is a clear example of East meets West. She highly regards tradition and respects the roots of practice and the true purpose of yoga as a tool of self-understanding. At the same time, she applies latest scientific understandings of human function and what is practical for the modern student of yoga.
Having been at the respected E-RYT500 level for nearly 15 years, and teaching movement professionals for 20, Arielle teaches continuing education courses for yoga teachers, focusing on yoga anatomy, fascial integration, somatic movement, prenatal yoga, and adjustment techniques. She has a keen interest in the effect of asana on the nervous system, which is the focus of her thesis research at the University of Victoria.
Arielle carries yoga off the mat as a mother of school aged twins.
Jeff
Jeff
Specialties
Authorized Level 2 Teacher, Mysore Method, Yoga Philosophy
Jeff Lichty is the founder of Ashtanga Yoga Victoria and a visiting teacher to the community (as much as we can have him around)! An avid adventurer and thoughtful seeker of truth and wisdom, Jeff spent 16 years as a critical care paramedic all with his own pre-existing existential inclinations that eventually led him to the practice of Ashtanga Yoga.
Jeff studied with Sri K Pattabhi Jois and Sri R Sharath Jois and has traveled to India over 17 times to study directly with the masters of Ashtanga Yoga. Authorized to teach the practice by Guruji and Sharath in 2006, Jeff has been teaching Ashtanga Yoga full-time in Canada and internationally. Former co-founder and director of Ashtanga Yoga Victoria, he recently relocated to Calgary, Canada.
Jeff is approachable and practical in his teachings. He has a real talent for expanding the ordinary definitions of yoga beyond the reach of our current body centric-culture and revealing how these practices powerfully penetrate into all areas of life. He is an excellent resource for lifestyle coaching and personal transformation. His teachings lead us to the pursuit of our highest selves.
Emily
Emily
Specialties
Mysore Assistant, Vinyasa, Beginners
Emily has been practicing yoga for 12 years and found Ashtanga through our very own shala 4 years ago. Recently, Emily studied Ashtanga and Hatha yoga teaching styles at a formal teacher training centre in Indiain early 2024. While she already deeply valued the Mysore system, this experience expanded on her own practice profoundly as a way to invite peace and intention into her daily life – beyond the mat.
Find Emily teaching Vinyasa led classes and assisting in the Mysore room during our Mysore hours so she can continue to learn and go deeper into her own teaching skills; and to ensure all our students get the time and attention they need in the Mysore room.
Paul
Paul
Specialties
Ashtanga Basics, Beginners
Paul loves teaching yoga, but also teaching about yoga. No practice and no medicine
have transformed his life in quite the same way as the yoga he encountered when he
hobbled up the stairs to Ashtanga Yoga Victoria in 2013.
The yoga he learned under the care of his teachers Jeff Lichty and Rachel Reid helped
him through a health crisis. He is deeply grateful for the many gifted teachers AYVic
have brought into his life. Together, they have helped him integrate the intense physical
discipline of Ashtanga yoga into an ongoing search for meaning and purpose. His
approach to yoga is rooted in a respect for its deep connections not just to South Asian
spiritual traditions, but to many other healing modalities around the world.
He completed a 200-hour teacher training at AYVic, has practiced throughout North
America and Europe, and has taken over a dozen workshops with advanced
practitioners from around the world.
When he’s not practicing or teaching at the shala, he is a professor of religious studies
and the director of the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society at UVic
https://www.uvic.ca/research/centres/csrs/about/team/bramadat-paul.php.
At UVic, he teaches and conducts research on those forms of religion and spirituality that end up in broader public debates about health, security, nationalism, and our common future. He recently wrote Yogalands: In Search of Practice on the Mat and in the World (McGill-Queens University Press, 2025). This book is based on a big research project he
conducted on yoga in North American society but also on the kinds of life-changing
experiences people like him, and perhaps people like you, regularly have on yoga mats.
Mia
Mia
Specialties
Ayurveda, Holistic Wellness
Mia is the manager of Ashtanga Yoga Victoria and has been practicing yoga for 17 years, 3 of those years being with Ashtanga Yoga Victoria. With obtaining her Ayurvedic medicine degree from the California College of Ayurveda in the fall of 2019, she also trained as an Herbal Apprentice at Fireweed Farm & School in Brentwood Bay, BC.
Mia’s dedication to living an intentional life filled with holistic ways of being is complimentary to her Primary Series practice. Her love for this traditional practice is evident in her dedication and commitment to helping Kimber in expanding and continuously elevating the Ashtanga Yoga Victoria community.
Rachel
Rachel
Specialties
Ashtanga, Mysore, Advanced
Rachel is a visiting teacher to the Ashtanga Yoga Victoria community and became a dedicated daily practitioner shortly after she was introduced to Ashtanga yoga in 2000. She began teaching the method throughout Victoria in 2001, placing her among the most experienced yoga teachers in the city.
From 2009 to 2015, she was blessed to teach with and be a student of Jeff Lichty and Harmony Slater at AYVic. Always passionate about expanding her practice and her understanding of yoga, Rachel has made five trips to India to study intensively with R. Sharath Jois and Sharmila Desai. In 2017, her intense dedication to the practice resulted in official authorization to teach directly from R. Sharath Jois. In recent years, she has also developed a profound relationship with her mentor and Certified Ashtanga teacher, Angela Jamison.
Rachel’s approach is simultaneously traditional and light-hearted. She takes seriously the classical Ashtanga system, but ensures that all students approach yoga in a way that is safe, accessible, joyful, and appropriate to their own abilities and interests. Her commitment is to showing students that a disciplined practice is both inherently rewarding and also a way to deepen one’s physical and spiritual life.
Why Ashtanga Yoga Victoria?
Find your people
Walk up the stairs of Ashtanga Yoga Victoria, and feel at home: this is your space. We are an inclusive community welcoming all ages, genders, abilities and body types. We foster a safe space where you can practice with the support of your teachers and peers. We listen and guide your every posture. Physically, mentally and spiritually, this is where you’re supported to make magic happen.
