Our Yoga Teachers | STRETCH Yoga Vancouver
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Choosing a teacher is the first step on your yoga journey, and we want it to be a gentle one. STRETCH is dedicated to creating an inclusive, non-judgmental, and safe space for every student.

Whether you are an absolute beginner who has never been on a mat or a seasoned practitioner, our instructors are here to guide you with patience, clear alignment cues, and endless encouragement.

  • Risto Duggan

    Risto came to yoga on his 40th birthday with a body that years of semi-professional, multi-sport athletics had left broken. His first class changed everything. Twenty years on, he is a “physical” power yoga teacher with a positive vibe and a growing reputation for hands-on adjustments that will change your practice. Expect focused cueing, clean…

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  • Boyd Thomson

    Boyd is STRETCH’s co-founder: entrepreneur, engineer, yogi, nerd. He came to yoga to loosen up as an athlete and, decades later, is still surprised by how reliably it hands him inspiration and takes the edge off everyday stress. He is convinced it has made him a better cyclist and a better person, in roughly that…

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  • Devon French

    Devon has been practising AcroYoga since 2012. The skills, tricks and sheer physicality drew him in; the connection, community and communication are what kept him. Over more than a decade of circus arts training, much of it side by side with Slava, the practice has become his way of opening his mind to what is…

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    Devon French basing Millissa in AcroYoga
  • Millissa Martin

    Millissa moves through the world as both artist and collaborator, guided by curiosity, connection and a deep love of movement. Her AcroYoga practice goes back years, and she has taught it at STRETCH since our very first Acro class in 2017. For her it is less about achieving shapes and more about what happens between…

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    Millissa Martin
  • Slava

    Slava has always been driven by one question: what is the human body actually capable of? Chasing the answer, he trained in Capoeira with Brazilian masters, practised acrobatics across Europe, performed in the circus, studied with Shaolin monks in China and dove 120 feet deep in Mexico to test the limits of human physiology. He…

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  • Ryan Stevenson

    Ryan‘s yoga journey began in 2005, and he has been teaching in one form or another since 2011. Practice has been his way into self-study, community, meaningful travel and staying healthy in body, mind and spirit. He is especially grateful for the years from 2012 to 2020 serving a grassroots non-profit yoga community as both…

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  • Kristi Albernaz

    Kristi tried yoga as a teenager but truly found it in her twenties, living in Dubai and flying long-haul as a flight attendant. A remarkable studio and a circle of international teachers took her in, and she fell hard for Jivamukti and Ashtanga Vinyasa. She completed her 200-hour training in Goa, then spent six years…

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  • Robert Wilson-Smith

    Robert flirted with yoga in the 1980s and 90s, but it was the Ashtanga Vinyasa method in 2003 that finally got him. Everything changed after that: his career, his body, his diet. He has since studied with teachers from the Sivananda, Iyengar, Anusara, Vijnana and Yin lineages, fasted, sat in silence and danced under the…

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  • Cindy Gu

    Cindy spent years as an engineer and product designer before she left the corporate world to follow a more honest path. What followed was a long stretch of travel, ocean living and surfing across Asia and Central America, and a teaching style shaped by the water: fluid, present, and unafraid of letting go. She has…

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  • Dustin Vieler

    Dustin came to yoga as a welder with a sore neck and back, looking for relief. One class was enough to hook him, and more than twelve years later he still practises every day. He teaches the Classic 84, a traditional Hatha sequence built on breath work, sun salutations and a steady base of postures…

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    Dustin Vieler
  • Suze Mercado

    Suze is a movement instructor and artist whose classes are built on creative flow and thoughtful sequencing. She began her training at Bambu Hot Yoga in Nelson, BC in 2018 and has been chasing classes around the world ever since, picking up influences from yoga, fitness and dance and weaving them into a style that…

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Check out our schedule, or start with our New Student Intro Offer to try classes with different teachers!