Love of Yoga Leads to Launch of Living Free Canada

Yoga enthusiast Blair Kaplan shows off her warrior pose

About five years ago I fell in love with yoga.

I was living in Winnipeg and working with lululemon athletica, and complimentary yoga classes were at my fingertips. I tried a class here and there, but it wasn’t until I was presented with a yoga challenge that I felt the true benefits of the practise.

Moksha Yoga Winnipeg had just opened their doors and they were having a 30-day Moksha Yoga Challenge. I am always up for a good challenge, so I decided I would test out yoga to see if all the hoopla was true. I wondered if it would actually make me feel less stressed, happier and healthier. And so it began.

A Yoga Challenge

I managed to complete 29 classes in 30 days, and by the end of the month, there was no doubt – I had fallen for yoga.

At the time, I was finishing university, working 30 hours a week and interning while still maintaining a social life. It should have been the most stressful time of my life, but it wasn’t. I was in great shape, I was able to think rationally without stress and I felt great!

Launching Living Free

Several years later I found myself living in Vancouver. I no longer had access to free yoga, and it became an expensive extracurricular activity. I looked for a resource that would allow me to find out what was happening in the community so that I could sample some new yoga classes, but I came to the conclusion that such a resource didn’t exist.

So I made it exist. It was like another yoga challenge, only this time it involved launching a business. Thus was born Living Free Canada – a company I started to give people the chance to fall in love with yoga – or to discover other activities they might love. It began as an elite coupon book for the health and wellness industry and eventually evolved into an online community resource supported by elite coupons.

Anyone can sign up for a membership and download coupons for their favourite activities. Or you can use it to try something new, like Moksha yoga!

Since embarking on this new adventure, I’ve fallen in love with business ownership. And the best part is, I still get to practice yoga.

Blair Kaplan is the owner and CEO of Living Free Canada, Canada’s online health and wellness community which features elite coupons from companies that reflect a fun and healthy lifestyle. She began writing at an early age with a column in the Winnipeg Parent Newsmagazine and has been published in various publications around North America. She fell in love with blogging in May 2009. E-mail Blair.