You understand your patterns. Your body is still running them.
Knowing why you brace, push through, override yourself: that's a beginning, not the finish. The pattern doesn't live in the explanation. It lives in the tissue, and the tissue doesn't take notes.
Thirty years reading bodies under threat, on the mat and on the table. Yoga therapy, hands-on work, martial arts. We start with what you're carrying, and where it's holding on..
No.01
Where the body is right now
You are still showing up. Still delivering. Still the person everyone counts on.
Your nervous system learned, early and well, how to keep you functional under pressure. It built a survival pattern. When that pattern stopped feeling safe to live in, you retreated to your mind. The body kept sending signals. You kept moving faster than they could land. The gap has been widening ever since.
The braced jaw
Effort that never clocks out — the last muscle to believe the deadline has passed.
The shallow breath
Air taken from the top of the chest — a body still deciding whether it’s safe to exhale.
The far-off gaze
Attention that has left the room. Useful once; expensive as a default setting.
The heavy chest
Weight with no clear source. Grief and exhaustion arrive wearing the same coat.
No.02
How my work moves
Your brain has a theory about what’s wrong. Your body has been sending the data for years.
The technique is not the work. My work uses the body to reveal what the mind has protected, the mind to complete what the body has been holding, and the nervous system as the bridge between them. Most approaches run one direction. Mine moves in all 3 directions at once:
Unfinished business
Completing the survival response the body started and never finished.
Structural body
Where the breath stops, the jaw guards, the shoulders compensate — read as evidence, not faults.
Metacognitive rewiring
You watch yourself think — not the thoughts, the thinking — and the watching changes what’s possible.
The four trapped alarms
Fight
brace, push,
defend
Flight
rush, escape,
never land
Freeze
shut down,
go numb
Fawn
please, appease,
disappear
The survival response the body started — and never finished.
A world-ranked martial artist. Thirty years of clinical practice. The same body, read from both sides of a threat — in one room.
Not therapy. Not bodywork. Not coaching.
Not a clipboard. A correction, in the moment.
Mark came to me after eight months of physio. What changed, he said, was that nothing was handed to him. No sheet of three exercises to do at home. New movement patterns, started and corrected on the spot, in his body, in the room.
Rebuilding a pattern takes guidance. Left alone, the clever brain steers you straight back to what’s familiar.
The offer
The Body Brief
The method is the practice. The Body Brief is your first reading.
A private, one-on-one session. In person in Vancouver, BC — or remote by video. Two hours. One practitioner who has spent thirty years learning to read what the body is actually saying.
Not a consultation. Not a protocol. Not a program. A reading — of what your nervous system is running, followed by targeted somatic work at the exact level where the pattern lives.
The toolkit is deep — Somatic Experiencing, shiatsu, craniosacral work, breathwork, yoga therapy — but the toolkit is not the method. Your body presents; the session answers.
I listen to more than your answers: the way your body shifts, where it braces, what it protects. Then targeted work at the level where the pattern lives.
Your first session with Diane. You want to know what your body is actually doing before you commit to anything longer.
- 1Request. Tell me what you’re carrying. I read every request myself.
- 2Meet and greet. A free 10-minute video call, so we both know it’s a fit.
- 3The Body Brief. 120 minutes, paid at the start. Check-in, movement, breath, repetition, rest.
You come in carrying something. You leave carrying something different.
Not sure the Body Brief is right for you? Start with the free 10-minute meet and greet. If you want to be a passenger while I do the work, we’re not a fit, and we’ll both know before you pay for anything.
There are four Body Briefs on the calendar each month, and Diane reads every request herself.
“As a medical professional, I can tell you — her knowledge base is incredible.”
“I came to Diane years after a traumatic MVA and many surgeries. I was stuck in my recovery. Her ability to understand my needs and create a plan integral to both my physical and psychological injuries has helped immensely. I leave each session with a feeling of progress. I can't say enough about her.”
— KIM C. MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL
Every session, every tier
What you leave with
No. 01
A working vocabulary
A map of the brain-body conversation, where it broke down and what the body has been sending. Name the pattern and you stop being at its mercy.
No. 02
An actual interruption
Not just awareness of the pattern, but a break in it, at the level where it fires. Something different in your body, not just your head.
No. 03
A new baseline
An arrival point your nervous system can return to. The brain updates when it receives accurate input. That update is the work.
Body Brief Integration
Five weeks. The pattern given a new baseline.
Five weeks of work on the pattern your Body Brief surfaced, so the new baseline holds instead of fading.
After your Body Brief, or when you already know the pattern and want it rewired rather than read. Also for returning clients topping up.
If you already know you need Integration or are an existing client, click here.
Ask about Integration →Rebuilding patterns takes time, repetition and guidance. Clients return.
Who this is for
This is for you if
You’re a creative running on empty
The work is still there — the aliveness inside it isn’t.
You’re quietly disconnected
Smart, capable, and strangely disoriented. The survival style that got you here was built for a structure that no longer exists.
You’re the one who holds it all
While your body has been escalating, silently, for years.
You never quite feel like enough
Despite the evidence. The hum doesn’t live in your achievements — it lives in your nervous system.
This isn’t for you if
You want a quick fix
A decades-long survival pattern doesn’t resolve in a single afternoon and anyone who says otherwise is selling something.
You want to be handed a protocol
Assessed from the outside, no participation. This work requires you in it — honest, present, willing to hear what the body says.
You’re in acute crisis
This method is not clinical or psychiatric care. If that’s what you need, Diane will tell you directly and point you toward it.
If you’ve done the work, you understand the patterns, and your body keeps doing the thing anyway — this is for you.
In your home
Looking for in-home sessions for yourself or an aging parent?
The Golden Hour is Diane’s private yoga therapy for seniors, in your living room, across Vancouver, Burnaby, the North Shore, Port Moody and Salt Spring Island.
Meet the Golden Hour →“She helped me to identify and clear old conditioning patterns and mental roadblocks.”
The information and the motivation I’ve received from her were invaluable. Diane came to me with her wonderful and meaningful coaching program at the right time when I needed it the most. I was going through a process of personal transformation and professional transition from a corporate job to launching my own entrepreneurship idea to the world.
S. NaterasCorporate to entrepreneur
“You can get a whole room to tap out without raising a hand.”
I fight healing like the plague and protect my rage and stress like a lion. “Oh, that ball of tar? It’s all the things I tolerate about the world that make me go on a rampage.” She got rid of my sludge.
JP MassMartial arts · Shiatsu
“The ability to take some control of your body and mind cannot be underestimated.”
She is a life coach… an experienced yoga therapist… and a shiatsu masseur. A former nurse who made my journey through heart-bypass surgery an easier experience — able to address both the physical and mental aspects of a medical condition.
Doug RobinsonSurgery preparation
“Both intuitive and soul nourishing.”
After 20+ years as a film stunt performer, my body had endured a lot of injuries. Diane’s yoga therapy has been profoundly effective for my mobility issues, given me relief from chronic pain, and greatly improved my daily existence.
Ashlea EarlStunt performer · chronic pain & injury
Diane reads a body before it moves.
She holds Kaiden Shihan Kogyoku — 5th Dan, KoKoDo JuJutsu. One of two women in the world to hold Kogyoku. The first outside Japan. Certified Yoga Therapist and Shiatsu Practitioner, teaching since 1997 — 8,500 hours. Thirty years of learning what a body does under pressure — with an opponent, and on a table. She is the author of Gut Punch: Is It Your Trauma or Intuition?
Questions
Is this therapy?
No. Diane is not a clinical therapist and The Body Brief is not psychotherapy. It is hands-on, nervous system-focused work at the brain-body interface. Many clients do both. Therapy works with the story. This works with the pattern underneath it.
Is this yoga?
Yes, and probably not the yoga you’re picturing. Most of us in the West know yoga as a set of poses. Yoga therapy is the fuller practice. Diane reads the stress patterns in your body and where it’s carrying load, then gives you modified isometric movements (holding, not straining) woven into everyday motions, so the change shows up in how you actually move. Every session works your physical, emotional, mental and spiritual habits together, and her work draws on somatic experiencing. No class, no “Simon says”, no performing poses.
How many sessions will I need?
Honestly: it depends on what you’re carrying. The Body Brief is one session — a real assessment and a genuine interruption. Some people return regularly. Some come back months later. Diane will tell you clearly what she observes and what she recommends. She has no interest in keeping you in the work longer than you need to be.
I’ve tried everything. Why would this be different?
Because everything you’ve tried has worked at a different level. Insight lives in the cortex. The survival style lives in the nervous system. Understanding the pattern does not interrupt it — because the firing is neurological, not conscious. This works where the pattern actually lives. That is a different thing entirely.
What if I’m not in crisis — just stuck?
That is exactly who this is for. Most of Diane’s clients are high-functioning people whose nervous system has been quietly accumulating for years. You do not need to be falling apart. In fact, the earlier you work with it, the less it costs you.
Your body wants to feel good. Let’s get you there.
Human beings are wired to expect the worst. That’s the negativity bias, and it’s the biggest pattern I work with. Insight doesn’t shift it. Repetition does: small changes you can safely learn and keep, and stored alarms released carefully, with support.
The Body Brief is where that starts. Two hours, CA$350, in Vancouver or by video.
Or you stay where you are. A pain you can predict feels safer than the unknown of feeling better.