Love and Acupuncture

09/25/2025

Hello Friends.

A friendly reminder and heart felt invitation ♥️✨♥️✨♥️✨

Toni Dunne and I are hosting our seasonal Acupuncture & Yoga gathering this coming Sunday 6-9pm .body in Cumberland

RELEASE: a practice for letting go + returning home 🍁🍁🍁

The turning of season, even if we are craving autumn, can prove difficult and confronting.

Our culture, which largely focuses on and celebrates ascension—attempts to carry on as though we lived in an endless summer.

This paradigm is simply not sustainable and this thinking keeps us striving, pushing and ultimately burnt out.

It’s no surprise then, that autumn, with its turning in and natural descent can challenge us. This offering is an opportunity to shift, to notice what wants to be released.

What parts of you can you let go of, to more fully step into the version of yourself you are becoming?

Please join us for an evening of conversation, poetry, inquiry, gentle somatic exploration, restorative yoga, and deep long rest with acupuncture points.

Sliding scale: $65-$80
DM or email Toni
yogatoni@gmail.com
to reserve your space

Hello Friends.

A friendly reminder and heart felt invitation ♥️✨♥️✨♥️✨

Casey .and.acupuncture and I are hosting our seasonal Acupuncture & Yoga gathering this coming Sunday 6-9pm .body in Cumberland

RELEASE: a practice for letting go + returning home 🍁🍁🍁

The turning of season, even if we are craving autumn, can prove difficult and confronting.

Our culture, which largely focuses on and celebrates ascension—attempts to carry on as though we lived in an endless summer.

This paradigm is simply not sustainable and this thinking keeps us striving, pushing and ultimately burnt out.

It’s no surprise then, that autumn, with its turning in and natural descent can challenge us. This offering is an opportunity to shift, to notice what wants to be released.

What parts of you can you let go of, to more fully step into the version of yourself you are becoming?

Please join us for an evening of conversation, poetry, inquiry, gentle somatic exploration, restorative yoga, and deep long rest with acupuncture points.

Sliding scale: $65-$80
DM or email Toni
yogatoni@gmail.com
to reserve your space

09/10/2025

As we orient towards the turning of the season, it’s wise to ask yourself: what am I holding on to? What am I afraid of letting go of?

For many of us, autumn can be a challenging season to transition into. It is a time of natural descent, the Earth’s contracting back into itself, a call to be more reflective and discerning.

It’s also a time to acknowledge grief, which can feel quite painful or even scary. In contrast to summer’s expansive brightness, grief and inwardness can feel confronting. As the leaves let go, the weather cools and we watch things die – we often experience a feeling of something being taken from us too soon, too abruptly, unfairly and before we are ready. But it’s important to recognize the inherent opportunities and gifts of this time. The great lesson of Autumn is that the pain isn’t from the loss – it’s not the grief itself that causes us to suffer.

The heartbreak is actually born from refusing to let go of something that was never yours in the first place. The heartbreak, the suffering is a result of mistaking that anything belongs to you, or that ownership itself is real. Autumn is painful when we cling to summer, when we resist the invitation to change.

Please join Casey Parsons (Acupuncturist) and Toni Dunne (Relational Somatic Therapist and Yoga Teacher) in conversation, movement, writing, poetry, deep rest and acupuncture points.
This 3-hour container is intended to midwife you from one season to the next with more clarity, acceptance, and care. Join us as we collectively acknowledge the necessary cycles/initiations of loss that point us towards our own inner well.

Date: Sunday, Sept 28th 6-9pm
Investment: $65-$80 sliding scale
Location: Unfolding Body, Cumberland, BC

Please email yogatoni@gmail.com to reserve your space (e-transfer is required to save your space.)

01/08/2025

I am so excited to be collaborating with my dear friend after a far-too-long hiatus. Please consider joining us for a cozy evening of discussion, meditation, Yin yoga, and community acupuncture. Hope to see you!

https://facebook.com/events/s/returning-harvesting-hope-in-t/4025887494352623/

12/24/2024

The clinic is closed for the holidays and will re-open January 6. Blessings to you and yours ❤️

10/26/2024

This post is a perfect analogy to our own thinking minds and how over-thinking (Yang) consumes our resources (Yin). The intellect (Yi - governed by the Spleen/Stomach) is meant to process information in a way that is digestible; meaning we aren’t chewing on information without any real purpose. We take in stimuli through our sensory organs (notice how the first 7 points on the Stomach channel pass through all of the sensory organs) and then are processed by the brain (St-8), where the information is then digested and integrated (from St-8 the channel then descends toward the feet). A great reflection of this process is “how am I digesting my experiences? What am I constantly chewing on (rumination)?”

We take in so much information everyday (much of it purposeless), our brain’s capacity to process is flooded, and our capacity to think critically has been severely compromised. But we think that thinking is a passive process, when it isn’t. It consumes energy and resources to be in our heads all day everyday, and eventually it starts to consume our blood and fluids to keep up to the pace of the mind. If you think of the fluids in your body as your cooling system, keeping everything nourished, lubricated and juicy, and also as the rooting and cooling system for your Yang (mind and function), you’ll notice many symptoms arise as a result of this yin consumption (muscle cramps, tight fascia, joint pain, stiffness, dry skin/hair/nails, excess heat in the body (worse at night), inability to fall or stay asleep, anxiety, rage, constipation, the list goes on and on. These are symptoms that I see in the clinic everyday, often in a single person. A conversation I find myself having over and over is around not only supporting our Yin (through rest, sleep, eating hydrating meals like soups, congees, stews, etc.), but by creating space in our minds so that we aren’t “running the computer” all day everyday, which is a huge culprit in consuming our Yin. Taking breaks from screen time, going out into nature, meditation, having a bath, deep breathing, sitting on a park bench watching the world go by, listening to the birds…these are all beautiful examples of creating spaciousness in our thinking mind.

In a world that celebrates productivity and busy-ness, in a world that is in it’s extreme levels of Yang (capitalism, patriarchy, resource extraction and over-consumption, the world is literally on fire), it’s a radical act to support our Yin. Yin is nourishing, introspective, reparative, and reflective. We deserve our Yin. We need our Yin. ❤️