The Doghouse

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Courtenay, BC
The Doghouse

The Doghouse is an intimate, community focused space, offering classes & workshops. Our emphasis is Alright community, we're doing it!!!

Toni Dunne and Kristen Gilbert are manifesting a creative hub on our beloved property. We have an amazing 1000sq ft. room with 13 ft ceilings, gymnastic rings, ropes silks, swings and a pole... We will be hosting yoga, dance, circus, poi, hooping, art and monkey business classes and workshops!!! If you have an idea for a workshop, pitch it to us!!! We are located in Courtenay at 1690 Carron Rd.

08/07/2025

Hello dear ones—

Big Updates!

I’m excited to share that I am moving into a beautiful, bright, inspiring clinic space, right in the heart of downtown Courtenay.

And I’m oh so excited!!

I have the pleasure of sharing this space with two inspiring practitioners Beth Ebers and
Under the umbrella of

Bridge Wellness Collective 💕

Also feeling delighted to be allied with our dear neighbour, support and big heart Shealeen

I will continue to offer 1:1 sessions in Relational Somatic Inquiry, and Enneagram Mentorship

And this autumn will be adding some small group offerings in this space, practices to invite us home to ourselves, to remind us of our aliveness, to reconnect.

I’m sending out a newsletter this week, sign up through my website (link in bio) if you’d like to keep up to date with what’s happening here and elsewhere (there’s an offering coming down the line , and some workshops in Cumberland and SaltSpring too).

In the meantime I will be soaking in this last month of summer sweetness with my kiddo, the river and my beloveds, and tending to the dahlias.

05/17/2025

MAO 💔

He came to us as a gift.
The beloved lap cat of our friends granddad who had recently passed.

A rotund, friendly, surprisingly agile, treat loving Siamese with a kinked tail.

Many of you had the honour to meet him in your time at The Doghouse.

Perhaps he propositioned you for a pet, sat or sprawled on your mat, kept your feet warm during savasana.

He had a way of finding the folks that needed him most, and offered his love back in affection and purrs.

His favourite place was in front of the fireplace, and in his later years held a permanent sheepskin throne there to keep his tired, aging bones warm.

and I buried him in the yard this week. He was ready to go. We planted a red rhododendron where he lay, so we can continue to honour his life in leaf and bloom.

Please feel free to share any Mao memories here. Thank you to all who gave him love and care and attention through the years.

RIP Mister Mao. You will be missed.

📸:

05/11/2025

Remover of Obstacles
✨🙏🏼✨🙏🏼✨🙏🏼✨

04/21/2025

WRITE FOR YOUR LIFE
✨✍🏻✨
An 8-week online writing journey
April 30th-June 18th

What would it mean to write for your life?

Can you feel the urgency in this language—like run for your life, a call to action. 🏃‍♀️

But rather than quickly fleeing, writing asks us to STAY, to slow down, to notice, feel. And well, the world, this earth is asking for this kind of attention. 🌎 ❤️🙏🏼

Right now it is imperative that we stay sensitive with our hearts, receptive to our bodies, visionary with our minds.

For me, writing is a practice that invites me home to myself. Through the process of writing, I come to know and locate myself with greater clarity and depth.
Writing anchors me into what matters, and to what has heart.

It’s my experience that something extra special can happen when we write in community. The opportunity to share our perspectives and hear each others stories is inspiring and impactful.

In this way, we weave a tapestry of human meaning making. We hear ourselves in others. We remember how much we need one another.

I want this for us.

If you’re curious in this offering, head to my website for more details (link in bio), or DM me here.

There’s still space to join in.
It’s shaping up to be a wonderful group!

Thanks for being here 🙏🏼
Toni ❤️

📸:

04/09/2025

🌹 CLOSING CIRCLE 🌹

Re:SOURCE 2025 has officially come to a close.

Im still in the afterglow of being in the company of such an engaged and inspiring group of humans this past three months.

It’s a powerful thing to journey alongside others for an entire season. 13 individuals coming together, relative strangers, with a commitment to embodied exploration and learning.
What a bold commitment!

Needless to say, we are no longer strangers.

The safety and connection cultivated in this group blew me away, I felt it, I feel it still in my cells.

This was my vision and hope for Re:SOURCE.
Not just a program or a course, not just about learning, but feeling and sensing and embodying ourselves in a new way. Alone and together.
One participant called it a paradigm shift.

And oh do we ever need that!

We danced, we cried, we laughed (a lot), we moved and breathed and rested and sighed and made sounds and told stories. We paid attention, and took care of our needs. We remembered, forgot and remembered again.
We spoke and we listened.
We let our bodies speak, and we listened.
We widened ourselves to include more.
Made collective poems.

And then it was Spring. 🌱

Thank you dear ones for being in the basket with me. I feel deeply resourced by your presence. 🧺

If you’re interested in joining me for this journey, I will be offering this program again next January.

The best way to stay in the know with this and other offerings is to sign up for my seasonal newsletter.

Link in bio.

03/11/2025

✨Write For Your Life✨
An 8-Week Online Journey

Spring is nearly here, the vitality of the good earth bursting through density and mud; the trees budding up, promise to unfurl billowy fountains of pink and white. 🌸

What a welcomed returning 🌱

At the same time so much of what we’ve relied on is falling away: systems collapsing, political unrest, huge setbacks in environmental policy and human rights. We are inundated with the worst kind of news, flooded with survival energy and immobilized by apathy.

Can you feel the achy stretch of these times?

To be human is to dance with paradox. The joy and the sorrow, hope and despair. Both, together. 
To be able to hold this tension of opposites, takes a willingness to be with discomfort, takes practice, takes time.

This capacity to stretch and hold is needed more than ever. And your capacity to be here is of great value.
🙏🏼❤️🙏🏼❤️🙏🏼

Write for your Life is an 8-week writing container, designed to orient you towards your inherent aliveness and power. Drawing on spring as the obvious muse, we will traverse themes and topics to flush out our inner worlds.

What stories are you currently telling yourself?

We humans are story tellers, meaning makers.

What we believe gets reinforced in our physiology and nervous system. Our state informs our story, and our stories inform our state, which can leave us feeling fearful, disempowered and relentlessly stressed out.

The Good News: as we bring awareness, curiosity and care to our present time experience, fresh stories begin to emerge. Bolstered by the earth in spring, we too can feel the possibility of starting anew.

Now is the time for a great revision. What kind of a world do you want to imagine yourself into?

Click the link in bio to get all the details.

📸:

11/09/2024

|| Re:Source || An Embodied Immersion in Care and Remembering - https://mailchi.mp/98bd477e20db/resource-an-embodied-immersion-in-care-and-remembering

11/08/2024

Hello beloved Doghouse followers,

I am beyond thrilled to announce the launch of my in-person immersion at Registration is open and all the details can be found on my website (link in bio)

✨✨✨✨
Re:SOURCE
An Embodied Immersion
In Care and Remembering

We are living in a time of great transition, of intersecting social and ecological crises.

As a result, many of us are grappling with personal and collective grief, relational ruptures, feelings of powerlessness and instability of all kinds. This level of threat, real and/or perceived, pays a toll on our bodies, hearts and minds.

Despite our best efforts to manage stress we may notice ourselves pendulating between high activation and deep exhaustion. Under these conditions, it can be difficult to slow down and notice what needs our holding and attention, our care and remembering.

Re:SOURCE is an immersive, in-person program to help you develop supportive tools and practices to anchor and sustain you through these changing times. With an emphasis on slowing down, and cultivating embodied awareness, this three-month journey is an invitation to catch up with yourself.

Together, we will grow our understanding of what it means to be human at this moment in time. As a group, we will explore the autonomic nervous system, yoga and somatic movements, breathwork, monthly workshops, inquiry, creative practices (writing and art), ritual, conversation and deep rest. In addition to the group practices, participants will meet monthly for a 1:1 integration session.

Designed as a seasonal container, Re:SOURCE will hold you sweetly through the dark Winter months and midwife you into the expansiveness of Spring.

This program is an embodied exploration of your capacity for resilience, your deep knowing, and innate power. By growing our capacity to hold that which is difficult, we also expand our capacity to hold that which brings us joy and delight. Re:SOURCE invites you into the important work of the heart, practices to sustain and support, so that we can continue to show up for the liberatory work of these times.

📸:

10/28/2024

✨🍃

As October comes to a close I am feeling into the season of descent, tucking in the garden, diving into my stack of books, layering plaid on plaid, making soup and preparing myself for many exciting projects and offerings that I am bringing into form this winter.

I’m a week away from launching a program!!

✨✨Re:SOURCE✨✨
An Embodied Immersion
In Care and Remembering

This in person program will run at The Doghouse Studio January-April 2025. This is the second year I’ve had the pleasure of teaching this program and I’m delighting in the process of refining, reflecting, growing and learning from my experience last year.

Designed as a seasonal container, Re:SOURCE will hold you sweetly through the dark days of Winter and midwife you into the expansiveness of Spring.

More info coming soon, but just sprinkling this out into the ethers. And wanted to say HELLO! ✨👋

If you’re curious drop an emoji below ⬇️ and I will alert you when the launch happens.

10/02/2024

Views from an Oceanside yurt.

Thank you everyone that came to last Sundays gathering. We were blessed with a gorgeous golden afternoon, delightful company and the call of geese.

The next gathering is in a few weeks
Thursday, Oct 17th 5-830pm

The theme is The Moon, as the 17th is the
Hunters Moon, and a super-moon in Aries.

And if it’s a clear night we will hopefully see the moon rise! If this interests you let me know, as spaces are going quick.

Thanks for being here,
Toni ✨

09/26/2024

Hello friends.

Toni here. ✨
How’s the transition into fall going? 🍃

I have one space remaining in this weekend’s gathering held at the OHM Center in Merville. A beautiful bright yurt a top a cliff overlooking the Sunshine Coast.

This evolving monthly offering is intended to be a support for whatever place you find yourself.

On Sunday, September 29th 3-630pm join me for Homecoming: a gathering for autumn’s arrival

Where we will drop into movement, meditation, writing, poetry, conversation, nature based practice and slow time.

My hope is that these gatherings can act as a little ritual to mark a moment, to be in the company of others, to catch up with ourselves, feel the power in our presence, and remember what truly matters in our lives.

If you’re curious about this weekend’s event send me a DM, if you want to be added to the list for future offerings please write DAHLIAS in the comments and I will be in touch.

Have a beautiful day,
Toni

09/19/2024

Long shadows stretch themselves over
golden ground
our bodies elongated
brief afternoon heat
sheds us momentarily
of our layers, before
the inevitable return of the rains

September has a hold on us
the changing colours
the drying up and lightening process
the melancholy romance of a maple leaf
open palmed
taken willingly
by downward currents
air
storyteller of unseen dimensions
her breath rocks this hand
towards the patient earth

Return of the spider
masterful makers
silken webs that hold the weight of dew
Opalescent garlands

The geese are loudly on their way
bulbous squash piling up
sweetness contained for future feasts

We clean up the yard,
keep the doors closed now
gather closer
our focus shifts
we look for warmth indoors
the dark comes quicker and we turn inward
now is the season to come home

🍁 ✨ ☕️ 🍃

Something NEW I’m offering is a monthly gathering in Merville at the OHM Center. The next one:

Homecoming: a gathering for autumn’s arrival
Sunday, Sept 29th
3-630pm

This 3.5 hour event is an embodied ritual for slowing down, and cultivating curiosity. Allow yourself feel supported and spacious and take time for presence and self reflection.

In a small group setting, in a yurt on the edge of the ocean, we will connect with and contemplate the challenges and gifts of the season. We will be moving (yoga, restorative practices, dance), writing (prompts and exercises-no experience necessary), resting (meditation and relaxation), and being in conversation about the many maps and practices that can support us during this time: elemental, astrological, poetic, nervous system, resourcing, resiliency, compassion etc.

DM me to register and/or to be alerted to future events.
Space is limited.

Homecoming: a gathering for autumns arrival
Sunday, Sept. 29th
3-630pm

Investment: sliding scale $65-$80

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Address

Courtenay, BC

Telephone

+12507921382

Website

http://www.thedoghouseyoga.com/

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