“Yoga is not just fitness, it’s healing,” Emmanuelle Rousseau says, “it’s a form of expression. It can be so many different things.” Emmanuelle is the co-owner of Stretch, a cross-disciplinary studio in Vancouver’s Chinatown. On the surface, Stretch is a yoga studio, but considering Emmanuelle’s expansive definition of yoga, it’s hardly a surprise that the space offers much more than that.
Emmanuelle and her partner Boyd Thomson opened Stretch with an ambitious mandate to be a catalyst for social change and community building. Stretch’s team includes an artist-in-residence position and a researcher-in-residence, who will be designing research around the science of yoga.
According to Emmanuelle, their job in the Chinatown community is to “take care of the people who take care of people” in the community. Anyone who works in health and wellness in the Downtown Eastside gets discounted classes.
