One month into their new venture, Teresa Byer and Engel Phercydes say Qualicum Beach feels like home.
The couple has spent recent years living half of the year and B.C. and the other half in Bali, but as of April 1 they are committed full-time to Qualicum Beach as the new owners of Yoga Grace in Qualicum Beach.
“Before we took ownership of the studio, we were doing six months here, six months there (in Bali), and we were thinking, let’s move to Qualicum. We like it, we don’t need to be in Vancouver,” said Phercydes, adding that Byer’s family moved to Qualicum Beach and they wanted to be closer to family now that the couple has a son, Kai.
“Bali, we have a really nice quiet lifestyle there, and we thought, let’s just bring that back there.”
Phercydes said he had held a teacher training at the studio in September, 2017. At the time, Yoga Grace was still owned by Holly Yates.
“We held the training here, and I just loved it. It felt like home,” he said.
After the first teacher training, Phercydes said, he wanted to hold the next few training sessions at Yoga Grace.
“We reached out to Holly and we asked, ‘Is there space on the schedule for us to hold another training here for May and then the coming September?’ She said, ‘Yes, there is, but I have something I would love to chat with you about.’”
Phercydes said Yates told them she wanted to take a step back and focus on her own practice.
Yates then asked Phercydes and Byer to take over the studio, he said.
“We weren’t thinking about running a studio because we were really content with what we were doing.”
Now one month into the business, Byer said, it’s going really well. She said Yates had established a good studio and relationship with the community.
“We just kind of came in and added our flavour into the offerings of our studio,” she said. “We’re just really blessed to have a great group of people working together.”
Collectively, Byer said, she and Phercydes have been teaching for more than 20 years.
“We’ve loved teaching yoga and offering it around the world,” she said. “I don’t know if we knew for sure we would open a studio, but this just seemed like a perfect fit and it came around for the right reasons.”
Byer and Phercydes are holding two more teacher trainings this year; one which starts today (May 1) and another in September.
To find out more about Yoga Grace, located at 101-664 Beach Road in Qualicum, visit www.yogagrace.ca.