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.

11/03/2025

Hearthfire Gathering
✨🖤🕸️✨🖤🕸️✨

The end of November finds us in the depths of autumn, the sun low and the nights long.

This seasonal threshold can be a helpful time of year to gather and assess our resources; an opportunity to gather quietly into ourselves alongside community, a chance to fill our basket with tools to companion us through the darker days of winter.

and are delighted to co-host a nourishing weekend of connection, inquiry, movement and expressive arts.

Over two spacious days, you will be led through simple, somatic and sensory exploration practices. These practices, rooted in embodied mindfulness, are intended to reconnect you to what matters and what has heart.

The days will be woven together with story, poetry, movement, rest, play, food and creative expression.

Each participant will create an altar card as a visual representation of their personal tools and allies for resilience.

Art supplies, snacks & tea will be provided.

See link in Bio to register.

10/28/2025

✨✨✨✨✨✨✨
Small group vibes
at my sweet and cozy
downtown clinic space
✨✨✨✨✨✨✨

I love working from home AND I am adoring being right in the hub of downtown Courtenay a few days a week as well.

Right now I have space for 3-4 NEW clients for Relational Somatic Inquiry. I offer a free 20-minute exploration call if you’re curious about how we might work together. I’d love to connect.

I’m also scheming some winter programming for small groups.
Currently I’m running a creative immersion called The Guest House.

In this 5 week course, we are exploring our emotional landscape through embodied mindfulness practices, conversation, poetry and collage.

I’d love to run this again!
Anyone curious?

Other ideas:

✨Monthly enneagram study group

✨Midlife-transit exploration

✨Poetry for The Present Moment

What kind of course/content interests you? I’d love to hear. 🙏🏼

10/27/2025

I’m so excited to be collaborating this fall with my long time friend, teacher, and extraordinary human

On the weekend of Nov. 22nd and 23rd we are co-facilitating a gathering in Cumberland called Hearthfire

The end of November finds us in the depths of autumn, the sun low and the nights long.

This seasonal threshold can be a helpful time of year to gather and assess our resources; an opportunity to gather quietly into ourselves alongside community, a chance to fill our basket with tools to companion us through the darker days of winter.

Natalie Rousseau and Toni Dunne are delighted to co-host a nourishing weekend of connection, inquiry, movement and expressive arts.

Over two spacious days, you will be led through simple, somatic and sensory exploration practices. These practices, rooted in embodied mindfulness, are intended to reconnect you to what matters and what has heart.

The days will be woven together with story, poetry, movement, rest, play, food and creative expression.

Each participant will create an altar card as a visual representation of their personal tools and allies for resilience.

Art supplies, snacks & tea will be provided.

For more info or to register, see link in bio.

10/10/2025

Hi Pals.

Wow does it ever feel good to be in the flow of teaching and group work again.

I am excited to announce that I will be offering Community Meditation again this fall at .body in Cumberland.

Embodied Mindfulness
Poetry
Slow Time

Oct 23rd-Dec 10th
7-8pm
By Donation
(Partial proceeds go to a
local charity TBD)

Come sit and breath and be and rest and receive and do whatever you need with other humans in a circle.

All Are Welcome.
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

10/06/2025

Write For Your Life:
The Harvest Edition
✨🍁✨🍁✨

Starts this Wednesday, Oct 8th

Are you curious to deepen your relationship to writing?

Are you wanting to drop into a holding container for your process, a space for traversing your tender heart?

This is the second round of this 8-week offering and I’m really delighted to see the group come together.

What’s the deal?

Each week we meet for a 2 hour live call.

You will be guided through an embodied grounding.

I will introduce you to poetry and readings to generate and move what’s alive in you/us.

There will be ample opportunities to share and listen.

I love the depth and magnitude of these writing circles, and I look forward to being with you all.

Please know that this is accessible for all. No need to identify as a writer.

Send me a DM if you are curious to join.

10/02/2025

The sweet return to my favourite seat.

Last night was the first class of The Paradox of Being Human.

What a delight and honour to teach and guide and facilitate. I’m so grateful for all of you who have spent time in the doghouse with me over these past 14 years.

I have learned so much from all of you.

Theres a couple of lines I shared last night from a Mark Nepo poem:

Those who wake are the students
Those who stay awake are the teachers

How we take turns

Thanks for being both students and teachers to me. My heart feels wide and ready this morning. What a dance.

—Toni ♥️

09/24/2025

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

09/17/2025

So excited to be in collaboration this season with my longtime friend, colleague and co-creative-nerd 🤓🤓

The end of November finds us in the depths of autumn, the sun low and the nights long.

This seasonal threshold can be a helpful time of year to gather and assess our resources; an opportunity to gather quietly into ourselves alongside community, a chance to fill our basket with tools to companion us through the darker days of winter.

Natalie Rousseau and Toni Dunne are delighted to co-host a nourishing weekend of connection, inquiry, movement and expressive arts.

Over two spacious days, you will be led through simple, somatic and sensory exploration practices. These practices, rooted in embodied mindfulness, are intended to reconnect you to what matters and what has heart.
The days will be woven together with story, poetry, movement, rest, play, food and creative expression.

Each participant will create an altar card as a visual representation of their personal tools and allies for resilience.

A simple seasonal lunch is provided both days, as well as tea and art supplies.

For more details click the link in my bio.

09/13/2025

Just over here attending to the garden, my heart, the home, all the feelings

I’m softly holding onto late summers hand while feeling into the tender depth and descent of the season ahead.

How are you tending, friends?

What is holding you sweetly through your days?

What helps you to locate yourself?

What/Who makes you smile?
laugh?

I really want to hear what’s lighting you up.

⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️

Share below 🙏🏼✨🍁

09/09/2025

🍁✨🍁✨🍁✨

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.)

09/03/2025

I’m excited to announce that I am stepping confidently into a new chapter:

My Oracle Era.
Poet & Storyteller.

This November I will be the feature poet and co-host of the Artful Gallery’s poetry night.

I’ve applied to The Woodstove Festival as well 🤞🏻🤞🏻🤞🏻🤞🏻
Regardless of the outcome, I plan to busk and be with my typewriter on the streets.

I’m compiling a collection of poems into a chapbook that will be ready this fall.

This creative undercurrent has carried me in such expansive and supportive ways, recently, but if I’m honest with myself, my entire life.

Writing for process and as a practice is deeply rooting for me. As an external processor, It helps me know how I feel, helps me access my heart and find clarity in the haze of confusion.

All of my fall offerings will contain a writing component and I am excited to share in this practice with you all.

I am offering a focused writing course as well.

Write for your Life:
The Harvest Edition
An 8-week online writing container

Begins Oct 8th

Sliding scale: $250-$300

Weekly 2 hour class +
4x co-writing classes

Visit my website for my details or DM me here

📸:

09/01/2025

Write For Your Life:
Harvest Season
🍁 🎃 💫 🌙

Embodied Practice.
Compassionate Process.
Writing for Turbulent Times

As the light begins to wane and we return to the season of descent, writing our bodies, hearts and heads onto the page can be a way to steady ourselves, to stay aligned with our personal truths.

The practice of writing can help to clarify and intentionally direct our attention.

Attention is the beginning of devotion.

These words, from Mary Oliver are a beacon in my world.

Such a beacon that on my 40th birthday, I had them tattooed on my left forearm; a daily reminder that this simple act of what I give my attention to, grows, has the capacity to shift my very reality.

And here’s the thing, the world needs your devotion. The world needs your engagement, your care and curiosity.

The practice of writing connects us to our own aliveness.

In this container you will also receive the gift of witnessing that aliveness in the other.

When we gather and share our stories, we can co-create a new vision, a shared vision.

I really believe in this.

Please join me in this 8-week online writing container, intended to reconnect you to what matters.

Each week we will meet online for 2 hours.

You will be a led in a grounding/meditation/visualizatin, an opportunity to check in, weekly themes and prompts to support.

There will be opportunities to share (always encouraged but absolutely optional).

In addition to the weekly calls, there will be 4 x co-writing calls (dates TBD), to work on projects, hold each other accountable and expand on the work of our calls.

You don’t have to identify as a writer to join, the emphasis is on process rather than craft.

All weekly calls will be recorded and sent out within 48hours with a follow-up email including links to authors shared, and podcast recommendations.

Date: Wednesdays 10am-12pm Oct 8th- Nov 26th

Price: $200-$300 sliding scale

Location: Online in the Zoom Room

DM to reserve your spot

Address

1690 Carron Road
Courtenay, BC
V9N9K5

Telephone

+12507921382

Website

http://www.thedoghouseyoga.com/

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