ABOUT
Madelyne Beckles is a Registered Holistic Nutritionist, Certified Yoga Teacher, and Multidisciplinary Artist currently based in Port Perry, Ontario. She holds a BFA in Art History and Women’s Studies from Concordia University, and puts her critical faculties to work as a co-host of the podcast High T. Her artwork explores themes of femininity and the body with abject aesthetics and camp humour, and has been shown at MoMA, the AGO and Miami Art Basel. Madelyne graduated with distinction from the Canadian School of Natural Nutrition (CSNN) and has completed a 200-hour yoga teacher training at Yoga Space in Toronto, Ontario.
MY PATH TO HOLISTIC HEALTH
My path to holistic health care began with a 200-hour yoga teacher training. It was 2013 and I was on a gap year between my second and third year of my undergraduate degree in art history and women’s studies. I had discovered yoga a year prior and was amazed at the effects it had on my depression, insomnia, and low self-esteem - something that had culminated through my late teens. I had the instinct to take some time away from an academic setting and pursue a more physical practice, which had been lacking in my life.
During this time, I also started working at a restaurant and became *pretty* into partying. The juxtaposition was challenging for me and I ended up abandoning yoga (and myself) for a while in favour of being out and about. This lifestyle also amplified the hormonal imbalances I had been experiencing since my early teens and resulted in extreme flare-ups of Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) symptoms. I always kept an interest in health and well-being through my movement practice, self-study, and trying different diets (ugh), but I felt that I couldn’t veer from my path as a practicing artist, curator, and arts administrator.
By March of 2020, I was already feeling burnt out from my museum job after two and half years and unsure if it was the career for me. While working from home, I started to turn to the practices that had supported me through difficult times in the past: I leaned into my love of home cooking, rediscovered my yoga practice, and started meditating. As I became more serious about taking care of my body, I had the ping of clarity to enroll in nutrition school. I am now a graduate of CSNN’s natural nutrition program and have put my PCOS symptoms into remission.
Learning how to nourish and support myself with whole foods was an entry point for physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual healing. Nutrition and holistic health can seem complicated and contradictory with all of the vast sources of information available to us, and I want to demystify and simplify healthy living to show you that it can be fun, and not so black and white! In my practice, I strive for curiosity and balance, as opposed to perfection; the beautiful thing about health is that it’s an ongoing conversation with yourself. By giving my clients a solid foundation on the principles of nutrition, and well-being, my goal is to meet you where you are and support you in exploring yourself to create your own healthy life.