About

Welcome to Functional Synergy

Helping you get out of pain and into possibility since 1995.

About Functional Synergy

Functional Synergy is the leading community, offering comprehensive training in anatomy, biomechanics, and physiology, empowering a wide range of movement and body-based professionals—including yoga teachers, yoga therapists, physiotherapists, massage therapists, and fitness trainers.

Our goal is to enhance healing abilities, foster profound personal insights in clients, and help professionals build sustainable, profitable practices they love.

We are passionate about unlocking each client’s potential for significant healing and personal growth.

About Susi

With her B.Sc. Kinesiology, and as a yoga teacher, C-IAYT yoga therapist, and teacher trainer, Susi is changing the way that pain is understood and the manner in which yoga is delivered.

In doing so, she guides and inspires a global community of health practitioners, therapists, researchers, yoga therapists and therapeutic yoga instructors.

For the last 30 years, physicians, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, massage therapists, and chiropractors have counted on Susi as a partner in helping their patients get well again. She has trained yoga teachers in Canada, USA, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Caribbean.

Susi’s leadership has set a new standard, not only in yoga therapy but also in functional movement therapy; helping people recover from surgeries, navigate chronic conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, scleroderma and lupus, manage cancer diagnosis and treatments such as radiation and chemotherapy.

From Susi

From the bottom of my heart, welcome. Welcome to Functional Synergy, welcome to my world. I am delighted you are here.

I have taught some remarkable executive leaders and healthcare professionals how to get out of pain and handle a host of other symptoms like autoimmune flares, recovery from cancer treatment and general life burnout.  

I have also trained some pretty remarkable people to become very effective, results-oriented yoga therapists who hold such a quiet power.

My training is a very unique and simple approach to healing. I like to say that I don’t have a doctor’s scalpel or medications, I don’t have an acupuncturist’s needles or herbs, I don’t have a massage therapist’s or chiropractor’s bodywork techniques, and I don’t have physical therapists hands/ultrasound/or tens machine.

What I DO have are my heart, my eyes and my brain. I combine my B.Sc. Kinesiology with my practical understanding of movement, breath and stillness. I can see compensatory movement strategies, and I understand how movement works. The nervous system can catalyze powerful healing when it is in a relaxed, non-wired, non-tired state. I know how to help someone get to that place.

That is what I teach my trainees to do. And I would be honoured to teach you the same.

Blending Anatomy and Yoga to Help You to Get Better Results

Over the last 30 years of teaching clients and training health professionals to reduce and eradicate pain – I have seen one common characteristic amongst all of them . . .

When you can connect to the whispers in the body, and can quiet the body’s screams, that is when you can get better, faster results – even for those who have been living with pain for decades.

At the foundation of Functional Synergy is a belief that where the pain is, is not where the problem is.

Using anatomy, biomechanics and your ability to see and listen, you can use small movements to get better results at an accelerated pace.

My job is to help you connect more clearly with your body and empower you to help your clients do the same.

Our Guiding Values

Courage. We need to be willing to go there, do the hard things, and say what needs to be said. Healing does require work. Sometimes hard work.
Ownership. No one can do the learning or the work for you. This isn’t a process where you are “done to”. This is you become the leader of yourself, learning to feel, listen and act on the still, quiet voice inside.
Empowerment. The most powerful healing relationships are those which are “power with” – we are in this together versus “power over” – I know more than you do. To be ultra-successful as a yoga therapist, work on the former.

Our biggest competition is ‘Tylenol
and emotional resignation’

I have developed programs that specifically push through plateaus in rehabilitation, moving healing away from temporary fixes and giving you and your practice long-lasting results.

Help your clients (or yourself) out cyclical patterns of physical pain – for good.

Functional Synergy's Key Values:

Healing Is Possible
Tissue Can Change
The Problem Isn’t Always Where The Pain Is

My Background

I earned a B.Sc. in Kinesiology with a focus on Exercise Physiology from the University of Calgary
In my summers during University when I wasn’t tree planting, I worked at the Vancouver General Hospital with Occupational Therapists and worked with a variety of people – from those recovering from post-op hip surgery to older folks who were living their last days at the hospital.
After I graduated from University, I worked at an OT Chronic Pain Center for people who had been in Motor Vehicle Accidents and Work Related Accidents.
I then advocated for people who were on long-term disability and weren’t getting the rehabilitation programs they needed and were in the process of being cut off of funding. I helped them get the care they needed and an extension of their benefits.
In 1999, I received my TTP Certificate from the Yoga Studio in Calgary and did my Yoga Therapy Training in India two years later.
From 2002-2009, two of my yoga programs were studied at the University of Calgary. These included a program using yoga as an adjunct support for recovery from cancer and another for improving the quality of life for people with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Both showed the benefit of using yoga therapeutically.
I published my first book, Anatomy and Asana in 2004. This book is used globally for teacher training, along with my online program I Love Anatomy.
In 2007, I launched Functional Synergy’s Yoga Therapy Certification Program and in 2014, it became accredited.

Want to get results at an accelerated pace?

There are a few things to know about how I train others in my approach to
healing.

I fundamentally believe that healing is possible. People can get well again, no matter the condition.
I love science, research and evidence . . . but it has its limitations. Evidence is all about xx% of people with abc symptoms benefit from a certain protocol. How do you know if your client is in that xx% that benefited? Do you just through the protocol at the condition and hope it will work? That isn’t really all that efficient – so I don’t support that notion.
Our results exponentially grow with as we become more present. As a yoga teachers or health professional . . . when you are present, you can see others. This is the start of really seeing what the actual problem is.
By present I I mean “Being in the Now, and in the Moment” – that really intimate place of connection with another. We have all experienced this with a really good health professional. It is this exact thing I train my trainees to be.