<a href="http://www.choose2be.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Slava-2.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-1623 alignright" src="http://www.choose2be.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Slava-2-300x300.jpg" alt="Slave - Nanaimo - Movement investigation - Yoga Nanaimo - Bodyweight training - AcroYoga" width="300" height="300" /></a>My name is Slava Goloubov, and I am a Vancouver, BC-based mover. For as long as I can remember, I have been curious about movement and complexity of expression. Being physical has always been a part of my life. I worked in the trades from age 14-22, specializing in HVAC and studying under some of the best tradesmen in the city. At the age of 22, I decided to change the direction of my life and attended a 10-day silent Vipassana course. In the silence, I contemplated a new path. By age 24, I was fully immersed in a new world studying yoga, meditation, and other complementary endeavours.
<a href="http://www.choose2be.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Slava-3.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-1624 alignright" src="http://www.choose2be.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Slava-3-300x300.jpg" alt="Slave - Nanaimo - Movement investigation - Yoga Nanaimo - Bodyweight training - AcroYoga" width="300" height="300" /></a>Fast forward 5 years, and I now have the pleasure of teaching full-time in the city of Vancouver – facilitating over a dozen weekly classes, numerous teacher trainings, workshops, and international retreats. I am the co-founder of VanCityAcro, the official school of AcroYoga in Vancouver. Aside from my full-time practice as a Yogi, I constantly pursue different disciplines, from Hand-Balancing in the Circus, to spatial awareness in Gymnastics, to finding strength and fluidity in AcroYoga, Contact Dance and Capoeira.
<a href="http://www.choose2be.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Slava-5.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-1626 alignright" src="http://www.choose2be.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Slava-5-300x300.jpg" alt="Slave - Nanaimo - Movement investigation - Yoga Nanaimo - Bodyweight training - AcroYoga" width="300" height="300" /></a>One of the most important aspects of my Movement mission is supporting the empowerment of others on similar paths. Yes, I can trace a common thread of physicality back through the various stages of my life. From my current vantage point, I can tie together the themes and the undercurrents of my expression across time. However, I am living proof that contrary to common misconception, it is not that some some of us are born with talent or skill, or that we need to be raised with a movement background from a young age to excel in a field. Just five years ago I couldn’t touch my toes.

<a href="http://www.choose2be.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Slava-4.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-1625 alignright" src="http://www.choose2be.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Slava-4-300x240.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="240" /></a> Now, I’m traveling the globe on a mission of magnifying mobility. I aim to advance the accessibility of these healing, transformative, &amp; liberating practices for many people as possible, since I’ve seen their own effects on my life. As a male raised in the Western society and indoctrinated at an early age under its corresponding mentality, I recognize the “standard programming”, so to speak, that so many of us are subject to. There is a pervasiveness to this programming. Our culturally-agreed upon narrative tells us that our ability to fit into a pre-packaged box that serves said society will determine our worth. As a result, many men will go on to live a life that is never truly their own. They will be fed into a system from a young age and perpetuate a cycle of seeming “security” and “success”. But while this may seem to ensure that our “basic needs” are met, this leads to a life that is not truly liberated. We are fragile when we do not control our own destiny, when we are at the mercy of another’s whims. We are incomplete when we are making due with the mundane rather than living a life fully expressed.

<a href="http://www.choose2be.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Slava.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-1628 alignright" src="http://www.choose2be.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Slava-300x300.jpg" alt="Slave - Nanaimo - Movement investigation - Yoga Nanaimo - Bodyweight training - AcroYoga" width="300" height="300" /></a>Finding movement as a lifestyle and career path has been the single most defining moment of my life thus far, and one that opens up countless opportunities for the future. More than movement itself, this world has removed dependence on any dogma for me. Now I know that even if movement were taken away from me for some reason, I have expanded my capacity for exploration. I have come to craft myself as a more capable human in all regards via my movements. I will continue to transfer these lessons to any realms I walk within. I feel the truest sense of security and freedom I’ve ever known, feeling empowered in shifting the course of my destiny at any moment as is necessary or true for me. The taste of this freedom is so sweet that I want to share it with the world. My greatest hope is for others to encounter their own experiences of the infinitude of exploration available to us. For me this comes via movement, and this medium is what I work within to offer others a taste of freedom’s nectar. It is my greatest joy to be offer service in a way that also fills my own cup simultaneously. I can’t think of a better way to live. I welcome you to walk with me on this path and explore the true potential that I know you have inside you.

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