Restore • Rebalance • Renew
A space to breathe again
I’m Stephanie Colwell. I teach Qigong (breath, movement and stillness) to people who are carrying more than they can comfortably hold.
The name
Why Pomsoul
People ask me about the name, and the answer is the truest thing I can tell you about this business. It didn’t come from a branding exercise. It came during a meditation.
“I saw a pomegranate with each seed representing a soul. The seeds were the people I would teach, each unique and individual, yet connected within one whole.”
A pomegranate is hundreds of separate seeds held inside one fruit. Each one whole in itself. None of them alone.
That is what a Pomsoul class actually is. Everyone arrives carrying their own week: their own stiffness, their own worry, their own reason for showing up that day. Nobody is asked to leave that at the door. And for half an hour, all of it is held in the same quiet space, breathing at the same pace.
So when people tell me they came for the exercises and stayed for something they can’t quite name, I know exactly what they mean. You are not joining a fitness program. You are joining a whole.
How I got here
I didn’t find this practice from a book
I have spent thirty years as a teacher. I know what it is to give everything you have to other people all day, and then come home with nothing left over for yourself. I know how long you can carry that before you notice what it is costing you.
I found Qigong during a period of burnout. Not as a hobby, and not as self-improvement. I simply needed something that would let me put myself back down. What I found was slower and gentler than anything I expected to help, and it worked. It gave me my breath back. Then, slowly, it gave me the rest of me back too. That is still how I think of this practice: bringing the mind and body back home.
I don’t teach Qigong because I read about it. I teach it because it put me back together.
I am a certified Qigong instructor, and Pomsoul is where I now teach. It’s based in Halton Hills, Ontario, and the practice runs online year-round.
What actually happens
Half an hour, and nothing to get right
Qigong is gentle standing movement paired with breath, finished with a few minutes of stillness. The movements are slow, repetitive and easy to follow the very first time you see them. There is no sequence to memorize and no level to reach.
What you don’t need
- No mat, no equipment and no floor work: you stay on your feet, or in a chair if you prefer.
- No experience. Genuinely none. Most people in the room started exactly where you are.
- No flexibility, no fitness level, no particular age or body.
- No changing, no getting sweaty, and nowhere you have to drive to.
- Your camera off, if that’s what makes it possible to show up.
What it asks of you
Thirty minutes, and a willingness to move slowly. That’s all. Every movement I teach can be adapted, softened or done seated, and I will tell you that out loud in every class, so you never have to be the person who asks.
Presence over pressure. Healing over hustle. That isn’t a slogan I chose because it sounded nice; it’s the rule I teach by. There is no perfect posture here and nothing to push through.
And if you like to see the science first, so do I. I keep an honest page of the research behind this practice: only what studies actually found, in plain language, with every source linked.
Who practises with me
People carrying something
My students are in their thirties through their seventies. Some are recovering: from illness, from injury, from a stretch of life that took more than it gave. Some are on their feet all day, some are at a desk all day, and quite a few have tried yoga and found it wasn’t for them.
What they have in common is stress that has settled somewhere in the body: a jaw that won’t unclench, shoulders up around the ears, a mind that keeps working long after the day has stopped. Qigong is unusually good at reaching that, and unusually forgiving about how you arrive.
And they stay. Most of the people practising with me this season have practised with me before. That is the part I’m proudest of, and it isn’t because of the exercises.
A word from a student
“I never would have thought that I would have loved Qigong as much as I do. It's such a deliciously magical practice that makes me feel like I'm cleansing my energy. I love Stephanie's classes. Her warm, loving guidance is such a nourishing way to start my mornings.”
Practising with me
How it works
Pomsoul runs in four seasonal sessions a year, following the turn of the seasons: roughly forty-eight weeks of practice, with a week off at the end of summer and two weeks before Christmas. Live classes are on Zoom, Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Three For Free
No cost, no card
Three live classes, so you can find out what this feels like before you decide anything. Most people know by the second one.
Season Membership
Full season · from $230
Every live class in the season, plus a recording of each one to practise with in between.
Fall Recordings
On your own time · $90
Every class of the season, recorded, for the weeks you cannot be there live or would rather practise when it suits you.
Start here
Come and try three classes
They’re free, there’s nothing to cancel afterwards, and you don’t need to bring or know anything at all.
info@pomsoul.com · (905) 299-7636
Halton Hills, Ontario · Classes online, year-round
