Before growing into the “Awakened Bear” she is known as today, Christine Lamothe began her journey as a playful, exuberant cub. Adopted at the young age of 3 months old, Christine found herself in a new home and experiencing a physically comfortable, yet turbulent upbringing, which ultimately led to her awakening as the soul-led leader she is today. 

As a young child, Christine felt like a beautiful container for this outstanding sense of energy and enthusiasm. Like most children her age, she enjoyed playing with all her might, using her imagination as much as her physicality to cultivate excitement and release all the energy she often felt was trapped in her body. She was often remarked as being “too loud”, “too energetic”, or plainly, “too much”. Christine frequently found herself alone—though that was rarely her desire—due to her high energy and even higher craving for adventure and expansion. Whether it was bookin’ it around her family cottage on a dirt bike, or going adventuring to nearby swamps to catch fish or explore the unknown depths of the water, Christine was always on the hunt for something that would leave her feeling less alone with her intemperate energy.

With high school came more opportunities to find a place for her high passions, but this search also led to a handful of difficulties in balancing Christine’s intense thirst for life. School assignments gave no nurturing to Christine’s internal flame, and she found herself wanting to connect more with her classmates and all the fun that could be had, rather than reading about others’ endeavors in textbooks and lectures. In addition to seeking energetic balance in herself, she was managing the equally harrowing environment at home, with an abusive older brother, a mother living with Paranoid Schizophrenia, and a father who was often away working on the railroad. It was in her search to find an internal equilibrium within an external environment that often lacked its own stability, that Christine first began looking at self-help resources to bring more balance and bliss into her life.

When she was 16 years old, Christine had the opportunity to meet her birth mother. Among the copious feelings of belonging, connection and reconciliation, Christine also experienced feelings that would soon become a fundamental part of her future work: unconditional love and understanding. Christine found that her birth mother accepted her, for exactly who she was at that beautifully challenging time of her life. Her birth mother introduced her to alternative lifestyles, deep self-care practices, worldly travels and the treasured gift of meeting her birth father and her huge family scattered throughout France, Switzerland and Sweden. All of these impactful introductions not only opened Christine's eyes to what could be and what could become, but what it felt like to be held and accepted for all that she was. All of this emotional expansion prompted more physical expansion for Christine, as well.

Though her adoptive parents weren’t very confident that any one sport or activity would hold her interest, Christine soon attracted one of the activities that would create an exhilarating new fork in the road of her journey: dance. It took a few persistent nudges from a friend to finally encourage Christine to participate in her first rave. Within a few minutes, she felt completely seen, welcomed, and appreciated for the fiery energy that was previously seen as a nuisance. Her body and mind were cracked open by the forceful beats and freely fun atmosphere of the rave space, and Christine learned how to expel and express her energy in a way that brought more joy and play into her day to day. In the height of the New Jack Swing and Hip-Hop movement of the 1990’s, Christine found another home in the rhythmic movement of her body. She could practically feel the energy being released with each rock, pop and lock. Her passion for b-girling—or as more popularly known, breakdancing—made way for new desires to flow into her awareness and express all of her excessive energy in a creative culture. It was through this introduction to dance that the world—and Christine’s opportunities within it—began to open up. 

Dance became the catalyst for how Christine would go on to seek out and form deep communities and tribes all around her. What she missed in her upbringing, she brought forth through her contagious energy and unwavering passion. After jumping into the breakdance community in her native city of Ottawa, Canada, in 1997, Christine began offering dance classes to young girls in town. Charging only $3 for two-hour sessions, Christine’s primary focus was always on making the art of dance available and accessible to all who desired to dive into motion with her. 

Christine continued to contribute heavily to the breakdance community in Ottawa and beyond, traveling to New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Detroit, Montreal and Toronto to compete and judge professional dance competitions. Her dance even brought her to France for one year where she performed with an esteemed dance company. She even had the opportunity to dine with the legendary DJ Premier in Paris! Doing what she did best—which was following her heart, passion and steadfast energy where it led her—Christine embarked on a yoga and meditation journey after being challenged by a friend to try Bikram in 1998. Again, she fell in love with the way her energy was able to be built, released and shared all through these powerful practices, and became hooked immediately. Yoga offered Christine the discipline that formerly eluded her and the energetic expression that she craved. After diving into the practices of Ashtanga, Kundalini, Kripalu, Vinyasa, Yin and Forrest yoga, Christine became a yoga teacher herself in 2011, continuing to stack up yoga certifications, one after another. Aho, another tribe was found and formed. 

Her yoga practices highlighted Christine’s interest and calling towards the self-help and personal transformation concepts formerly introduced to her by her birth mother. Christine followed her energetic pull and went on to study massage therapy, personal wellness and transformational leadership which magnified the already impactful shifts she was making within the communities and tribes she now belonged to. Through these practices, and through the communities that passed them on to her, Christine was cracked open, and began to learn that the strength in her softness was more powerful than the grit in her toughness. But Christine didn’t stop there, as she rarely stopped anywhere when she felt that familiar call towards more. She had been meditating and practicing yoga for some time now and realized that it was relatively easy to practice in the beautiful settings that were designed to support this modality, but that it might not be as easeful to get the full benefits of these practices in a place without such a foundation. So, after finding some solace one day—and reflecting on all the soul-led strides she had made in her community up to that point—she asked the Universe to send her somewhere that she could be of service: somewhere that she could put her energy and passion for building community to the test. It was then and there that she heard the Arctic call her name.

In total, Christine spent over 11 years in the Arctic region of Nunavut, Canada and surrounding areas. In this chilly, vast and expansive space, Christine put focus on passionately contributing to the wellbeing of people throughout the communities she explored. Drawing on her diverse set of skills, abilities and certifications, Christine shared her unique energy to the land that became her new home. Beginning with teaching breakdancing to youth, Christine continued on to run multiple hip-hop programs for at-risk children and teens, even resulting in a professional team trip to showcase Nunavut culture at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics and the opening performance at the G7 Summit. With her background in yoga and meditation, Christine followed that illustrious energetic pull of hers to create the yoga and wellness studio, Saimavik in 2014. Through this endeavor, she learned so much more than opening a studio; she learned how to gut and rebuild water damaged architecture into a wholesome healing space, how to train other yoga instructors, how to write effective business grants, and above all, how to ask for help from her community. The studio became more than just a learning environment for Christine, it became an oasis of wellness and transformation in Nunavut. 

The more Christine taught and surrounded herself with wellness, the more areas she saw that could use this love, attention and positive energy. Seeing that Nunavut had the highest smoking rate in all of Canada, Christine shared her time and creativity with the Tobacco Has No Place Here Campaign which helped teach youth about the negative effects that tobacco products have on their bodies and minds. She also offered her time and spirit to working with air search and rescue teams, looking for lost planes, helicopters and people in the harsh Arctic terrain. But even with the taxing nature of her endeavors, Christine always found opportunities to explore, move and learn. During her time in the cold climates of Nunavut, she spent much of her journey outdoors, resulting in her learning how to dog sled, build igloos, hunt and even sew her own parkas and boots. With all of her incredible, bold actions and impacts, Christine never forgot how to have fun and how to play full out. The 11 years she spent sharing her light and magnetic energy to the people of the Canadian Arctic was the illuminating chapter of her life that allowed Christine to finally step into the being she was always told was “too loud", “too energetic” or “too much”. She had used that resplendent energy source of hers to share light, love and understanding to others who experienced the feelings of being caged and held back from what made them shine. It was through her embracing the energetic cub that came on this Earth to learn and play that she grew into the bear that was now here to guide, love and awaken.

After feeling the call to return to Ottawa for higher personal expansion and to better support her adoptive mother’s health, Christine returned to her home with a host of new experiences, triumphs, and lessons under her belt. However, she came home to find she was stepping into a new environment once again. With her beloved adoptive father passing away and the end of a relationship she once saw as supportive, Christine felt the similar pings of loneliness she experienced as a child. But it wasn’t long at all before she recognized the value in every single one of her experiences that brought her to this exact moment. Now, older, wiser and awakened, Christine knew she was not alone, and that she would never feel alone again; she had herself, she had her mother, she had countless tribes she had built and fostered through her passions. Through coming home, Christine reached the peak of the mountain where she could see the road she traveled to get there. It was a road paved in ebullient energy, honest revelations, meaningful challenges and glittering pebbles of love. Christine knows it was the complete host of her experiences that built her resilience, passion and abilities that make her the role model she is today. And she does not take this role lightly, for she is constantly diving deeper and deeper within herself to unravel the beauty within in order to ensure that the wisdom she shares with others is as pure as possible. 

Christine’s mission is—and has always been—to spread joy and embodied play to a world that has become convinced of its dissolution. She lives by the belief and deep knowing that each human being is a radiant force, and that we are meant to shine together as one big, global family of unified love and liberated fun. Through her years on this Earth, Christine has created a life of opportunity, excitement, growth and play and she has that bursting ball of youthful soul energy to thank for it. She teaches others to honor their unique energy and use it as a catalyst for inspiration rather than social proof of their separation from the tribe. What has emerged from Christine's utilization of her comprehensive talents, passions and experience is her mission to inspire other souls to the most authentic embodiment of themselves. And through this, the Awakened Bear, and its vision for the future, has emerged.