Avenue Calgary — January 2018

60 avenueJANUARY.18

WORKOUT

standout fashion sense, her reams of energy

and her ability to wrest every bit of effort from

her students.

This Tuesday evening Mehalko wears a vintage

cargo jacket tied around her waist, along with

fringed moccasin booties, Lululemon leggings

and a crop top. She sports a series of small tattoos

along both arms: the coordinates to her grandma’s

house, a cartoonish version of the evil eye symbol

topped with big flirty lashes and a dainty skull

on the inside of one wrist.

Raised in southern Alberta, Mehalko, 36, began

working as an interior designer in Calgary in her

early 20s. During that time, a co-worker con-

vinced her to try a yoga class. Within months,

she was a seven-days-a-week practitioner of yoga.

She also reconnected with an old boyfriend,

Brad Mehalko, a professional hockey player who

had returned to Alberta in the off-season. Now

married, the pair dated long distance for a year

before she moved to Norway to join him. Mehalko

found work at a design firm there, but missed her

social circle in Calgary, so she sought out yoga

studios for community. “I’d have no idea what

they were saying,” she says. “I’d look around

and try to do what they were doing.”

Over the next years, Brad’s hockey career took

the couple to Germany and Finland. Mehalko

continued to do contract design work and sought

out group fitness classes in each new locale. “No

matter where we went, the fitness community

was a community I could connect with,” she says.

“It was something I knew, a place I was comfort-

able. Movement is movement, whether it’s in

English, or Greek or whatever.”

The couple moved to the Los Angeles area in

the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis. At

the time, American firms didn’t have enough

work for established American designers, much

less for a newly arrived Canadian. So Melhalko

immersed herself in the fitness community of

southern California — a mecca for yoga and

spin enthusiasts.

She became certified to teach yoga and spin

and found teaching a refreshing change from the

material world of design. “This wasn’t about stuff,”

she says. It was about spending an hour or so with

people, just turning on the music and moving.”

“NO MATTER WHERE
WE WENT, THE FITNESS
COMMUNITY WAS A
COMMUNITY I COULD
CONNECT WITH. IT WAS
SOMETHING I KNEW,
A PLACE I WAS COM-
FORTABLE. MOVEMENT
IS MOVEMENT, WHETHER
IT’S IN ENGLISH, OR
GREEK OR WHATEVER.”