Today we’d like to introduce you to Kandice Shaw.
Hi Kandice, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I don’t think I ever set out to build what Sangha has become in some perfectly linear way. Like most meaningful things, it has unfolded one devoted step at a time.
It began with a genuine hunger to understand the deeper layers of healing, the kind that goes beyond symptom management and into the root of who we are and how we live. I was drawn early to yoga, Ayurveda, Reiki, herbalism, ritual, and the ancient wisdom traditions that remind us: you are more than your productivity. More than your past. More than the roles you perform for other people.
Over the years, I studied with teachers around the world and gave myself to the practices that helped me feel more rooted, more resourced, and more honestly connected to my own life. And eventually, that personal devotion became professional devotion.
I became a yoga teacher, then a teacher of yoga teachers. An Ayurvedic counselor, a Reiki Master Teacher, and the creator of Cardinal Alchemy and the Platinum Triangle Process, a framework for understanding the relationship between body, mind, and energy. Along the way, Sangha by Ritual Collective became the physical and energetic home for all of it.
What started as classes has grown into an entire living ecosystem: a brick-and-mortar studio, online yoga classes, a 200-hour yoga teacher training, Reiki certifications, retreats, continuing education, mentorship, and community spaces where people can study, practice, rest, and return to themselves again and again.
My new book, The Cardinal Alchemist, feels like a natural extension of that whole journey, a gathering of what I’ve been teaching, living, and refining into a small but potent guide for people who are ready to stop outsourcing their alignment and begin doing the essential work of lasting transformation.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Not exactly. And I think it’s important to be honest about that.
From the outside, people sometimes see the finished version of something: the studio, the retreat photos, the full class calendar, the book, and assume there must have been a clean path to get there. But the truth is that building something meaningful often asks you to meet yourself over and over again, sometimes in ways you weren’t prepared for.
There have been seasons of real financial pressure, exhaustion, self-doubt, and learning through mistakes. There have been times I had to trust the vision before there was much external proof that it would work. Times when I had to refine the model, let go of offerings that no longer fit, have uncomfortable conversations, ask for more support, and grow into a level of leadership I didn’t always feel ready for.
Running a studio also asks a kind of devotion that most people don’t see. There is the visible work: teaching, writing, holding space, facilitating transformation, and then everything behind it: the cleaning, the marketing, the bookkeeping, the repairing, the endless adapting. The continued showing up with integrity even when it’s hard.
But I’ve come to believe deeply that the road does not need to be smooth to be sacred.
So much of my work now is rooted in exactly that truth. We don’t become who we are by avoiding discomfort. We become who we are by learning to meet our lives with more clarity, more steadiness, and more devotion. That’s the heart of Cardinal Alchemy, and it’s not just a teaching. It’s something I’ve had to live.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
At the heart of everything is a simple but profound belief: true well-being requires us to tend to the whole self.
I teach this through the Platinum Triangle: body, mind, and energy. When any one of those three is chronically ignored, we eventually feel it. We may look successful from the outside while feeling disconnected on the inside. We may be doing all the “right” things and still feel scattered, depleted, or misaligned. The Platinum Triangle gives people a practical map for understanding why, and what to actually do about it.
My work brings together yoga, Ayurveda, Reiki, nervous system care, energetic bodywork, philosophy, ritual, and self-inquiry in a way that is grounded, practical, and deeply human. At Sangha, we offer in-person classes, live online yoga practices, Reiki certification trainings, a 200-hour yoga teacher training, retreats, continuing education, and membership options that support people in building a real, consistent relationship with practice.
I also host a podcast called The Platinum Triangle, which has become a natural extension of all of it. Each episode is a space to explore yoga, Ayurveda, Reiki, and the practice of living through the lens of the Platinum Triangle. It started as a way to support the community we already had, and it has grown into a way of reaching people who are just beginning to find this work. If you’ve ever wanted to understand what a more integrated, embodied life could feel like, it’s a good place to start.
The online offerings have become especially meaningful to me, because they allow people to stay connected to the work even when life is full. When they’re traveling, when they live outside our area, or when they simply need the comfort and intimacy of practicing from home. That accessibility matters. Transformation shouldn’t be locked behind geography.
I’m known for teaching yoga as a full system, not just a physical practice. I care deeply about honoring the tradition while making the teachings genuinely applicable to modern life. My students are householders. They have jobs, families, businesses, grief, ambition, joy, complexity. So the practice has to be something they can actually live, not just perform on a mat for an hour and then abandon at the door.
That’s also at the core of The Cardinal Alchemist. The book isn’t about escaping your life. It’s about tending to what your life revolves around so that you become more rooted, more sovereign, and more available for the life you’re actually here to live. Your energy is your legacy, and this book is an invitation to treat it that way.
What am I most proud of ?The community. Without question.
I’m proud that Sangha is not a place where people take a class and leave unchanged. It has become a space where people build real relationships, return to themselves through practice, study deeply, support one another, and carry the work beyond the mat and into their actual lives.
I’m proud of every student who has moved through teacher training and found their own voice. Proud of every person who came to a Reiki session feeling disconnected and left remembering something essential about themselves. Proud of the retreat spaces we’ve created, the ones where people can soften, be honest, be witnessed, and rediscover parts of themselves they thought were gone.
I’m also proud that Sangha has grown without losing its soul. That’s not a small thing. Growth can be seductive in ways that pull you away from what made the work meaningful in the first place. There’s always a temptation to get louder, faster, trendier, more polished in a way that disconnects the offering from its roots. I’ve tried to let Sangha grow in a way that still feels intimate, thoughtful, and genuinely rooted in practice. Rooted, enduring change: that’s the standard I hold for the studio, and it’s the standard I hold for myself.
This year, that sense of community has expanded in a way that moves me deeply. We’ve connected Sangha to a Human Trafficking Awareness initiative supporting women and children in the red-light districts of Kolkata, India. Throughout the year, we’re creating opportunities for our community to come together for this cause: fundraisers, gatherings, shared intention. Our goal is to raise $5,000, and we’ve already reached $1,500. I’m so proud of that. We have always given back in the ways we could, but this year we are braiding it into the fabric of Sangha in a fuller, more powerful way. It has become one of the most beautiful things to witness: a community of practitioners showing up for people they may never meet, because they understand that care, like energy, moves outward.
And personally, I’m proud of finishing The Cardinal Alchemist. Writing a book requires a different kind of courage. It asks you to get very clear on what you believe, what you stand for, and what you’re here to say, and then say it, in your own words, for anyone to encounter. This book feels like both a milestone and a threshold. A distillation of years of practice, teaching, and becoming.
What sets me apart?
I think it’s the way I hold depth and accessibility together at the same time, without sacrificing either.
I love ancient wisdom, and I also love practicality. I love philosophy, and I also care whether you’re sleeping well, eating in a way that supports you, speaking honestly in your relationships, and managing your energy with intention. I don’t believe transformation has to be dramatic to be meaningful. Often, it is the daily tending that most changes a life.
My approach is rooted in tradition, but it isn’t rigid. It’s spiritual, but not performative. It’s grounded in the body without reducing wellness to fitness. It honors the energetic body without abandoning common sense. And it holds space for the full, complex, sometimes contradictory range of being a human being.
I also think people feel that I’m genuinely walking the path alongside them. I’m not teaching from a pedestal. I’m teaching from lived experience, deep study, and ongoing devotion. I’m still practicing. Still learning. Still becoming. And I think that shows.
That’s a central thread in Cardinal Alchemy: the understanding that we are not trying to become flawless. We are learning to become more honest, more aligned, more resourced, and more devoted to the kind of change that actually endures. That’s what separates this work from a trend. And it’s what I hope people feel when they step into Sangha, open the book, or show up to an online class for the first time.
We’d love to hear about how you think about risk taking?
I don’t think of risk as recklessness. I think of it absolutely necessary. And inevitable really. Especially anytime we follow our heart.
There have been plenty of risks along the way: opening and continuing to sustain a brick-and-mortar studio, creating trainings from the ground up, expanding into retreats, investing significantly in my own education, trusting my voice enough to write a book, and building a livelihood around work that can be genuinely hard to explain in a sentence.
There’s also the emotional risk of visibility. When your work is personal, spiritual, and rooted in your own lived experience, you’re not just offering a service. You’re allowing people to see what you care about. What you believe in. What you’ve built your life around. That kind of exposure can feel deeply vulnerable.
But I’ve learned that not taking the risk carries its own consequences.
It is risky to abandon the work that is calling you. Risky to stay quiet when you have something real to say. Risky to build a life around what looks acceptable from the outside while ignoring what feels true on the inside. The cost of that kind of safety is enormous, and it’s one most people pay slowly, without ever naming it.
For me, risk has gradually become less about one dramatic leap and more about listening closely to what is asking to be born through my life, and then taking the next honest step toward it. Sometimes that means moving slowly. Sometimes it means acting before I feel completely ready. Sometimes it means trusting that clarity doesn’t always precede action. Sometimes it arrives through it.
Sangha exists because I kept taking the next honest step.
The Cardinal Alchemist exists for the same reason.
And my hope is that everyone who finds this work, whether through the book, an online class, a Reiki training, a retreat, or a practice in the studio, feels invited to take their own next honest step, too. Not because they need to become someone else, but because there is already something essential within them asking to be tended, refined, and fully lived.
Pricing:
- 200hr Yoga Teacher Training – Online
- Live Yoga Instruction – Online & Inperson
- Reiki Trainings
- Cardinal Alchemy Coaching
- Retreats
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.sanghayogaandwellness.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kandiceshaw/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Sanghabyritualcollective
- Other: The Platinum Triangle Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/3gPuON3GgTfBBcBbHWShgT
