Drawn to Yoga to rehabilitate from a dance injury, Michelle Chua experienced its power to align body and mind with the unconditional love that lies within, eliciting benefits beyond physical healing. While volunteer teaching in Ghana, West Africa, and later in Costa Rica for over a year, Michelle developed a regular yoga practice and realized it can empower a joyful vibrant life when applied with integrity and consistency. After returning to the USA in 2010, she graduated from YogaWorks' 200-hour yoga teacher training and transitioned from California-credentialed schoolteacher with an Art emphasis (having graduated with a BA in Liberal Studies from CA State University, Northridge) and professional dancer to a life path sharing yoga with diverse communities and evolving in her own practice, since attending her first yoga class in 2001.

Michelle’s compassionate teaching style nurtures a clear understanding of physical alignment paired with mindful breathing to facilitate focus and meditation among diverse people. She shares insights on ways to integrate Yoga in daily life for inner and outer peace and wellbeing and provides space for self-inquiry and personalizing asana (physical) practice within group sessions.  

In 2021, Michelle earned a 300-hour Yoga Teacher certification in Yoga Psychology, and in 2023, her second degree Reiki Energy Healing Certification. She has trained in guiding meditation, offering accessible Yoga for different bodies and abilities, mindful leadership, trauma-informed yoga, skillful asana sequencing, dance as moving meditation, Yoga lifestyle and nature-immersed Yoga. Integrating her passion for creativity, nature and facilitating life-enriching community experiences, she founded Root 2 Rise Yoga, through which she guides Hike + Yoga, Soul Movement (intuitive dance), arts-infused Play*shops and wellness retreats locally and abroad. She currently facilitates Yoga throughout Los Angeles in various studios, weekly online, for private clients and throughout inspiring places in nature.  She intuits that cultivating a loving relationship with Mama Earth is essential to individual and collective healing and thriving.  Find her donation-based weekly online classes here or her LA Yoga-in-Nature events here.  Since 2010, she has been offering community yoga classes by donation in the spirit of community and inclusivity.

Always a lover of dance, she continues to freelance lightly as a professional dancer.  
She enjoys her free time traveling and immersing in world cultures, dancing, trailrunning, hiking in nature and savoring a meal at her favorite plant-based restaurants.  

Connect with Michelle via email here, on IG @root2riseyoga or FB here.

Running in Nature in Her Native Country--the Philippines, 2019

Volunteer Teaching in Ghana, Africa, 2008

Volunteer Teaching in Costa Rica, 2009

Feedback about Michelle's Yoga Offerings...

Michelle has a way of making you feel like you've come home in her classes. Not to a space or a location - but to yourself. Beyond providing a personalized critique of my practice, she continually offers a philosophical structure for personal inquiry and growth. 
-Craig Havens (West Covina, CA)

Thank you so much for teaching my students yoga.  You had an incredibly positive impact on them as evidenced by their written reflections:
  One student wrote,  I felt well-instructed, confident in my poses and really empowered afterwards.
  Another explained, I was so focused on the movements and felt each of them in my body.  In fact, I have never felt so true to my emotions.
  Another described, The peppermint oil, soothing sounds of rain, darkness and the sound of my own breathing enveloped me, and in that moment, I felt grateful for the chance to experience something like yoga.

With much gratitude,
Catherine (Campbell Hall High School, Studio City, CA)