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)
Mary Michelle Chua
Certified Yoga Instructor Since 2010, RYT
Passionate about movement from and for the soul, Michelle Chua sees yoga as the practice of union between heart wisdom, bodily expression, a centered mind and the world, including nature, your surroundings and its diverse beings. Valuing freedom and happiness, she celebrates life with love: dancing to live drums, meditation-running in nature, eating delicious plant-based cuisine, laughing with loved ones, traveling and discovering various cultures, and most recently, playing with her newborn nephew and his uplifting pureness.
Michelle entered her first yoga class in 2001, and earned her teaching certification in 2010, after being inspired to share yoga’s life-transformative benefits she experienced during challenging times: a yearlong recovery from a dance performance injury, grieving the loss of loved ones and volunteer-teaching English in underprivileged schools for 14 months in Ghana and Costa Rica. Her previous 7-year career as a credentialed schoolteacher influences her clearly facilitating yoga for different ability levels and effectively organizing culturally rich international yoga retreats, arts-integrated meditation workshops, wellness-centered community events and private and public yoga classes through her community business, Root 2 Rise Yoga.
Having earned her Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Studies and Multiple-Subject Teaching Credential with a Concentration in Art, Michelle encourages exploring creativity with the spirit of your courageous, curious and appreciative inner child. She believes that genuinely living yoga empowers your ability to root into your uniquely beautiful inner Self and our universal interconnectedness to rise together into our fullest expression of being. Devoted to her personal yoga practice and guiding others through theirs, she continues to create opportunities to learn, evolve and share treasures along her life journey.
Michelle entered her first yoga class in 2001, and earned her teaching certification in 2010, after being inspired to share yoga’s life-transformative benefits she experienced during challenging times: a yearlong recovery from a dance performance injury, grieving the loss of loved ones and volunteer-teaching English in underprivileged schools for 14 months in Ghana and Costa Rica. Her previous 7-year career as a credentialed schoolteacher influences her clearly facilitating yoga for different ability levels and effectively organizing culturally rich international yoga retreats, arts-integrated meditation workshops, wellness-centered community events and private and public yoga classes through her community business, Root 2 Rise Yoga.
Having earned her Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Studies and Multiple-Subject Teaching Credential with a Concentration in Art, Michelle encourages exploring creativity with the spirit of your courageous, curious and appreciative inner child. She believes that genuinely living yoga empowers your ability to root into your uniquely beautiful inner Self and our universal interconnectedness to rise together into our fullest expression of being. Devoted to her personal yoga practice and guiding others through theirs, she continues to create opportunities to learn, evolve and share treasures along her life journey.
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 (North Hollywood, CA)
