Lesley’s Story

Lesley’s yoga journey first began in 2006 when she started practicing classic 26 and 2 hot yoga in Portland, Oregon.  Her first class was incredibly challenging, and she discovered how tight and restricted her body was from all of her athletic pursuits (prior to discovering yoga, she spent years playing competitive sports), and she decided to take one of these classes every day, which changed her body in ways she never expected.  A trip to Bali in 2012 allowed her to completely immerse herself in all different types of yoga, and it was there that she discovered her love for the vinyasa flow style of asana practice.  She spent a few years training for and competing with USA Yoga, placing 9th in the country at the U.S. Nationals in May of 2015.  The second year of competing, she underwent some injuries and realized that pushing her body in this way was unhealthy, and it made her re-think what her yoga practice was all about.

  In the summer of 2015, she traveled to India to do her first yoga teacher training in Rishikesh, and she came back with a renewed sense of what it means to practice yoga. She learned the importance of meditation to balance out the intense physical asanas, and she gained further insight on how it is possible to maintain true inner peace in even the most chaotic environment.  In 2016, she furthered her education with an Ashtanga Vinyasa 200 Hour training with All Yoga Thailand and has incorporated all that she has learned into both her teaching style and her own practice.  Since moving to Los Angles, California, she earned a certification in Mat Pilates through Equinox and also performs as a professional contortionist under the name Lyra Star.  The depth of knowledge that she has gained over the years about how to train the body to be both strong and flexible has come from her own experiences physically and mentally through these different forms of movement.