Angelique Lele
Angelique is a yoga teacher, actor, and dancer. She received her 200hr certificate in 2007 at the Center for Yoga in Michigan with Jonny Kest and has been teaching ever since.
My Story
I was born in Downpatrick, County Down, Northern Ireland. We lived in a lot of different places before I came to the United States when I was six. It’s almost like I was an army brat, but I have no military affiliation. My dad is a retired surgeon now. At that time, he was doing his residency, so he had 6-month rotations all over Northern Ireland. Then, when he became a doctor, he was just trying to find a place where he could raise a family because Belfast in the 70s was not it. My Mom, my Dad, my brother, and I finally made it to Michigan in 1975, and I’ve been in the States ever since. But before that, it was Ireland, England, Barbados, back to England, back to Ireland short stint in Canada, and then America. And I wouldn’t change it for anything.
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I’m an actor, aerialist, yoga teacher, dancer… so far. I helped to found an all-women’s theater company called Toxic Shock Stage in Los Angeles in the early aughts with a couple of my best friends. We wrote and produced all of our own material and had a great time for a while.
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Things with our theater company were winding down, and I was looking for something new. I started doing trapeze and silks as a workout. Over the next few years, as I got better, I began to teach and then to perform. I joined up with an edgy, fun circus troop called Cirque Berzerk for a short and wonderful time and learned a lot.
I moved to Minneapolis after LA because they also had a great circus arts community as well as a thriving theater and art scene. I connected with a group of people and started performing there with a group called Blue Phoenix Circus Troop and then I also did some sketch and cabaret. All the while I was building my yoga business and training to become a massage therapist.
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In 2012, I fell while I was training on my trapeze. I broke my back and became paralyzed, and my life changed forever. In Minneapolis, I had been practicing yoga, vinyasa, ashtanga, and hot yoga. I knew I was gonna be giving up a lot after I fell, but I didn’t want to give up yoga, and it turns out I didn’t have to. I was introduced to Matthew Sanford and Mind Body Solutions, and they changed the way I was able to look at my body and able to adapt yoga to my body.
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Oh, don’t worry I rebelled a little in the beginning, as is my way. But then I came around. Regardless of how I practiced, I started teaching yoga within about three months of my injury and I started teaching adaptive yoga from 2020 on with MBS.
