Mason Steele, born 10/04/1994 in Fairfax, VA. My journey has been an authentically ORGANIC flow, following my curiosities into deeper personal and professional study.
I played sports my whole life and begun working out in a gym by age 10. The prep school I attended required we play 3 SPORTS-per-year, and lift weights! Cool, I know. (11-18 years old).
While pursuing a B.S. Business Administration from the College of Charleston (2013-2017) I began training/leading some friends in the GYM; coaching them and teaching them basic movements.
Around the same time, I began practicing YOGA, fall 2014.
I really enjoyed Yoga and signed up to work once per week as the cleaner and towel folder (KARMA yogi) to earn a free membership.
Over time I became proficient at the Asana practice and people naturally began to ask me questions; which sparked my curiosity. I really liked helping my friends in the gym and I was beginning to enjoy showing people how to PROGRESS into deeper postures.
Ready for the next step, I became an ASSISTANT teacher. I would walk around during class offering hands on adjustments and some quiet verbal cues.
It was fall of my senior year and I really did not know what I wanted to do with my life. I knew I didn’t want to work behind a desk, sitting all day ruining my body. I knew I loved working with people. I was thriving in the Food n Bev industry and that’s when a friend at the time, Candace, tried to get me to sign up for a TEACHER TRAINING.
I wasn’t a FULL YES right away. I had not thought about teaching and really didn’t have aspirations for it… But she was persistent, and as I thought on it longer I realized how much I enjoyed working with my friends in the gym and fellow practitioners in the studio; the lifestyle it would allow and the global potential being a yoga teacher would unlock …
So, I decided to sign up for the Winter training and by Spring of my senior year (March 2017) I was teaching at my first yoga STUDIO. Redux Yoga
Soon after I began teaching at Charleston Community Yoga as well. I was still in the Food n Bev industry. I wasn’t making enough MONEY teaching yoga and I enjoyed the social aspects of FnB.
My friends who I was working with in the gym suggested I become a PERSONAL TRAINER! I practically already was one, to them at least. I loved the work and I figured this would allow me to make more money per hour that most yoga studios would pay per class.
So I bought and read the book, signed up for the test, and bam; Congratulations, you’re officially a personal trainer. It was painfully easy; partially because I had lots of knowledge, partially because the NASM test is lacking in difficulty or creativity.
What really mattered were my years spent in the gym and playing so many different sports. I picked up great exercises and form from GREAT coaches along the way. And movement has always been a medicine for me. Dance comes naturally; fluidity and grace are second nature. At an early age I discovered a FREEDOM in and through my body. Now, I was beginning to share that with others in a professional setting.
I started working at a gym where I was already lifting in June of 2018. Exemplar Fitness. I pray I never forget those trainers and the FAMILY we had there. I recently (May 2025) went back to Charleston and got to see their new facility Ethos Athletic Club. I’m so happy for their evolution.
I was finding success working with my clients and helping them progress in the gym. BUT, I knew something was MISSING.
We can teach someone how to have perfect form on a lift, but if they go home and eat a pizza and drink 6 beers, they will quickly reach a PLATEAU and soon after that begin to decline.
Through a podcast, I head of Paul Chek. My life was forever shifted as I heard this man speak. HE GETS IT. Paul, amongst many things, is an authentic Holistic Lifestyle Coach and practitioner. He practices what he preaches. Paul has created powerful and simple methodologies to help yourself and your clients become more well rounded. His goal, and mine, is to help people become healthy enough to follow their dreams.
So, without calling myself a HOLISTIC LIFESTYLE COACH I started weaving in Paul’s teachings with my clients. I myself was still needing to integrate his suggestions in my own life and so my clients and I went on our journeys side by side. Setting goals, failing, trying new things, exploring, experimenting, holding each other accountable etc. My Charleston clients will always have a special place in my heart and memory. I was able to develop myself as a person and coach through their reflections. We ALL got better.
As my mind was opening about many things, and I was coming into my own as a MAN. I knew there was more to yoga than a Vinyasa Asana practice. I had tried other modalities like Yin, Kundalini, Nidra, Hatha, Bikram, Ashtanga, various breath practices etc. Of all those, KUNDALINI yoga really sparked my interest. I loved the classes and the instructor at Mission Yoga, another studio where I was teaching.
After 4 years in the Food n Bev industry, I was out. I was teaching at 3 studios and 2 gyms! Health and Wellness now earned me a LIVING! I was stoked.
I signed up for a kundalini training in the fall of 2019. It was much more intense than my first training. Quick synopsis: Kundalini yoga produces a response in the body! Something ALWAYS happens! It challenges your mental, emotional and spiritual bodies. Asana, I feel, is lacking that depth of experience.
I was asked to teach on my first INTERNATIONAL retreat in November of 2019! In Panama! My younger self’s vision of me as a global yoga teacher was coming true…
My life was SHIFTING away from teaching 12-15 yoga classes per week (at my peak). I was a full time personal trainer and more of a part time yoga instructor.
Unsure how to fully own my energy while in service, I became a little burnt out on working 10 hour days in the gym. I also had this TASTE of a life on the road, teaching yoga.
So, I left for Nicaragua at the start of February 2020, I landed at a hotel in Nicaragua as their resident yoga teacher. 7 weeks later… COVID happened.
Even though my dream of life on the road was thrashed, I made myself a VOW; that I would get back out there someday and try again!
After traveling around the USA backpacking and car camping in national forests… thinking covid would be max a few months… I ended up in Santa Barbara, California ready to continue my health and wellness career.
Even though lockdowns were VERY strict in CA, in September of 2020, I began training people at a gym (The Base) and teaching outdoor yoga classes for a local studio (Yoga Soup). Instead of working in Food n Bev to help supplement income, I worked for an airstream refurbishing company. All and all, life was good.
I knew I needed to keep learning and my girlfriend at the time asked me to do a REIKI Level 1 & 2 course. She had received lots of healing from that modality so I thought, “what the heck, why not?!”. I had many powerful experiences receiving and “giving” reiki; I am a fan! If you believe in it, it works better.
Everything I was implementing from Paul Chek’s system made me stand out as a trainer and coach. In the fall of 2021 I went through the second level of his HLC training course.
By February of 2022, having “made it” through the plandemic, and successfully re-established myself into the matrix, I was ready to leave it all behind again and set off on TAKE TWO my international teaching journey.
I landed in Costa Rica, working at a beautiful eco resort near the Arenal Volcano. Rancho Margot After 2 months I went and worked at a few studios in Santa Teresa, CR.
More and more people were talking about TANTRA. I had dated a woman 3 years prior who had introduced me to a few books and concepts. They shifted the way I related to myself and others. I met two Tantricas in two months, both of whom recommended an upcoming training. So, I signed up for the 9 Day Men’s Tantric Initiation course to deepen my reservoir.
Ready to keep going into myself, I signed up for a DARK retreat in Mexico. While traveling to the business a hurricane hit and destroyed part of the building. Safe to say, everyone was okay and I wasn’t going to be sitting in the dark.
A friend was in Peru so I bought a ticket and went to a 10 day retreat with her. We IMMERSED ourself in the Peruvian healing modalities. Feeling the call to go further, I reached out to a few companies and was about to go live and work at a Retreat center in Iquitos.
However, feeling my WESTERN mind kick in, having not “worked” for money in 2 months, I decided to take a job in Morocco teaching yoga at a few studios. This was one of the worst decisions of my life (another was not staying in Nicaragua when the lock downs started). I found the Moroccan people in the North to be very judgmental and unfriendly. I only made it three weeks before bailing to go work on a yacht in Ibiza.
This I knew, was also a temporary situation, but luckily I had work lined up in Thailand. I taught yoga for two months at a Maui Thai camp in the middle of the country. Still buzzing, literally, from the Tantra world and my own personal EXPLORATIONS; it turned out that the author of many books I had read, Mantak Chia, had a retreat center in Thailand.
I signed up for his 2 week TAOISM and Sacred Sexuality Retreat. It was a blessing to get to sit with someone considered a Master of their field.
My time on the road was getting tiresome and I knew I wanted some GROUNDING; to be in a place for more than 1-3 months. I grew up going to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. It’s a magical place in the mountains of Wyoming; pinched between a few national parks and protected land refuges.
So I applied to be a snowboard instructor at the mountain where I learned to ride, JHMR, and reached out to some studios and gyms. I found Medicine Wheel Wellness, now named The Sacred Athlete, and all the PIECES started to fit together. I had been the strength guy at yoga studios and the yoga guy at gyms. This was a place where I could be more EMBODIED in all my offerings. I was finally in a place where a Holistic view to wellness was the normal! Additionally, because of all the corrective work I learned through Paul Chek, a physical therapist, I began offering PTA under the license of Excel Physical Therapy.
In March of 2023, 4+ months into my time in Jackson, I was hired to help facilitate a Men’s Retreat in San Ramón, Costa Rica. I was offering workshops on YIN-YANG balance and daily yoga and meditation classes. Some time in the sun was much appreciated during the coldest winter of my life, literally.
In May of 2023, Francine, The owner of Medicine Wheel Wellness, and I hosted a Medicine Wheel Retreat in Ubud, Bali at SOULSHINE. I was offering daily yoga and meditation classes with workshops in Taoism and basic Qi Gong.
Continued Education is very important to me. I knew I wanted to keep following the path that Paul Chek has created. (The Chek Academy) I could feel myself building momentum and establishing myself as a well rounded holistic practitioner. But there was more! I had TWO big steps to take.
The first, was to leave Jackson Wyoming and sign up for and attend Paul’s version of a personal training certification, Integrated Movement Science, IMS, in October of 2023.
The second, was to move back to Santa Barbara CA, attend Massage Therapy School and become a MASSAGE THERAPIST. I didn’t know enough about passive therapy. It doesn’t matter how great you are at coaching people through corrective exercise; if there motor engrams are faulty they need to be physically broken down before new ones can be established. WOW, I learned way more than I thought I would.
In March of 2024, one of my old clients from Charleston SC asked me to arrange a CONCIERGE wellness retreat for him, his family, and a few friends. So I hired my best friend Michael to be our guide and private chef in Nosara Costa Rica. We had an epic 10 day adventure there. It felt like a full lifetime. And yet, Michael and I knew we weren’t done in Nosara…
After finishing massage school in May of 2024, Francine and I led round 2 of the Medicine Wheel Retreat in Ubud Bali. It went even better than year one. I also want to mention we have traveled to Arizona and San Francisco to work with her wide range of clients for weekend immersions. We make a great TEAM!
It was now time to move back to Jackson to continue working at the BEST place I’d ever worked, Medicine Wheel Wellness and continue at Excel Physical Therapy as a PTA; with some new powerful tools in my holistic belt
Michael and I hosted a Men’s Retreat in July of 2024 in Jackson. We led workshops on Paul Chek’s system, had Yoga and Qi- Gong classes on a deck with Teton Views, went on breathtaking hikes, whitewater rafting, campfire conversations, epic wood-fire cooked meals, and more. It was the highlight of the year for many of the men who attended. Michael and I also make a great TEAM!
Summer flew by and all was well in the world. I turned 30 and made a vow to keep evolving my life and surrendering to Spirit. I shaved my dreads off as an OFFERING for my development.
It was time for my yearly continued education course. After 11+ years of practicing yoga, I was ready to go to India in November of 2024! Leading teacher trainings is going to be a part of my path in this life and I needed more hours of study and an authentic INITIATION from the birthplace of yoga. I completed my 3rd YTT making me a “700 hour” teacher. To say India was transformational for me who be drastically undercutting it. I will return to that sacred land one day.
India changed me, and I knew when I returned to Jackson WY that I wasn’t supposed to stay; even though Medicine Wheel Wellness helped me blossom. At the end of January 2025, Michael and I returned to Nosara, CR. I worked at a holistic wellness clinic similar to Medicine Wheel Wellness and taught yoga at 2 places. Admittedly, Nosara was less about work and more about SELF LIBERATION. I felt safe there to reveal myself completely. That is something sacred.
In March of 2025, I helped facilitate a holistic bachelors trip in Dominical Costa Rica for a group of men from Charleston. We had stretching sessions, yoga classes, arm balancing/handstand sessions, lots of holistic conversations, waterfall jumping, atv adventures, rafting, and much more!
I knew time in Nosara would end as the rains came. I found a job as a yoga instructor and massage therapist at a resort in Nicaragua and spent just shy of 3 months there… its my last day at Costa Dulce Resort 8/30/25.
Ready to hear what comes next?!
