We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Lexi Portaro a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Lexi, appreciate you joining us today. If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your business sooner or later

My first reaction to this question would be “sooner.” My next reaction would be “definitely sooner.” But in between those two resides a host of complicated feelings.

By the time I started my business in 2023, I felt that I had already lived a few lives. I had been a practicing pharmacist, I had been a faculty lecturer for several years, I was owner/builder in the middle of construction of my home, and I had been performing at my mother’s dance studio since before I was a teenager. From the outside, my life probably looked full and complete. But inside, I had been seeking purpose and fulfillment, trying to understand what my heart wanted, and coming up short.

In late 2020, I – along with the rest of the world – had been dealing with the impact and isolation of the pandemic, I had recently gotten married, I had gone through some unexpected challenges in my personal life, and I had spent an inordinate amount of time adjusting my teaching to the online space. I never gave myself time to find that something that “made me want to get up in the morning” until one day when I realized that I simply did not like the picture of my future path. I felt a severe loss of identity and direction, and that’s when I stumbled into yoga – not just taking classes, but entering a teacher training program.

I’ve always appreciated movement and teaching, but I didn’t go into the program expecting to actually teach; rather, I was in search of spiritual guidance and community – and I found those there. I started doing more creative hobbies like cake decorating and hosting murder mystery parties, I started devouring books on eastern religions, philosophy, and spirituality, and I discovered that I felt joy developing peace and stability in those around me.

I found something that really resonated with me. But I found it years later than I had expected to. I look around at others in my life and in my space and I can’t help but think that they had it all figured out years ago. It’s humbling to be starting again, to have accomplished things and gone so far down one path only to turn and head in a different direction.

I do wish I had started sooner, but I have also come to realize and appreciate that all of my experiences – teaching, pharmacy, building a house, marriage, enduring a pandemic – have given me time to really understand myself, what I needed, and what my heart has been telling me.

But still… Sooner would have been lovely.

Lexi, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Lexi Portaro, and PranaRae is my yoga and wellness business.

The word “Prana” is from Sanskrit, and it means “life force.” When I first began my yoga teacher training, the word stuck with me because for the first time in my life I could feel that force; I felt energy buried deep inside start to come out. Rae is my middle name, and also connects me with the rays of the sun that stimulate and warm me. PranaRae truly encapsulates how I felt when I first broke free of my old identity and stepped tentatively into the new.

As I stated earlier, I came to the world of yoga and wellness after a circuitous route in harder sciences and education, though even from childhood, I also had my hands full of beeswax and bare feet in the dirt. I’ve always experienced this duality of being, which is somewhat ironic considering that the search for identity is what brought me to yoga in the first place. You’d think my two halves would equal a whole, but the math just wasn’t working for much of my life.

Yoga first served as a way to heal myself, to help navigate a difficult time in my life and explore a side of myself I had not yet really seen. It wasn’t too long, however, before I saw it as something more – an opportunity. Looking back through new hobbies and old habits, I started to see with more clarity that I enjoyed facilitating joy and developing peace and stability in those around me. It was something I strived for as a pharmacist and faculty lecturer, but felt I couldn’t achieve at the level and in the fashion that I desired. I realized there is so much I wanted to do and could do to hold space and stable ground for people in an increasingly chaotic and unpredictable world.

I brought yoga to the dance studio that was my home for many years of my life. In my classes, I employ meditation, movement, breath work, chanting, and sound. I am holding my first sound bath soon, and developing events and workshops employing activities such as reiki, chanting, and meditation. I will hold my first yoga retreat this year, hoping to treat others to the same kinds of magical experiences that I had on retreats around the world. I also intend to further develop my social media presence in order to expand my community beyond the local space, where I aspire to do everything from delivering creative meditations to offering simple ways to calm the mind through breath work and yoga. I look down the road at possibilities such as meditation coaching and opening a yoga school.

My artful childhood, the rigors of pharmacy and lecturer, a background that encapsulates science, medicine, dance, performance, and spirituality, and overcoming significant personal trials and tribulations have, I hope, helped give me a unique perspective as a new business owner in the wellness space.

I was greatly inspired by a recent trip to Bali on a yoga retreat, finding the people and their generosity, compassion, and spirituality to be something to aspire to. I would like to be someone who is able to hold space for those like me, to find healing, to find myself, and to find ways to be a light for others. That is what I aspire to achieve with PranaRae.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

Before he was my business partner, he was my husband. Before that, my dance partner. And before that, my mother’s.

As I mentioned before, my mother owns a dance studio and recently celebrated 25 years in business. During the entirety of that quarter century, my family has performed – singing, dancing, acting – together for three shows a year. Performance has required developing an eclectic skillset, but as a family business, I’ve also learned that growth and success requires many hats.

Throughout the years, I mostly danced jazz and hip hop until 2016, when our resident salsa instructor reached out after a show and suggested I try out his class. It was there that I finally met the man my mother had been dancing with for a few performances. At first he was just another classmate, but eventually we began dancing together for performances more frequently, and developed a dance chemistry and friendship that eventually blossomed into marriage.

PranaRae is my business and my passion, but my husband has been my partner and rock since day one. Beyond his actual day job, he wears a number of hats of his own, including photographer, videographer, sound engineer, website designer, and social media manager. He takes care of the behind the scenes nitty gritty so I can focus on the core of the business – trying to be a source of healing for myself and for others.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

I had assumed that social media would play a large role in developing my clientele, but perhaps because I have not yet been able to focus enough attention on it, it has not yet contributed as much as good old-fashioned word-of-mouth. My mother teaches a conditioning class at the studio and has referred some of her regulars to me, and some of them have brought in their friends.

I’ve begun to develop my own little community from these humble beginnings – people from different backgrounds, with different levels of yoga experience ranging from “I’ve taken a class or two” to “I’ve done it for years,” and with different goals and priorities. I hope to develop my social media presence and bring in new faces through special classes and workshops, but I will always appreciate the beauty in developing through the network method.

There’s something organic and familial about it that just feels appropriate in the yoga space. I often tell my students to root themselves in the Earth, feel the stability of those tendrils, feel that energy stretch deep down, and feel that connection ground them to the world and those around them. I can’t help but draw a comparison to the way we build friendships, acquire clients, and establish communities.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://thepranarae.com
• Instagram: @pranarae

Image Credits

Parhaum Toofanian (FrameJob Photography)