Alejandra Retamales has been in motion her whole life. She was raised in Chile, became a mother at just 17 years old, finished high school with a baby, earned a degree in agricultural engineering, moved to France with her young family, and eventually helped launch the California branch of a French agricultural grapevine nursery company.
"I was a mom at 17," she says. "From there it was just go, go, go."
For decades, she and her husband, Sebastian, built a life side by side. They shared the same profession, welcomed opportunities that carried them across continents, and embraced each new chapter together. But somewhere within all that momentum, there was one person Alejandra had never really taken the time to know.
Herself.
Everything shifted when the company she loved was sold to a large corporation. The work became more about numbers than people, and the culture no longer reflected the way she believed relationships should be built. "It wasn't my style of working," she says.
She stepped away and began consulting independently in agriculture, working with nurseries in Chile and the United States, including some work with the University of California, Davis.
"I discovered I had free time," she says. "I was kind of rediscovering myself. What do I do? Who am I?"
Around that same time, she wandered into a heated power yoga class. She didn't know much about yoga, but she felt invigorated with the way she felt afterward. "I really loved what I felt through the practice," she says.
She had been so busy raising children, building her career, and constantly moving forward, yoga became a place where she could simply be. The more she practiced yoga, the stronger her desire to understand the practice beyond what happened on the mat. She wanted to understand herself better, the deeper questions she had been quietly carrying and she felt the answer was within her yoga. Her local studio announced an upcoming teacher training, but becoming an instructor wasn't what drew her to it.
"There was zero interest in me ever teaching," she laughs. "Zero."
That's when Sebastian offered an unexpected idea."If you're going to do this," he suggested, "why not go to India?"
It sounded almost impossible. She had never been away from her children for that long. She wasn't afraid of traveling; she had lived all over the world, but leaving her family for an entire month felt like an enormous undertaking. Still, curiosity won. She traveled alone to Rishikesh, India, often called the birthplace of yoga, arriving knowing almost nothing.
"I wasn't an experienced yogi," she says. "I knew nothing."
The days began before sunrise and stretched into the evening where she experienced meditation, breathwork, philosophy, anatomy, and physical practice. She lived in the school's dormitory, ate vegetarian meals, drank very little coffee, and found herself surrounded by thirty-three students from around the world.
It was exhilarating, until it wasn't. Halfway through the program, the excitement gave way to homesickness. She missed her family and began questioning why she had come halfway around the world. She says, "I thought, 'I'm going back home. I don't think I can do this.” Alejandra laughs at the memory now, when she also thought, “It's all like vegetarian, very healthy. I'm like a heavy meat eater myself, so it's not a lifestyle that is easy for me at all."
A woman teaching at the school shared her own story with Alejandra. The woman had grown up in a traditional Indian family where women were expected to remain within carefully defined roles, caring for the household and serving their families. In many traditional communities, women were not expected to practice yoga as it is often practiced today, let alone teach it.
She, too, was the mother of three boys, like Alejandra. She spoke honestly about the courage it had taken to trust herself, pursue her own path, and become the teacher standing before them.
"It was very powerful," Alejandra says. "Very powerful, actually. She saw this urge and she kept on going. She trusted herself. She kind of encouraged me to do the same. She said I had the support. It was kind of nice.”
And so, Alejandra decided to stay. Her homesickness began to ease, her confidence was boosted, and she found herself embracing the experience she had nearly left behind. By the end of the month, she had earned her certification.
Ironically, the experience convinced her she should never teach. Her final exam required her to lead a 60-minute class. She finished in thirty. "I thought, 'This is not my call,'" she says with a laugh.
She returned to California perfectly content to remain a student. Time went by, and her friends at the yoga studio she attended occasionally needed a substitute. She agreed to help because she wanted to support the people she cared about. But, one class became another. And then another.
She still wasn't dreaming of opening a studio when her family moved to the Columbia Gorge in 2020; however, the alignment of teaching kept crossing her path. Someone asked, "Can you teach me?" And she said yes. That one student became seven. They would gather outside while the weather was warm, unrolling their mats beneath the open sky.
Then the mornings turned crisp and the evenings came too early; autumn was beginning to settled on the Columbia Gorge. When their outdoor classes were no longer practical, she decided to move their yoga her garage. Sebastian helped her transform the space. He built a warm wooden wall, softening the ordinary garage into something that felt welcoming and intentional.
Week after week, the people returned to practice yoga with Alejandra. They practiced together, during a year when so much of the world felt disconnected. But within her humble garage, neighbors found one another, sharing movement, breath, and conversation. Just people rolling out yoga mats in an ordinary space because they wanted to move, breathe and be together.
The garage was never intended to be permanent, it was only set up because the weather had turned cold. More people kept showing up,and Alejandra began wondering if there might be a more permanent home for them to practice yoga together. She wasn't actively searching when she noticed a “For Lease” sign in a storefront on 12th Street. Curious, she stepped inside, and as the natural light spilled across the maple floors, something about the space felt immediately familiar. "I knew it," she later recalled.
Sebastian, once again, helped her bring the vision to life; he even brought over his handcrafted wooden wall feature he had made for the garage studio.Alejandra named it Machi Yoga. The name reaches back to the place where Alejandra's own story began. In Chile, a Machi is an Indigenous healer, someone who helps others reconnect with health and balance. But Alejandra's philosophy is slightly different. At Machi Yoga, healing isn't something another person gives you. As the studio says, "You are your own shaman, your own medicine." The studio’s belief aligns with her own personal narrative; no one else could discover what her identity was. She had to make that journey herself.
Alejandra once wondered who she was beyond motherhood, work, and the constant motion of life. Now, years later, inside the walls of Machi Yoga, she quietly creates space for others to ask the very same question.
Machi Yoga is located at 1116 12th Street, Hood River. Visit www.Machi.Yoga for class times.
