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Jonathan Angelilli Gives Back to Health Care Heroes with Qigong

Tess in the City
7 min readJul 4, 2020
Qigong Instructor Extraordinaire Jonathan Angelilli exhibiting his fostered physical strength.

If you were a subscriber to Shape Magazine in 2013, you might recognize Jonathan Angelilli as the seventh hottest trainer in America (to which on his website, he states — “they were measuring inner beauty of course”). And maybe what makes that joke so funny to me is how true it feels. Not only is Jonathan recognizably wonderful looking (and beautifully married, I should note) but what really struck me about Jonathan is the beauty of his presence.

For weeks, a friend told me “You have to come to Jonathan’s Qigong class on Sundays.” Finally, I listened to her prompting. Upon entering The Well studio (one of the places Jonathan teaches), I felt encased in the light of the tall man with the bright smile and rich, golden energy. What followed was a joyful and silly hour of breathing and moving the body differently through movements with poetic names like Tiger Claw and Receptacle of Tears. For those unfamiliar with Qigong, Dictionary.com defines it as “a Chinese system of breathing exercises, body postures and movements, and mental concentration, intended to maintain good health and control the flow of vital energy.”

For those unfamiliar with Jonathan, his presence offers a contagious joy and for me, a hilarity. I’d have to stop looking at him in class or succumb to a fit of laughter, and never in my life has anyone…

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Tess in the City
Tess in the City

Written by Tess in the City

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