About Me
Greetings! I am Melylah.
It’s an honor to have you here to learn a little bit more about myself and my journey.
As a yoga teacher since 2008, an infant massage and family bonding educator, birth doula trainee, an aromatherapist, and a teacher trainer, I am passionate about supporting and educating womxn to be empowered and proactive in their own wellness and personal growth, from pre-conception, to pregnancy, and beyond.
And this journey begins with self-care. Loving self. Loving on self so that you are able to meet the world, yourself, and the demands of life, with a little more ease and grace. Whether its pregnancy, labour, birthing, parenting...or a pandemic.
Through my personal yoga journey, I have healed my trauma, found my voice, and share my learnings and offerings with womxn on their motherhood journey, as well as train those who are answering their calling to support womxn’s wellness through yoga.
Bringing over 20 years of yoga experience to my classes, I infuse them with love, compassion and joy. My teaching style encourages you to tap into your inner teacher, ancestral wisdom, and listen to your body, allowing the practice to meet you exactly where you are, at that moment.
Noticing the yoga and wellness community did not reflect back my diverse background, just like the corporate America I left, I seek to cultivate space that supports and empowers Black, Indigenous, and Womxn of Color (BIWOC).
As an advocate for birth justice and wellness for all, I offer “Pay from the Heart” Perinatal Yoga Classes, on Zoom, for the Global Majority, and am continuing my education as a Birth Doula Trainee, Trauma Informed yoga teacher, and working towards my 500 Hour with Janet Stone Yoga. I will forever be a student of life and yoga, continuing my own self exploration, through the 8 limbs, so I may continue to heal, grow, and share from my heart.
I invite you to breath with me. Move with me. Heal with me. One breath at a time. Om shanti. Shanti. Shanti. Om.
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A Little More About Me
I was born into this path of wellness through my own birth. My two health conscious parents decided to birth me on their own terms and contacted Ina May Gaskin for birthing instructions. My father delivered me in our cozy Manhattan apartment in “Alphabet City” in the early 70s.
Being raised by hippies, my childhood was wild and adventurous, traveling back and forth from NYC, where I was born, to Hawaii, where my mother, and her fierce mama friends, migrated. My days in Hawaii were filled with playing in the ocean waters, swimming in waterholes, catching crawfish, and eating vegan, juxtaposed with returning to Manhattan and navigating the urban jungle. During my childhood, everywhere was home and nowhere was home. Shortly after we settled down in Brooklyn, I was off to Washington D.C. for University.
My first “yoga” moment was in 1998, when I left my advertising career, in Manhattan, to travel through South America for a year, seeking a better understanding of self and the world around me. One year later, I found myself living in San Francisco and stepping onto a yoga mat for the first time. A co-worker, from India, invited me to a yoga class and I never looked back. It was as though I had finally arrived home.
In 2006, I experienced the transformational powers of pregnancy and I found myself on my mat more and more. As I dove deeper into my yoga practice, I began to embrace this other side of me that I had been rejecting in order to pursue my career. I fell deeply in love with being a mother and yoga, and how they both come together so beautifully, and ultimately left my fast past advertising world behind. I received my 200-hour teacher certificate shortly after, followed by Prenatal certification through Mama Tree, and Kids Yoga through It’s Yoga Kids.
This yoga journey has been my anchor and teacher, while parenting, and homeschooling, my three children, and navigating the world around me.
Honestly, my relationship with yoga has had its ups and downs with lots of twists and turns, and yet, it’s always there for me. No judgement. Just an open heart. It has supported me through two layoffs during the dot.com burst, my father’s transitioning, an enormous amount of healing of childhood trauma, a miscarriage which landed me in the emergency room, and through the pregnancy, births, and parenting of our three children. And most recently a pandemic. Always a student, I continue to learn about myself, the world, and the 8 limbs of yoga so I may continue to heal, grow and share.