Melissa Cooley

Melissa has been teaching vinyasa flow style classes for 8 years locally in the Rogue Valley. She sees yoga as the unfolding process of life.  When we think we could never do something, when our own worth is challenged, when we’ve lost hope, or felt frustration, yoga is a navigational system to help us make it through the rough waters. Yoga is the witness in moments of joy and laughter, and a source of refuge whose method is a constant friend and guide.   

Training
Melissa has studied within the Vinyasa, Ashtanga and Iyengar traditions. She has studied extensively with Amy Cooper, Kristan Laak, and Johanna Wright to whom she finds gratitude for their sharing of the wisdom that this practice continually reveals. She humbly approaches meditation practices set forth by her teacher Lama Tsering Everest, whose words of wisdom are often woven into her class

Classes
Melissa’s intention while guiding a practice is to give students a container in which to grow and refine themselves...remembering their own integrity, alignment, mind, body, spirit connection.  Her classes offer a multi-leveled approach to the flow that is energetic, focused, while still joyful. Melissa incorporates music with an ambient and devotional tone to complement the feeling of the practice and not distract from it.

Dharma
Melissa hopes that we all recognize our sources of false refuge and begin to reinvest our precious life energy into methods that awaken greater awareness, not in some distant time and place or "ideal" setting, but now, in this moment.