Melissa Chabierski
Teaching Certificates or Qualifications
Certificate of Classical Yoga Australian College of Classical Yoga - 2006
Yoga Meditation Vagyoga Chetanapitham, Varanassi India - 2004
Diploma of Teaching Pre-Natal Hatha Yoga Gita International – 1999
Diploma of Teaching Hatha Yoga Gita International – 1998/1999
About Me
I initially came to yoga with joint pain and curiosity. From the first weeks I experienced such profound changes in my joints, energy levels, and mental state that I began a training within months of my first class. I have been practicing and teaching ever since.
I love to make things with my hands. Sowing, weaving, cooking and gardening. I am nourished by being outside in the natural world, bushwalking and camping with friends and family. This has led me to be an active member of Newlands Parents for Climate Action. I have lived in the north for 20 years and enjoy bumping into yogis at Preston market and other local venues. I live a short bike ride away and have two primary school age children that I love to share this amazing life with.
Yoga Influences
Judith Hanson Lasater, Swami Satyananda Saraswati, BKS Iyengar, K. Patabhi Jois, Gurmukh, Paul Wooden.
Teaching Style
Hatha yoga. This incorporates both gentle and dynamic physical positions, held positions, flowing sequences, meditation, chanting, breath work and guided relaxation.
Melisa’s personal practice, through two pregnancies, transformed her teaching of prenatal yoga. It deepened from the theoretical understanding of how and why to practice, to an embodied understanding of what the practices bring to the many aspects of the self. From her experiences in the role of birth support/doula, she has witnessed how yoga positions are labouring and birthing positions. These experiences are the framework for the themes and topics that are woven through the classes. Each week explores a different Self Inquiry, breath technique or meditation to nurture and empower the pregnant woman on her journey. Melisa’s classes incorporate both gentle and dynamic physical positions, meditation, chanting, breath work and guided relaxation. She is confident to incorporate varying physical abilities and stages of pregnancy and can give accurate guidance to adjust the practice to students’ injuries or conditions, including pelvic instability.
Why do you practice yoga?
I practice yoga because I love to. It meets every aspect of my being. The physical practices support my physical health and vitality. Pranayama, meditation and chanting permeate all areas of life and being in ways both obvious and subtle.
Why do you teach?
I teach to share the inner joy that yoga practice cultivates.
At Prana House I am teaching prenatal yoga. Pregnancy is a time of such radical transformation of the body, heart and lifestyle. Yoga offers so much to the pregnant woman. It is empowering on so many levels. From practices that support the bodies changes and ease common discomforts, to developing inner trust and preparing the body and mind for labour.
Favourite Asana?
Currently it is Uttita Parsvokanasana. As spring brings its fabulous variety of weather changes, it is an anchoring point in my practice. The lower body is working strongly which is grounding, and good preperation for riding my bike. The delicious expansiveness it invites in the upper and side body invites such a lightness. Inwardly it is like spring has sprung, whatever the outer weather.