Meet Melissa Menke, member of the Yogiños: Yoga for Youth® Leadership Team.
Melissa has been practicing yoga for nearly a decade and took her first of many Yogiños: Yoga for Youth® trainings in 2013. She is working on her RYT200 & RCYT and has attended several yoga conferences and workshops in Texas. Melissa taught yoga and mindfulness in classrooms at Atascocita Springs Elementary School, the Atascocita Montessori School, and volunteers at the Atascocita Public Library, bringing yoga to story-time. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Aviation degree, and is in her 21st year as a professional airline pilot. She is also the proud mother of two awesome middle/high school aged kids.
Melissa believes in the Yogiños: Yoga for Youth® philosophy: “Feel, Connect, Act to Heal.” By sharing it, she hopes to help others live their lives more intentionally, with joy and peace.
“In aviation, pilots study a manual and checklists for each plane they will fly. In addition to normal operations and maneuvers, thorough training for handling failures and emergencies is required. Unfortunately, most of us don’t get such detailed training when it comes to navigating the ever present ups and downs of daily life, specifically our youth, navigating their experiences with education and peers.
Through my own practices of yoga, mindfulness, and meditation, I have been able to cultivate a more authentic, joyful, sustainable way of being, during ‘normal’ and ‘non-normal operations’. This has made a huge difference in my life and I want to share that wisdom with my community.
I am committed to empowering our youth with tools that will help them build a strong foundation of self-love and self-acceptance, presence, compassion, and resilience. Using the 8 Limbs of Yoga and mindfulness practices, I seek to encourage kids to maintain a workable relationship with stress and challenges, form healthy habits, have awareness & connection with their bodies and emotions, learn to set boundaries, exercise compassionate personal leadership/responsibility, and be socially conscious members of their communities.“
Melissa is a ‘forever student’ and enjoys spending time with her family (two legged and four legged), traveling/exploring, reading, practicing many types of yoga, and being outside in the trees.
