About Melissa
Melissa Spamer, M.A., LPCC, ERYT, C.Ay. She/Her
The more I wonder, the more I Love.
Alice Walker
I was fortunate enough to have grown up in the vast wilderness of the Midwestern United States. The Earth became my teacher and loving companion. Everything was alive, full of magic, and incredibly beautiful. Those long, uninterrupted days from sunrise to sunset, on my own, exploring meadows, forests, rivers, and swamps formed my sense of belonging to the earth and everything that grew out from her. I was deeply observant, highly sensitive, and profoundly empathic. I loved animals, art, spirituality, music, and movement. I was an avid swimmer, athlete, and dancer for most of my early life. In my late teens I began seeking answers to my questions, and to try to understand how to live wholeheartedly in myself and with the world, amidst so much suffering. It was during this time that I found Yoga, nearly thirty three years ago. The path and practice of Yoga provided me with a spiritual direction and offered energetic practices that helped me shape my inner and outer experiences. It began to unfold all that was bound in the heart.
Curiosity and wonder are two qualities I value deeply. This guided me to study various academic paths in art, politics, anthropology, religion, and psychology, yet Yoga was the path that continually brought me home to myself. It helped me foster understanding, patience, forgiveness, compassion, and an ever expanding, radical Love. In my work, studies, and healing path over the past thirty years, I travelled to six continents, seeking to experience and explore all of the various places on this body of the Earth. I wanted to touch, smell, taste, hear and feel all the manifest forms that this planet expresses. As a result of these rich and life-changing experiences, I feel at home in the world, and I do not have any illusions about both the unfathomable violence and ecstatic love that flows through this physical existence.
I have studied the body as a dancer for eighteen years, as a bodyworker and energy healer for twenty two years, as a Yoga practitioner for thirty three years, as an Ayurvedic educator and consultant for twenty years, and now a psycho-somatic counselor for twelve years. My life in the world of healing arts has evolved from the time I was a child, and continues to evolve, integrate, and grow with awe and fascination.
All the pilgrimage-centers exist in woman's body.
Purascharanollaasa Tantra
I have spent the past thirty three years exploring what it means to heal, to look into the truths of the heart, and uncover what prevents us from experiencing our own fully nourished, loving embodiment. Much of that knowledge has come from my own lived experience, as well as spending time with some exceptionally wise people on the planet. Since I had an affinity to the female form as the earth embodied, and a profound awareness of the wounding of women from the long standing effects of the patriarchy, I sought out radically alive female teachers that were brave and courageous in trusting their own wildly divine experience. I owe a great deal of respect and gratitude to Lee Ann Louis-Prescott (my first Yoga teacher), Kali Ray, Angela Farmer, Aditi Devi, Shiva Rea, and Rama Jyoti Vernon. My path of Yoga follows these leaders in the post-lineage movement that turned away from abusive male patriarchs and trusted their own embodied experience. The few male teachers that I spent a significant amount of time with, and impacted me greatly in expanding my knowledge and supporting my own light of awareness, are Victor Van Kooten, TKV Desikachar, Dr. Vasant Lad, and Georg Feuerstein. Along the way, all over the world, I have met and befriended so many exceptional beings. Somehow we found one another which enhanced a wider and stronger path for us all to walk along together. My teaching and practice comes from decades of working primarily with women to heal, unravel, empower, and transform.
The function of freedom is to free someone else.
Toni Morrison
I received my first university degree in art history, photography, and computer imaging, and then worked in the field of graphic design as I went on to study modalities in bodywork, energy work, movement/art therapy and holistic healthcare while also teaching Yoga. I completed graduate work in anthropology and Eastern religions. My work as a body and energy worker, and Yoga teacher, led the way as I surrendered other avenues of academic study. I then went on to study Ayurveda with Maya Tiwari (Swamini Mayatitananda) and Dr. Vasant Lad. I completed clinical training in Ayurvedic medicine at the Ayurvedic Institute, and have been an Ayurvedic practitioner and educator ever since. As I was working with women, and the overwhelming amount of trauma that showed up in my classes and clinical work, I further pursued my master’s degree in counseling psychology with a specialization in trauma and neurobiology. I have completed more than six Yoga teacher trainings, as well as twenty five years of dedicated study with Angela Farmer and Victor Van Kooten. All of these distinct but related paths interweave in my work as an integrative psychotherapist, post-lineage, trauma informed Yoga teacher, and Ayurvedic practitioner.
I have been guiding people in Yoga classes, workshops, and retreats for twenty seven years. I have my own Yoga school, which opened in 2005, and continues to offer enriching programs of study as trainings and continuing education programs. I have a private psychotherapy and Ayurveda practice in Santa Fe, New Mexico that offers both in person and virtual sessions. I have been blessed with the great good fortune of a long, creative, and heart centered life. When I am not working in the field of healing arts, I am spending time with my husband, two dogs, and backyard gardens. Understanding very clearly how precious this life is, I choose to do as much of what I love as often as possible, which includes moon gazing and sun bathing, floating in the sea, bonding with and feeding animals of all kinds, dancing with passion and play, exploring various art mediums, reading poetry, writing, wandering this blessed Earth, participating in activism for needed change, and spending time with the people I love.
Randomness is an organizing principle of the Universe. Things happen because they do ….
The Indigenous People of the Andes
In 2022, I was diagnosed with an early stage, rare, and aggressive form of cancer that required two major surgeries, five significant procedures, and six months of intensive chemotherapy. There were also many complications that arose from treatment. I have spent much of my life silently living with a chronic illness that created debilitating pain. So surgeries and the modern medical world was not new to me, nor physical pain. Nor were the quests and journeys in all directions to find answers. I spent much of my life trying to find answers to the inevitable “Why?”. Why do bad things happen to good people every day? Humans have developed all kinds of answers to that question through religion, spiritual philosophy, continual scientific investigation, and yet there is a great deal that we will never understand. There is still so much we do not know. We would rather cling to perceived answers, then bear the discomfort of randomness and all that is unknown to us. I have learned so much through my own healing paths, and especially these past two years of living with and through cancer. It has radically changed my understanding of how people experience and bear witness to suffering and the unexplainable. These days, I am quite comfortable with the unknown, and the very finite time we have on the planet. And now, the people I admire most are able to live with the randomness of the universe, hand in hand with the Mystery, exuding generous kindness and fierce love. At this moment, my scans are clear, and I am savoring every single good thing about being alive.
I am proposing that we reconceive the dream. That we consider what would happen if security were not the point of our existence. That we find freedom, aliveness, and power not from what contains, locates, or protects us but from what dissolves, reveals, and expands us.
Eve Ensler
