MELISA CHABIERSKI

Melisa Chabierski has been practicing hatha yoga for over 20 years and began teaching in 2000. She initially came to yoga in her mid 20’s with joint pain caused by arthritis and an unruly mind. Melisa experienced such profound improvements in her energy levels, joints and mental state that she swiftly began her first training.

YogaGround is the synthesis of Melisa’s personal practice, training, experiences of pregnancy, birth & early parenting and being in the role of birth support.

The year Melisa started yoga she was invited to support her mother during the birth of her much younger sister, and was taken to birth workshops that utilized yoga techniques, to prepare for the event. Her mum actively embraced the intensity of labour, and baby No.4 was born safely into water after dawn. This experience was pivotal in opening Melisa’s awareness to the incredible power of women, the intensity of birth, what active birthing means, and why you may be inspired to work towards experiencing it. Her interest in the intersection between yoga and birth was born.

When her friends began to have their first babies Melisa was honoured to support more women in birth and further explore this relationship between yoga and birth.  

Melisa had been teaching full time for some years, with a mix of hatha yoga in studios, workplaces, private residence, prenatal, mums & bubs and intermediate level classes when she conceived her first baby.

Two very different pregnancies followed, juggling teaching between them. Two beautiful babies, one active birth in hospital, another actively born at home, two very different postnatal recoveries, and the joy and chaos of early parenting.

Melisa still comes to practice because yoga supports her to ride the waves of life. Especially the sticky difficult parts. She is passionate about sharing practices that empowering women to welcome themselves as they are, in life as it is. Acknowledging that women’s bodies are cyclic in nature, not linear. Accepting and working with the changes of body, lifestyle and energy that ebbs and flows from the beginnings of menarche, through pregnancy and early parenting, to the changes of menopause.

Melisa lives in the inner north and loves seeing the woman and their babies (some now teens) that have come to yoga around the local area.