My Story
For nearly 13 years, I’ve been guiding women just like you through sacred and transformative moments of life.
For me, this work is more than a profession—it’s my prayer, my offering to you and the world. It’s deeply guided and intentional somatic healing, and you are not just another number to me. I’m wholeheartedly committed to this work, and my own journey of living a soul-led life.
I’ve walked the path of shedding and emergence more times than I can count. Life has asked me to surrender, to trust, and to continually step into the unknown.
Born and raised in Los Angeles, I was a deeply sensitive, expressive child—feeling so much, sensing the unseen. But in a world that often felt too rigid for my exuberant, fullness, and sensitive nature, I learned to shrink. Over time, patterns of self-abandonment took root, leading me down a path of disconnection. At 18, in the depths of my second bout of Anorexia (first was when I was 12), I had what I can only describe as a near death experience and spiritual awakening—an inner voice that told me, You are here for something greater. Choose life. That moment changed everything.
My healing journey led me to study the body, movement, and the innate wisdom we all carry. I pursued a degree in Exercise and Health Sciences and spent nearly a decade in the personal training world before a deeper calling emerged. A mysterious illness after a triathlon cracked me open, guiding me into yoga, somatic healing, feminine embodiment coaching, and earth-based traditions. I followed the breadcrumbs, leaving behind what no longer fit, and devoted myself to the transformational arts—guiding women through deeply soulful and transformative processes like somatic healing, ritual, intuitive and dance movement practices, yoga, and soulful coaching.
In early 2012 I started my business, and for over a decade, I built a thriving community, mostly in Santa Barbara where I lived for 21 years. Through my business I led many retreats, 1:1 private offerings, 6 & 12 month women’s group programs, workshops, classes, and deep transformational journeys. And then, life asked me to let go—again. In 2021, after ending a nine-year relationship, I was invited to go deeper into my own shedding and emergence process.
The next 3 years would ask me to let go – again and again, stripping me down bare to really embody more of the woman and soul that I am. Just when I thought I had let go, life asked me to surrender again and again. It’s been incredibly humbling and also necessary to continue to embody and walk the talk I share with others.
My soul would ask me to let go of old forms as well, including my old business model and ways of working, to really emerge and create this next iteration that you are receiving today. During this time I also followed an intuitive nudge to Costa Rica. What began as an 11-day trip turned into a calling I could no longer ignore. A year later, I took the leap, leaving behind the life I knew to step into the unknown.
Now, I live and work from this land in Costa Rica, where nature mirrors the cycles of transformation I teach. My work weaves somatic healing, movement as ritual, earth-based wisdom, and soulful guidance—creating spaces for those navigating their own metamorphosis.
I walk, and continue to walk, this path too—guided by the mystery of life, learning to trust its flow. I’ve faced the unknown, sat with the discomfort of letting go, and learned to trust myself more times than I can count. I know how challenging surrender can be, and I also know how beautiful it is when we finally allow ourselves to release, and rise. It’s a process we return to again and again.
Life is cyclical, and though I feel more aligned than ever before, I know the journey is ongoing. Because transformation isn’t just something we talk about. It’s something we embody. Again and again.
My experience in somatic healing, and more technical details:
-200 hour Yoga Teacher Training through Baron Baptiste
-300 hour Saul David Raye, advanced studies Yoga Training program. Three modules successfully completed including Earth & Sky, Bhakti Veda, and Sun, Moon, & Fire.
-Almost a decade of study of Somatic Body Intelligence Coaching with Katie Hendricks of The Hendricks Institute. Also a BIG LEAP Coach through the Hendricks Institute.
-Studied, and mentored extensively in soulful coaching, ritual, earth-based wisdom, embodied feminine practices, and more for 10 years with Joanna Lindenbaum of the Applied Depth Practitioner Institute
-Completed The Sacred Depths 10 month transformational practitioner certification
-Walking the Red Road with my Mayan Mentor, Ricardo Gomez
-Studying Authentic Movement and Dance Ritual Practices with Marisel and Roly of Move & Heal in Peru
-Numerous hours of workshops and ongoing learning
-Numerous hours of teaching private and group classes (thousands of hours)
-Continued study and learning as I am an avid student
If my story resonates with you, I’d love to connect. I personally know the power of having support as we walk this path, and it would be an honor to walk that with you through private mentorship, a transformational retreat or ceremonial session.
For those of you who love a good deep dive… if you’re curious more about the little details and behind-the-scenes moments, here’s an extended version of my story . Grab a cup of tea, get cozy, and let’s dive in!
A Path of Transformation, My story
Born and raised in Los Angeles, California, I grew up as a very sensitive child. I felt things deeply, and I sensed things others couldn’t always see or feel. The energy of this world and beyond spoke to me so intensely that I often felt out of place, and like I didn’t know where I belonged. While I was a sensitive, deeply feeling child, I was also full of life—big-hearted, big-energy, fully expressive. I moved, laughed, and felt with my whole being. But in a world where so many were shut down, my aliveness felt too much—too loud, too intense, too unfiltered. So I learned to shrink, to tuck parts of myself away, to become an over accommodating pleaser. These behaviors became patterns of self-abandonment, and I lost touch in many ways with my own center.
While I was loved by my family, growing up as a feeler and deeply intuitive child was challenging. It was hard to acclimate to the world, and I’m not sure my parents knew how to guide me either – especially in a world where this way of being isn’t always celebrated. But there was always this love for movement, dancing, and expressing myself through these avenues, and my parents encouraged this. I would create performances in my living room for my family, and sometimes I’d take my boombox (yep a kid of the 80’s) outside and play in nature for hours. From a young age music, song, dance, movement, nature, and the animal kingdom were my sanctuary.
Facing the Struggles, tender teenage years
Food and body image were a constant topic in my home and greater society (esp. in the era I grew up). I didn’t feel like I fit the narrow definition of beauty, and what society told me was acceptable and loveable. I was a curvier kid, and as I grew into a young girl and young adult, this led me down a path of eating disorders—Anorexia—for much of my teenage years. At 12 and again at 18, I went through the intensity of Anorexia which was never really about the food, yet a deeper mechanism and call for love from within. It was at 18, in a moment I can only describe as an awakening, that I had an experience that really woke me. One day, driving home from the gym, in the thick of my second bout of Anorexia I felt faint and had to pull over. I was rushed to the emergency room, put on IVs, and in that moment, I heard a faint voice—what I now recognize as spirit and my higher self—telling me, “Girl, if you keep going down this path, you will die, and you’re here to do big things. So choose this life.”
It was that voice, in one of my weakest moments, that woke me up. I made the decision to get help, and although the process was difficult and I fought it, it was that moment of surrender that turned my life around. From that point, I committed to my healing path with everything I had. And let me tell you, this path has led me through many more cycles of death and rebirth—painful, challenging, yet so fulfilling, opening, and necessary.
The Awakening, a turning point
That decision to get help brought me to UCLA Medical Hospital at 18 in 2002, where I began my journey of self-discovery on a deeper level. While I took a more Western approach to save my life, it wasn’t long before Eastern medicine and spiritual practices began to weave their way into my world.
By the way, as I share this story with you it’s surreal because in a way I feel like I am telling you the story of someone else, as that period of time and eating disorder feels like a distant memory, yet it’s an important part of my her-story that brought me to this moment with you.
After my time at UCLA medical and getting support, I returned for the remainder of my studies at UC Santa Barbara, where I studied Exercise and Health Sciences, as well as Sociology. My fascination with the body and its innate wisdom was deepening. My desire to support others in cultivating a relationship with themselves and their body that is steeped in love and connection was alive in me even at this time. At that time of my life I didn’t know where it would take me, yet, I knew that it was part of my journey, and so I kept following the breadcrumbs.
I went on for nearly a decade to work in the personal training industry after receiving a degree in Exercise and Health Sciences and completing many certifications, diving deeper into the connection between body, mind, and spirit. I was fulfilled at that time of my life, and then as the natural process of transformation happens, the next shedding occurred.
In 2009, I decided to do a short-course triathlon. I trained with a dear friend at the time, and while I was focused on the physical challenge, I felt something deeper at work. I knew that completing the triathlon would mark a significant transformation in my life. And oh how it did!
A Breakthrough, a new life emerging, again
As I was healing my body from the triathlon, yoga came into my life in a way I never expected. What started as just the intention of a workout soon became something so much more. In a yoga class in Santa Barbara, I began to feel things on a deeper level—things I hadn’t felt or accessed in a very long time. I started feeling a connection to something deeper within me, and greater than me. Those moments on the mat were opening something for me, a deeper union with myself and life, and it soon became a sacred practice for me.
This led me to dive full on into yoga training in 2010 and 2011. I completed my 200-hour training in those few years, and fully immersed myself in the practice. Which then led me to devoting the next decade plus to thousands of hours of study, practice, and completing my 300 hour Bhakti yoga training. This also led me on a path of expanding my study in somatic and body-intelligence coaching, ritual and earth-based traditions, feminine wisdom practices, and so much more. It was a complete shift in my life, and while the path was uncertain I could feel I was moving more and more into a life that was true to me.
A New Path Unfolds, the journey continues
Yoga’licious became my outlet for self-expression and a platform for the deep transformational work I would lead others and myself through during this time that included yoga, soulful coaching, ritual, and much more.
For nearly a decade, I poured my heart into growing a beautiful body of work and community under the name Yoga’licious. I led numerous retreats in Santa Barbara, Ojai, and Hawaii, guided 6- and 12-month transformational group program journeys for women, and offered private programs, public classes, and workshops. Every year for six consecutive years, I also hosted a big community event in Santa Barbara—creating spaces for deep connection, expression, and transformation.
It gifted me the opportunity to guide hundreds of women through these transformational journeys, and also was a space I would continue to evolve and grow in the process.
In 2019, though, I began to feel the name Yoga’licious no longer reflected the depth of the work I was doing. By 2020, I made the decision to shift the name to Essence’tially You—a name that better aligned with my own personal evolution and the sacred work I was guiding others through.
Surrendering to the Next Chapter, the next expression of shedding and emergence
In August 2021, I ended a nine-year relationship. I had known for a long time that it was time to let go, but I deeply loved this man. When I finally made the brave choice to complete this relationship, knowing that more of life and me was waiting for me, my life slowly began to unravel. The thread that had held that version of my life together was coming undone. At first, I tried to hold on to what remained, but deep down, I knew I would have to surrender in a way I had never embodied before. This was my initiation into an even deeper layer of shedding, trusting myself, and stepping into the unknown. That first year after the breakup was marked by profound grief, disorientation, and intense self-reflection.
I promised myself that I wouldn’t let this moment pass me by. That I would truly walk my talk and embody this work. I had no idea where I was going, how long this would last, or where it would bring me, yet I knew I had to choose this path of shedding and emergence, and where my higher wisdom and spirit was guiding me.
In those first weeks in the midst of my grief, I was laying in my bed one night and heard the softest and sweetest voice say go to Costa Rica over the holiday. I had never been there before, yet I knew in my heart I was meant to follow this call. What I thought was going to be an 11 day solo vacation changed the very course of my life. I returned back to the states from that trip at the end of 2021, and knew that life would never be the same.
It was evident that listening to that inner voice—the one that led me on this trip—was opening the door to a whole new life. While I deeply loved my life and community in Santa Barbara, I could feel the stirrings of a life in Costa Rica calling me. As much as I wanted to run toward it with wild abandon, I knew I needed to walk each step with intention, digging into both the spiritual and logistical work required to get there.
So over the next year, I followed the breadcrumbs to make this vision a reality. I was preparing myself to take the leap—to leave behind the life I had known, for the life that was calling me. I still loved Santa Barbara, yet I knew it was time. Time to release these old forms for the deepening of myself, my work, and my life.
Leaning Into Life, a new book
In the time I’ve spent here, life has asked me to let go even more—deeper than I ever imagined—stripping me down to the core of who I am and inviting me to truly embody the medicine I teach. This also included the letting go of old forms of my business. Over the past few years, it became clear that while my heart and soul still deeply love the work I’m here to share with you and the world, the container I created back in 2011, which once held it all, was changing. The old form of the business I’d built for over a decade needed to shift because the woman I am now is different.
So, I made the important choice to honor that old chapter and name it complete, even though much of the wisdom continues to flow in this new form. It’s been humbling, to say the least. This decision has required me to dive deep into letting go of old identities, ego stories of self-worth, and to embody even more fully the medicine that I’m here to share, creating spaces for that same transformation in others.
During this time, I’ve also begun the next leg of my journey, walking the “red road” with my dear Mayan Mentor, Ricardo. Peru has also become a place of deepening for me, where I’ve spent time learning more about movement, earth-based wisdom, and ritual with my teachers and the land. There are still so many unknowns, but I’m grateful to be here with you now, sharing this journey.
What you’re receiving here is the newest expression of my work, and I am honored to share it with you. I imagine your story may not be exactly like mine. Or maybe it is. You may not have struggled in the same way, or perhaps it’s a daily challenge for you. My offerings are designed to meet you where you are and help guide you home to your unique path.
Thank you for being here.
With Love, Melanie