"Yoga
makes your heart carefree, and radiant like starlight.
And it frees your mind from wanting things."
- Patanjali Yoga Sutra 1.36-37
(from The Essential Yoga Sutra)
Anya Arax-Melnick is a dancer,
yogini, and artist who first discovered yoga as a teenager
to compliment her rigorous dance training in ballet and modern
dance. Over the decade that followed, Anya danced in several
companies and was a member of various art, dance, and music
collectives in Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago, Miami and DC.
Anya rediscovered yoga as a way to heal from a very painful
dance injury and has been practicing ever since. From this
experience she learned about the powerful healing that can
occur through yoga and hasn't looked back. She is a certified
AcroYoga teacher, a certified yoga teacher with the Jivasara
Yoga School, registered with Yoga Alliance, is a Thai Yoga
Therapy practitioner and is the founder of the Karma Yoga
Initiative, a program that helps create a way for people interested
in yoga to give back to the community.
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Anya brings a warm
and open energy to her teaching and believes that yoga is
a way for people to tap into their true natures and find the
inner happiness and peace that is found within us all. She
says "Yoga helps uplift the spirit and lets us remember
our true nature, which is love." Anya loves teaching
yoga, acrobatics and gymnastics with all of her heart and
feels so honored to be able help people of all ages find delight
in connection, movement, stillness and everything in between.
She brings a creative and intuitive flair to her classes which
both inspire and motivate her students to help them embrace
the divinity within through movement. She teaches uplifting,
fun and challenging classes that focus on various yogic techniques
including vinyasa, asana, partner yoga and acrobatics, music,
pranayama, meditation, alignment principles, and spiritual
teachings.
Anya is so grateful to all of her teachers
past and present who have helped her along on this amazing
journey including Marni Task, Cheryl Wallace, Sharron Gannon,
David Life, Sri Dharma Mittra, Rolf Gates, Max Strom, Gurmukh
Kaur Khalsa, John Friend, Tiffany Fraser, Jenny, Jason &
Vanessa from AcroYoga along with many others. She is especially
grateful to Jason & Jenny from AcroYoga and Marni Task
from Jivamukti Yoga who have taught her spirit to fly. Anya's
wish as a teacher is to share the happiness, healing and love
that she has found through yoga with the world. She currently
resides in the Washington, DC area and teaches throughout
the United States.
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