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98

july 2016

yogajournal.com.au

PHOTO: EMILY LEES

Over the last 17 years, the

warm and bubbly Melanie

McLaughlin, 42, has trained

as a meditator in India, taught

Power Yoga in Sydney, and

helped pioneer Yin Yoga

training in Australia. Through

yoga and meditation, Melanie

has healed a spinal injury

and also her own spirit. Her

mission is “to relax the world,

one person at a time” and

she has settled on Yin Yoga

as her modality. Mel runs

training sessions through

The Yin Spaceand teaches

yoga for inspirational retreats.

By Tamsin Angus-Leppan

Healing powers

AYJ INTERVIEW

in ir ti n

How did you first come to yoga?

When I was 15 I had a major car crash that

crushed a couple of vertebrae in my spine

and I didn’t really do anything for about

ten years. I’d previously been a dancer. My

whole nervous system, body, and mind

were rigged to move so I really missed it.

By the time I was about 25, I’d already

toured around Australia a few times as a

backpacker and I really loved it here, but

I’d gone home to Yorkshire in the UK to

try and settle. I had bought a house, I had

a boyfriend, and then I realised that I

really didn’t want this, and I wondered

what to do. I was looking for an escape

route. I forayed onto the spiritual path, I

read Paulo Coelho’s books, and I thought, I

want to go to India, I want to do something

that embodies movement and spirituality.

In 1999 I sold my house, I went for six

weeks to Kerala to do a teacher training

and then I just stayed. I absolutely loved it!

It was like my whole being cracked open. I

thought, I’ve come home. I found myself in

yoga and especially in meditation. I stayed

in India for six months. I lived in the

ashram and my teacher said at one

point, “You’ve either got to stay here,

shave your head and put the robes on, or

you’ve got to go.” I had really long hair

and I was really attached to it. I think if

he’d said that I could stay and put my

hair in a bun and put robes on, I would

have stayed.

How did you start teaching

Yin Yoga?

I met an Australian and came back to

Sydney. I found BodyMindLife and then

I trained with Baron Baptiste and

started teaching at 28. I was teaching at

BodyMindLife for a decade, I ended up

running their teacher trainings with

other senior teachers, so that’s where I

really cut my teeth and learned to run

trainings and retreats. I had come from

a broken home, and I had a lot of anger

from that and displacement and anxiety,

and I’d had a few eating disorders

during my dancing years. The six

months in India had healed my spirit.

My big thing was, I want to relax the

world one person at a time, because

that’s what healed me ... feeling safe

and relaxing. Then I found Yin Yoga.

I finally felt that I had found the other

side of the yoga coin ... the soft tissue,

the fascia, the ligaments, the joints.

I was doing Yin Yoga secretly at home

to Paul Grilley’s DVD and started to

sneak it in to my Power Yoga classes.

When I came back from training

with Paul four years ago, nobody was

teaching Yin training in Australia.

I saw that the Yin teachers were

slowing down Hatha but they had

no concept of Daoism or the meridians

or the organs. It is a totally different

tissue – it’s a Yin tissue, not Yang – so

if you don’t grasp that concept then

what you do might be unsafe, to hold

something in a Yang way for five

minutes. People don’t know they

need Yin until they do it. It’s as if we

remember there is another side to

ourselves, and we think, “Oh, I’m

so tired and I’m deeply anxious,

underneath all that white noise,

distraction and excitement, I’m

worried about things and I know I’m

not taking care of myself.” We need

muscular stability and strength but

we’ve missed the feminine side, the

mysterious, the quiet, the still.

A Journey to Machu Picchu: Yoga and adventure Peru;

September 13-24; check http://www.theyinspace.com for details.