MY YOGA PATH | Melanie Lotz | Lotus Flow Vinyasa Yoga

Praying yogi besides Ganga River in Rishikesh, India

Photo: Nousha Salimi

MY STORY

A dancer turned yogi, Melanie Lotz is in love with the dynamic and creative vinyasa yoga style. Connecting deep, powerful breathing with moving through yoga poses is meditation in movement, an intimate dance with yourself. While Melanie enjoys to challenge herself and her students on the mat with fun shapes and transitions, the most exciting part of the practice starts beyond the mat. Taking the yoga into daily life, also vinyasa style: One breath at a time progressing into living with more awareness, creativity and connection - that to her is the magic of yoga.

MOVING INTO MAGIC

I discovered yoga when I was still heartbroken over my first love: Dance. I had been one lucky girl, being admitted to study Modern Stage Dance at the University of Amsterdam and then... with the first step into school I lost my joy and my love for dancing. All I obsessed about now was how I wasn't good enough. Not talented enough. Not creative enough. Not special enough. In the third year of training I quit the struggle, defeated, and returned to Germany. Lovesick, literally, for years.

Until I entered one of the yoga studios of Lord Vishnus Couch in Cologne. My first vinyasa yoga class with a teacher as sweet as her name, Dulce, an Argentinian ballet dancer, made me fall in love again!! The mindful moving, the breathing, the re-connecting to my body and the pure fun of stretching and twisting my body in all directions... all of this reminded me of what I had loved about dance, only without the mirrors, without the judging and comparing, without any pressure to be anything else but ME.

PURE BLISS

It took another eight years and some more heart breaks until I allowed myself to make BLISS top priority in my life. I finally took that yoga teacher training I had been flirting with for many years.

From here on, everything moved pretty light and pretty fast: I started to teach while still in training. I started to write about yoga and mindful living for the German online magazine evidero. I visited the mother land, India. I got to live in the city of my dreams, New York City. And I discovered, finally, where my heart'n soul belongs: To the Lotus Flow by Laughing Lotus - it's ridiculous how much I adore this yoga style and the surrounding community. So grateful to call Laughing Lotus my hOMe.

So grateful, too, and THRILLED that I get to share my passion. I am sharing what I LOVE so that you might (re-) connect to what YOU love. I am sharing my imperfection so that you might lose the fear to show YOURS. Together we can create a happy space, a moment of blissful magic.

See you on the mat!