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About Mela Moves
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Mela Moves
through ages and changes

For me, wellness is not just about personal growth. ​It is about collective care and creating spaces where people feel seen and safe to return to themselves.​​​

Empower Your Wellness Journey with Mela Moves

 Melanie Kalay founder of Mela Moves, blends science-backed practices with embodied, rooted wisdom. Her approach is grounded in trauma-informed, research-led methods and shaped by decades of study with leading somatic and social embodiment teachers.

With a background in functional fitness, somatics, yoga, and nutrition, Melanie offers a sensitive, inclusive, and non-performative approach to transformation, one that honours nervous system rhythms and the lived experience of marginalised bodies.

Through the melamoves platform, she supports people to return to rhythm, reclaim space, and rebuild trust in their own knowing. Her work bridges structure and softness, movement and rest, care and clarity.

Melanie holds numerous certifications, including a Diploma in Sports Therapy, Senior Yoga Teacher Status, Somatic Therapeutic Training, MNDFL training, Menopause Health, and various qualifications in nutrition and bodywork.

Our Core Values

Lead with lived wisdom, not performance.

Honour rhythm, care and personal sovereignty.

Create from an ongoing journey — not a perfected destination.

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Melanie's Journey

Movement has always been central to my life, though how I understand it has been shaped by experience.

​I was an active, outdoorsy child and a competitive athlete until a serious elbow injury at 20 left me with lasting mobility loss. Recovery taught me about adaptation, acceptance, and patience,  and quietly planted the seeds for my professional path.​​​

My twenties and thirties were spent deepening my understanding of the physical body. I trained across a range of hands-on and movement-based disciplines, from personal training to sports massage therapy. When I later left the UK and began travelling, my perspective widened further. It was during this time that I first studied yoga, meditation, and mind–body practices, gradually shifting my work toward a more holistic and embodied approach.

In 2020, in response to lockdown, I began moving more of my work online. That shift came to an abrupt halt when I suddenly lost my father to COVID. At the same time, I was navigating my under-acknowledged experience of perimenopause. The combination of grief, PTSD, and hormonal change brought me into stillness, and in that stillness, I turned inward.

Somatic yoga, sound therapy, and connection to nature became my rituals of reconnection. They helped me come home to my body, process long-held and unexpressed emotion, and helped me re-root myself.

When I later contracted COVID myself, I had to rebuild again. That journey reminded me of the importance of strength and resilience — and called on every skill I had developed as I worked to regain my health.

Today, my work is shaped by all of it: the pain, the healing, the remembering.

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It is trauma-informed, intuitive, and built with care. It centres people often overlooked in mainstream wellness — queer folks, people of colour, childless and childfree women, and anyone navigating grief, change, or marginalisation.

Mela

Take what you need.
Leave what you don’t.
Move with intention.

Workshops 

Over the years, I have facilitated workshops at festivals, retreats and gatherings worldwide. 

If you would be interested in co-creating or bringing a Somatic experience to your event, get in touch with me.

Previous events

Solstice Rising: A Morning of Somatic Movement & Dance Ritual

A Morning of Somatic Movement & Dance Ritual

An immersive experience that blends sound, stillness, and subtle movement to awaken the senses and deepen body awareness. This workshop supports nervous system regulation and emotional release through vibration, rhythm, and sensory presence.

Sound Somatics:  Rest & Digest

Rest & Digest

Melanie’s therapeutic workshop will rewire and rejuvenate the cells, shift blocked energy and increase your awareness through the process of sound and somatics.

It’s a chance to connect with your body and allow it to then receive the healing vibrations of the sound waves, which also assist with regulating the nervous and digestive systems.

Together We Move:  Exploring connection through partner practice

Exploring connection through partner practice

This offering blends partner yoga and somatic movement to gently explore themes of trust, relational awareness, and co-regulation.

Rooted in curiosity and care, it invites participants to move with—not just beside—each other. Through shared postures, mindful touch, and responsive movement, we explore how connection feels in the body.

The structure centres consent, communication, and presence—supporting people to attune to one another in grounding, respectful ways. This session has been shared with all kinds of pairings, from friends and partners to new connections formed on the day.

Media & Press Release

Looking to hire me for your studio, event or festival?

Our Core Values

Undertand  more about us

Contacts

Have a project or collaboration you think I would be a good fit for? Let me know more about it. 

+44 7716 120552

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Free Guide

Winter Rhythm

A guide to help you move with the season rather than against it, supporting your nervous system, your energy and your inner rhythm.

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