Melissa Madara is the founder and director of Sacred SoulScapes. An ordained United Methodist deacon, Melissa first began sensing a call to ministry while backpacking the trails of the Pecos Wilderness of northern New Mexico as a teenager. Since then, she has encountered the presence of God in many ways and places, both traditional and unexpected: in the tones of a pipe organ, in the prickles of a cactus, in the presence of gathered community, and in a heart-to-heart conversation with a “soul friend.”

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Throughout her life of faith, Melissa has discovered that worship feels most authentic when it is embodied and experiential—when we are invited to bring the fullness of who we are, body, mind, and soul, into relationship with God and with one another. Her own experience of living with chronic illness has deepened her commitment to creating sacred spaces that are genuinely accessible: spaces in which people do not have to possess a particular kind of body, ability, energy, experience, or spiritual vocabulary in order to belong.

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Melissa founded Sacred SoulScapes in 2022 to invite people into embodied, sacred conversation with the Divine through yoga, spiritual direction, and connection with the natural world. She is especially passionate about adaptive and accessible approaches to yoga and spiritual practice that meet people where they are and honor the wisdom, limits, and possibilities of each individual body, needs, and lived experience.

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Melissa holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Music and Religion from McMurry University and a Master of Divinity degree from Duke Divinity School. She holds 200- and 300-hour yoga teacher certifications from Holy Yoga Collective, with more than 250 additional hours of specialty training in senior/adaptive yoga, kids’ yoga, size-inclusive yoga, trauma-sensitive yoga, and others; a Spiritual Director certification from the Center for Spiritual Formation in Carlisle, Pennsylvania; and a Wilderness First Responder certification from Wilderness Medical Associates.

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Melissa lives in central Pennsylvania with her husband, two children, and two cats.