How One Mom Went from 3 Yoga Studios to Mindful Entrepreneurship

Well, thank you guys for having me. I have lived in San Antonio since 2015, and we moved here from North Carolina. My husband's in the military. When I tell people we've been here this long, they're like, how? And I can promise it wasn't a simple thing. We did do a geographical separation because in 2017 I opened up a yoga studio, and then by 2019 I had 3 studios in San Antonio. I owned Bernie Yoga, Melmarie Yoga, had a private studio for my one-on-one clients. And then I also opened the first yoga studio on a military base in 2019. So yeah, we were thriving and we got orders and I was like, there's no way I can just drop this. So he went to Florida and did that. We did a geographical, you know, back and forth for like 2 years and during the pandemic. So that was insane. I'm a mindfulness expert and yoga teacher. Well, really a yoga therapist. And I always joke that, you know, you may be into this work or mindfulness, stress reduction, but it doesn't omit challenge or hardship in your life. And it's actually an opportunity to develop through curriculum that life gives us. So that was a season of building a lot of resilience for sure. But yeah, then we were able to get him back here. He's medical, so you know, he came back, but we are here now. And I did close my physical locations. And unfortunately, during the pandemic, they shut down the studio, but now it has evolved. The studio originally was a volunteer effort that Melmarie Yoga and the USO partnered on. And then it evolved to now the Vogel Meditation Center, which is part of the DOD. And it's a legitimate studio on Fort Sam for the military. And so it's cool to see like this effort now it's in the hands of them, but it's evolved and it's something that is, you know, it didn't just die. So very thankful for that. Um, but yeah, closed everything down because it was just a wild time. But my specialty and what I do is I lead yoga teacher trainings and part of what the— or part of why I chose to shut down my studios was because so many studios in the yoga community here were struggling. And because my specialty is education, my thought is I could just partner and rent and support these other studios, be in my mastery and build, help rebuild and support the San Antonio yoga community. And that's what I've done. So I'm at different studios. You'll see me around town and I do a lot of work with the military, but specializing in education and program development all over. Well, yeah, in our community too, it's really hard for military spouses to really put roots down anywhere and oftentimes they're And I think it's not just military. I know for women who, you know, if you're married to someone who either moves around a lot or, you know, oil field, right? Whatever the profession is, it's like, if you feel like you're not going to be here long, what's the point? But it can often lead to a lot of depression, a lot of disconnection. And I, what I learned was the power of negotiation. I always tell women who want to pursue entrepreneurism, opening a business is to negotiate and to, you know, ask for what you want. And when I opened my first studio, I'd had said to the landlord, like, look, this is our situation. My husband's in the military. We need to have a military clause on here. If he gets orders, that I can get out. And, you know, that was the security blanket for me to have the courage to say, all right, let's go, let's create this and see what happens. And then now here we are and You know, San Antonio has been so good to me. So I've seen this a lot in my, even my work, like partnering with different nonprofits, the military, the importance of using our voice. And one thing that helps me, because, you know, if you meet me, I'm 5 foot tall, I'm a tiny human, I'm all about the cozy. And so my softness can oftentimes like be misunderstood, or my lightheartedness just not taken serious. And something that has helped me is I believe that confidence is a byproduct of clarity. So before I go into something, I really get clear about like, what are the things I'm going to be asking and what is the reason I'm asking what I'm asking? So, because I feel like women have this tendency where we feel like we have to overexplain ourselves. And so instead of talking in circles, when I say this is what I want to do, or this is what I need, or this is how I'm going to do it,. And if I get any pushback, I already have what I'm going to address. And then, you know, being able to know when to leave the table. Also, people tell me I'm difficult with my latte orders or when I go to a restaurant, but I'm so specific, like when I'm like 140 degrees, 7 pumps, right? Like, you can't mess this up. I'm helping you. Why are you— why is that difficult? It's just being clear. And that's that. This actually highlights that program, right, that has been fostered in our culture. And I think that the more women who can exhale out and say, okay, if it comes off as too much, like, and not get hung up in it, right, just identify, like, we're in a cultural shift as well. Like, what is the future I want my daughter to live in? And I want her to belong and be accepted and loved, but not for a lie, like, for herself. So it's up to us. In a way to pave that. This did not come natural at all. In fact, it's, I always say that you have to know what you're not to know who you are in a way, because there's been a lot of times, like, I started my career very young. So I mean, I dropped out of college and got married. I, I did everything kind of backwards and really young. So I was 19 years old in Fayetteville, North Carolina, passing out business cards as a yoga therapist, right? And, but I've made a lot of mistakes early on in my career because I felt misunderstood or I wanted to be, to belong. I really think belonging is such a foundation for women. Like I wanted to be at the table, so I would forfeit a contract or like something that I knew needed to be handled before I said yes to something because I didn't want to miss the opportunity.. But every time that I did that, I walked away with a really hard lesson. And I think by 2017, and really I don't think I got the hang of it until 2020 probably, where it was like, okay, I've had enough. It's not worth exchanging myself for, you know, this perceived accomplishment or this perceived whatever, because at the end of the day, people were making money off of me that I wasn't getting. People were getting, you know, riding my coattails into things that, and then not acknowledging how much I put in for that. And so I've really learned, yeah, it's from experience for sure. And that's why I think we shouldn't shame like our regression because there's always regression before we progress, you know. Absolutely. So mindfulness, it's really about being present to what's meaningful right now. And there are so many different practices and techniques within the domain of mindfulness. In fact, in the West, yoga is a mindfulness practice, right? If we kind of look at how the Western integrative medicine and all of that views yoga. So when we talk about mindfulness, I really invite people to reframe it as it's not something you do, it's who you are. And through You don't need to go to a yoga class. You don't need to find that 30 minutes of your day. It's looking at what you already do and starting to be more intentional, starting to be more reflective and honest, noticing it or creating space between, you know, impact or an experience, a circumstance and our reaction to that. So how do we create more space where we're more reflective? It's also a connection to our body. Most people are very disembodied. They're not connected. And an example of this would be like, you go, you eat at this restaurant all the time, and every time you eat there, you don't feel good after, you know, you have an upset stomach, but you keep going back to that restaurant, right? And yeah, same food. Or it could be even like you have a cramp or something going on in your body and you're not, you you just, you're just like, ignore, ignore, ignore. So this disembodiment that we have, or even feeling our gut feelings, right? If you're around someone and you feel bad every time you're around them, that's your body saying like, this is not a match. This is not who you are. And instead we go, we push it down. So it's really a process and practice of awareness. And there's a lot of different ways to cultivate that awareness and practice presence. I want to mention one really big dis— or misunderstanding about mindfulness is that you're supposed to empty your mind and be completely at peace when you're doing it. In fact, mindfulness is a process of using contrast, using struggle to become aware. So it's when your mind wanders and you catch it and you come back. It's when your kid is screaming and you take a breath in and you meet them with this breath out, right? Like it's, it's in those edges that we actually train our nervous system and then in time it becomes your default and it's not something you have to remember to do. It's just how you walk through life. Yeah. I mean, all we are, it's kind of weird. Like we're walking meat suits with a nervous system, right? Like it, our neural patterns, right? And form so much of how our brain operates and receives information and how we process information, it comes through a filter that's based in neuroplasticity and neural pathways. So when you talk about anxiety, for example, really your anxiety is your body trying to rise up to face something that feels unsafe, right, or unknown. And it's just learning, you know, not demonizing these things we struggle with that makes us human, but rather really being in relationship, like, oh, there it is again. How can I source inner source safety within myself? Or what physical thing? Because with anxiety, for example, you want to do things that are sensory, physical. Because if you just tell someone to calm down or tell yourself to be calm, it doesn't work because we got to get in the body. A lot of this stuff, a lot of mental stuff, is a physical thing. So yeah, we model— like, as parents, we model to our kids. So what was modeled to us right? If everybody dealt with hardship through tripping out or worrying, right, it's of course going to be a way that we face challenge or, or just a lot of commotion, right? And this is why for ourselves, I always say for ourselves first, because, you know, nothing's worse than, you know, I'm thinking from a kid's perspective, looking at mom and she's telling me to do all this stuff, but she doesn't walk it at all. You actually can lose a lot of trust with your kid, right, when you're like, do this, but you don't embody it. So if you just practice it for yourself first, and then naturally you will co-regulate with them, you'll model these new coping skills with them. And that's why mom— like, when we talk about family, right, the parents are such the center of so much of the ways the kids are going to cope and deal with stuff. So yeah, it's totally— and I can share with you guys, so just real quick hacks for So if you're anxious, obviously the exhale, but if you forward fold, it takes your head below your heart and it downregulates your nervous system. So if you take your head below the heart or find child's pose or any type of forward fold, it relaxes the nervous system. If you're feeling depressed or fatigued, if you open your armpits, like armpits open, back bend, that's gonna actually reenergize your body. Inhalation re-energizes the body. And so when we are in those negative feedback loops, using somatics such as the examples I gave— I'm big on tapping, I'm obsessed with Emotional Freedom Tapping as well for myself. And it's funny because my daughter does it, she sees me do it, so she, she'll do it too. But EFT or any type of techniques that allow the body to be involved in the coping process, that disrupts those negative feedback loops. Or like getting in the shower when you're just feeling blah, like, yeah, or sunlight, like something somatic. That's a really powerful way to get right into it. It's so true. I think that a lot of women can resonate with that because especially in the day of social media too, right? And the, the way things are put out there, but the always, if we come back to like our energy and our spaces and our home, and a lot of the reason we may bully ourselves that it's supposed to look a certain way, it could be also that programming from the external. It's not really ours. And this is what I mean by mindfulness being a reflection tool. It's reflecting and going, is this mine or is this somewhere else? Someone else? Do I really believe this? Do I? Is this really me? And asking those questions because then we can discern what is a program, what is a narrative that we're subscribing to unconsciously, to what is our conscious truth. Yeah. Yeah. So I do a lot of mindfulness coaching. I'm a mentor. So I, you know, I've trained hundreds of people to be yoga teachers. In fact, if you go around San Antonio, a lot of the yoga teachers are graduates of my school. And I mentor them through the training process because yoga teacher training, for example, from the outside it can look like, okay, you're going to do this to get your certification to be, to teach these poses. And again, with my background in yoga therapy, mind-body medicine, and mindfulness, it's a lot of on and off the mat. And I believe it's imperative that if we're teaching something, we're embodying it ourselves. So the teacher training journey for a lot of people is really a process of self-discovery and it can bring a lot of stuff up for us to reorient back into our alignment. And so I do a lot of one-on-one coaching with them and having these conversations. And even with moms, for example, you know, they say, well, I can't do my yoga or I can't do these things because I got the kids in the room. And in fact, that's why we have our remote module teacher training program, which is livestream, but it's online.. And it's based off of your calendar and then you get one-on-one with me, which makes it even more magical because we get to deepen into a lot of things personally through the experience. The baby's in the room. When you let your children be in your self-care practices and spaces, even if they're going crazy. I remember when my daughter was 3, I had a coach and she— I was tripping about how like I bought a sauna and I was like, I just want quiet. And actually when you're in the sauna, it amplifies the sounds around. I don't even know. Like, oh, this is so annoying because my daughter— it was just so loud. So I was kind of like, I can't do this. And she said, be a monk at a Metallica concert. And like, you train the highest, like what you train the most when you can witness and reorganize, right? So this ability— so I really applied that, and I always share that with people because one, when you allow your kids in, they're— you're modeling. Like, last— literally last night, we— as we're filming this, right, the full— the blue moon, the full moon in Pisces night. And it was so funny because I did, you know, I do, you know, a little relaxation meditation, did my thing, came out, and my daughter was actually listening to meditation music too. And I was like, what are you doing? Like, she's 7. She was just like playing on her iPad, had the meditation music going while she was like doing whatever school app that they use. But like, oh my gosh, like she picked that. And, you know, but maybe it's because she saw me go in and do my meditation. Maybe she, you know, we model. It's because she sees how mom does self-care practices, and there's many times where she's been right next to me and I, I listen to things, or so she naturally does that too. So we're teaching our kids, and then also we can use them to build resilience. And I mean that, right? They can be that tool to help us redirect. Window, like their face like up against the window, like, get away. And but what— so in yoga, this, this concept of like witnessing and redirecting, like using that, like when, when like she's playing and she's being loud or she's, you know, whatever, and I want quiet. This is called paitiyara in yoga. So it's withdrawal of senses. And we train this on the yoga mat. An example on the yoga mat is when you are, let's say you're in a down dog or you're in a stretch and you take a breath in and then all of a sudden you hear a noise outside or you notice something, you judge yourself, right? Your ability to go, oh, and then come back to the sensation or the present moment. So it's like that stimuli that they're creating, because you want kids to be kids, right? And I, trust me, I want my space to be as like zen all the time, but with children, like, we need to let them have that space to be kids. Or if, you know, she's like, you know, whatever, really it was just her being loud with toys and like just shh, or jumping around. They just— we have a rule at night, so I always make her, um, I'm always like, all right, before we shower, we start, you need to get your wiggles out. So we do a get rid of the wiggles. So she gets to like jump around. We do frog— she does frog jumps, or like a down dog, playing. It's like, so, and it's become this fun thing. But I, I had her do it once because one night I was just like, you are so energized, I need you to calm, right? But it's the reason they're doing that is because they have— they haven't exerted all that energy. It's just energy. And so how can we direct them? But going back to the mind wanders. So, oh, that's the kid toy. Oh, that sound. And then coming back to my breath. That's how we train those neural patterns actually. And so we need these external stimuli or if you're in a meditation practice, the whole point of meditation is that your mind wanders. So you bring it back to develop that neural pattern for presence. So if your mind is not active during meditation, I don't know if you're a human. Your mind is meant to— your mind doesn't stop, right? So it's debunking these things and learning to co-create with them to actually edify our vitality versus making it another reason things are hard or I can't do it. There's been unfortunately a horrible socialization of yoga and mindfulness in the West because it's so performance-based. It's so look what I can do or look how I appear versus actually understanding like why we're doing the techniques in the first place, where are they derived and what was the process of the derivation of that. It is a lot more inclusive than the West has propped it to be. And that's my mission with all the work Malbory Yoga does. You know, we bring it to the military, we bring it to first responders. We bring it to a lot of different pathology, so autoimmune, chronic pain, healthy aging, all different bodies, all different lifestyles. You know, I do mostly work with women because, you know, statistically more women are into meditation, mindfulness, and yoga. But I would say about 30% of my clients are men, you know, so there is a big interest. I do see with men like there's starting to be this interest of self-regulation and human performance. And we know with all the research out there how much yoga and mindfulness meditation can affect the body. So, you know, people are leaning in more and more for health. However, it is accessible to all people. And I think that if you ever have an experience with yoga for one, or, or anything, mindfulness, yoga, meditation, number one, If the teacher tells you that you're doing it wrong or you have to do it a certain way and you're not good, like, makes you feel that way, because that's not true. Of course, there's very small, you know, things for safety, like making sure your knee is stacked above your ankle, or— but if your knee can't because you had knee surgery and all the scar tissue, then maybe they should have you just go on your back and do it. So there's a different— there's always a mod— there's moderation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or If they tell you that, or if they ever say like you can't, I don't know if you ever have an experience like that where you don't get agency with your body, I would find a new teacher or a different class. And then also look at mindfulness and yoga as ice cream in a way. It's like there's a lot of different flavors. You may love mint chocolate, but hate pistachio. Like go, you know, try different flavors and find what you like. And just if you don't like it or it doesn't feel right, doesn't mean you're bad. It just means you didn't like the flavor, you know. I know that there's gyms that offer restorative yoga, and restorative yoga is restorative yoga. I would more so look at the description of what the class is going to be, because yoga does what yoga does. And I mean, even when I, in 2011, 2012, I started teaching with CrossFit stuff, like I was doing yoga for CrossFit. I taught for, I was at UNCA in Asheville, North Carolina. I taught for their health and fitness. Like, so yoga gets put into the fitness world and it is because it can definitely strengthen it. It helps with a lot of mobility. You can sweat, but this just goes back to, there's a lot of different flavors. And I would not say that gym yoga is worse or better than studios. And I know that some people might be like, studios are just a different experience. They're juicy, they're cozy, they have a different energy, right? I, I think it's more of the, the place you would experience. But yoga, yoga does what yoga does, you know. There's ways to intelligently sequence things where it's more inclusive, more intentional, more impactful. But at the end of the day, breath, body, mind coming together— if you're doing it at home on YouTube, it's, it's a doorway into these deeper things. So I don't think there's a wrong. I think it's more about what you find, what's right for you. If you're wanting to optimize breath capacity and, you know, even just presence with the musical instrument, yoga can actually help with that. It might not be, you know, it might— you might just need to find what class description would work for those things. I love that. Yeah, like, what, what is your intention? What do you want? And then I think that if you're just going into it, Recognize that you're trying different flavors of ice cream. You may love it, you may not. If you don't love it, look at something else. Try, you know, it's finding your places or finding the YouTube video or any of that. My favorite thing for myself is being in this line of work of mindfulness, yoga, stress reduction, mind-body medicine. It has given me the mental and emotional sobriety in my life that I could not imagine if I didn't do this. Every day. Like, this is such a gift to get to guide people and share this work, but it helps me. So there's this element of it keeps me accountable. It keeps me in this process of continuing to learn how incredible the body is and how this is a self-regulating organism and how there's so much to inner resource for myself. So I feel like I'm in a constant, like, love experience with myself. And then when I have hard moments, I can sit there with that duality and darkness in me and mother it, like be in it but not be afraid of it. It's just, it's awesome for myself. And I see this with people who become yoga teachers or just become like, get into this stuff. It's like you really get to be in these gems. For the work that I do with the world, I am a creative, right? So I'm an author of a poetry anthology. I was actually San Antonio's best poet in 2019. I'm like, and if you come to class with me, you'll see, you'll hear it in the cadence of my, my voice when I teach. I'm, I'm a poet. I have a nerdy book on the chakras and medicine. So I'm an author, but I'm a creative. We just had an oracle deck come out. We have a whole docu-series launching on YouTube right now. Like, I'm always into creative projects because I like to pioneer things. I like to go where no one's been and like kind of poke it and push the envelope and see what we can shift and change. It was kind of even a joke when I did all this work with the military, you know, like the yoga studio. And then I worked with the soldier medics and brought a yoga program in and we have impacted the US military where they're now scaling yoga into basic training and AIT schools. But because I don't belong anywhere in a way, I kind of, you know, I run, I do my own business, but I do a lot of volunteer work. So I can work around red tape. Our school is also part of higher academia with Northwestern Health Sciences University. So we're like, again, trying to pave these paths of being in higher academic, academics to like the military, to these places that like to give yoga a home. That's something that I love. So when I train people, I really listen to what their passion is and where they dream to bring this or what their gifts are. And I really help them mold this to be relevant to their interests. Like an example would be we had an esthetician, like her bringing this stuff into her esthetician practice, to someone who works in Bexar County Prison, creating a mindfulness program for Bexar County Prison incarcerated fathers, to all types of— like you name it, like we play. And so I love witnessing my graduates and trainees like doing these, these amazing things, but I'm definitely Like seeing the impact and then the ripple of that over the years and within integrative medicine. Yeah, I like to play and like create and poke and watch then people pour in to like maintain what we start. So that's my favorite. I like love this stuff so much, obviously. I just, I believe in the bigness of people. I believe in their magic. I believe in my truth. Like I meet people where they're at because I do believe in something called mental privilege and I kind of made this up, but what this is is that We have to understand that people perceive the world through the lens that they have, that have been conditioned, right? So if I tell you that you could, you hate your life, you hate this, like just make these choices and it'll change your life. It doesn't work if there's all these negative feedback loops, right? So you have to meet people in their consciousness. You have to meet people where they're at. But the root of it is I believe in their bigness and I trust that if if they're just held and supported and they're met, so much can unlock in the mind from a perspective standpoint. So much can unlock in their reality and the way they're in relationship with things, especially when we take our power back. Like the example with mom guilt, for example, or being a working mom. There are a lot of programs in the world that tell us we have to do all these things and be this type of woman and look this way. And like, the list is bogus, right? It's like, you know, it's, it's oppressive. But when we start to untangle ourselves of why do I believe in this, why do I think this, and then who am I really? Because you're the best mom because you're your best self. Like, you are so perfect for your children. Like, you, even in your imperfection, like, you are giving them the lessons they need for their highest good, even in your quote-unquote faults. Like, that's inspiring their soul growth. And when we start to reconcile and then be honest We liberate a lot in our lives, and I just believe in people. Like, I, I think we live in a tough world. It's horrible, the things that people go through. It's unfair. There's a lot of struggles. But I think that we just need a remembering, like a radical remembering and coming home. And my prayer is that I can pollinate that little by little and everything I do to help people come back home to themselves. And because magical things happen when we start to call our power back and take authority, take responsibility, um, and agency in our life.