Melly standing in front of a wall with hands in prayer position at chest

Welcome to Melanated Zen!

This site began as a project to fulfill the requirements for my masters program but over time the vision evolved.

I knew I wanted to provide instructional yoga videos, to Black people especially, and discuss mindfulness meditation, spirituality, and other related topics. But I also wanted to get vulnerable about my journey with these topics so that people do not get discouraged while on their’s.

I still plan to make my instructional videos but I will also create vlogs where I am vulnerable about the struggles of going on a spiritual journey and being consistent.

You could say yoga was my gateway drug into the spiritual world. As I attended more classes I learned about things like chakras, meditation, essential oils, and more. This wasn’t necessarily my intent when I first started doing yoga, I just wanted to be more flexible so I could do cool poses like the girls on Instagram. But as I left the community center where I was taking weekly classes, I began to notice how good I felt.

I also noticed how there weren’t many people who looked like me in my classes. In some classes there was only one other Black person but in most, I was the only one. The more yoga I did, the more I thought about how it could benefit my people. When I needed to figure out how I was going to display the skills I picked up in grad school I knew that it would involve yoga in some way.

Now that I have graduated I am excited to continue on with this project and personalize it even more. I know that staying consistent with yoga and meditation can be difficult and I plan to be honest about that. I also plan to discuss the other things that keep me zen.

I hope that others will join me on this journey so that we may learn and grow together.