In June 2024, Melissa Shah (she/they), MPH, C-IAYT, was one of the accomplished speakers at IAYT’s Symposium on Yoga Therapy and Research (SYTAR), an annual gathering devoted to advancing the practice of yoga therapy.

When she’s not offering professional development for colleagues in yoga therapy, Melissa, like many IAYT-certified yoga therapists, provides education about the practices to the public.

For example, in a Women’s Health magazine article, “Types of Yoga: The 16 Most Popular Styles and How to Pick the Right Practice for You,” Melissa explained that those popular styles were created partly to help people in the West better understand the ancient South Asian practice.

Melissa offered more detail to yogatherapy.health, noting that considering yoga through the lens of distinct, separate styles can dim understanding of the practice’s true purposes: developing sustained attention and clarity and reducing suffering. “Fragmenting yoga can perpetuate the idea that it is only about the postures, or only about breath,” she said, “when it is actually inherently a holistic practice.”

In fact, this yoga therapy leader also takes care to describe how yoga stretches far beyond the confines of a mat or a studio. Melissa takes an inclusive approach to the well-being yoga promises, as reported on VoyageLA.com:

“I try to focus my offerings on the intersection between yoga and social justice—to me, this means to learn how to tune into our inner knowing and dharma (calling, purpose) when it comes to taking action toward what we believe in.“

“As a yoga therapist,” she explained, “I deeply believe in applying the culture and teachings of yoga to bring to light the long-standing disparities in wellness spaces.”

Melissa’s offerings at the SYTAR conference did just that, with an interactive session titled “Looking Within: Understanding Power and Privilege in the Spaces You Hold,” and participation in a panel discussion on “Access and Belonging in Yoga Therapy.”

Learn more about Melissa here, and about yoga as a social-justice practice in previous yogatherapy.health blog posts such as “Beyond the individual: Yoga as a community healing practice for social transformation.”