Who am I?
a bit about the muse musing
Here’s the short version…
I am the child of a healer and a physicist, conceived in a conscientious objector’s community in Nova Scotia. I was born in Virginia, raised in the Northeastern US, spent my freshman year at Temple University and then graduated from Cornell. I worked in the arts in Santa Fe, Boise, and New York City before heading overseas in 1999 to travel (but ended up living) in India, Barbados, Puerto Rico, New Zealand, and now Australia.
I feel at home inside trees and water, and with critters and those humans who are also at home in the wilds. I love to dance and move my body, as it is the most authentic communication we have, however I also love words and etymology.
I am intrigued and motivated by delving into the roots of why things seem to be what they are.
I’m grateful to be here, in this human form, sharing space and time with you.
May you and all those you love be well.
May all waters be blessed.
For a more extended bio, keep reading…
I recently learned my hippy parents introduced me to yoga while still in the womb. At age 6 we were Nichiren Buddhist, making me a “fortune cookie". The next year my mom and I spent time at Kripalu Ashram, and at age 16 I began practicing Kundalini Yoga. I began a dedicated self-practice or sadhana at age 23 before leaving the US in 1999 to roam India. In 2002 I returned to Kripalu for my 200 hour teacher certification.
Although privileged to teach in a number of countries, Aotearoa New Zealand is where I’ve lived the longest (since 2005) and was welcomed into a wider sense of whānau, family beyond blood-ties.
In 2008 I opened Powa Centre in Wellington and organized my teachings under the brand MYOGA which stands for Manifest Your Own Greatness thru Awareness, and which was coined with the intention that each person must “own” their own practice.
MYOGA’s guiding principle is freedom to unfold. Each aspect of the practices – mudra, mantra, pranayam, asana, poetry, humour – has been chosen for its efficient and effective ability to cultivate both union and liberation.
MYOGA Basics recognize the value of caring for our foundations, while MYOGA Seasons evolved in 2010 as a way to honour and ignite the powers and energies within us – our chakras – as well as to align with those outside us – the natural environment’s changing seasons.
Unlike many practitioners, I consider vinyasa or flowing yoga to be advanced. I figure if you can do the simple things slowly, with grace and ease, then the more complicated and quicker things are simply less complicated. So both Seasons and Flows are only available to those who’ve practiced with me before, as they rely on a good grounding in Basics (which, along with Sounds and Restores are freely available on MYOGA’s YouTube channel).
Additionally, my own journey with hearing loss led me to place great emphasis on the healing power of vibration and learning to own and speak Truth, which is invaluable as an actor and comedian. MYOGA Sounds is where you’ll find tools to aid you in shifting your state with accessible breathing and sounding practices.
I have certifications in Pregnancy Yoga (2003), Radiant Child (2009), and the Forrest Yoga Advanced Teacher Training (2016). I registered with the Yoga Alliance in 2004 and since then have become an ERYT, Experienced Registered Yoga Teacher with a minimum of 1,000 “in the field” (more like 8,000+). I formulated and led two Yoga Alliance-certified 200 hour teacher trainings, taught on TVNZ’s Good Morning Show, and also in the local women’s prison for two years.
In 2014 I put most of my teachings online, including MYOGA Restores, and in 2015 I took a “spiritual sabbatical” to question deeply what has become of the Yoga Industry and what my place within it might be.
My name is Melissa Elvira Billington and I am of Robertson, Carr and Billington descent. My parents are second cousins so I have a double dose of the “fierce when roused” Robertson blood and it is this part of my ancestry that has been so proud, for hundreds of years, to be descended from Pocahontas. Even though claiming this ancestry can be offensive to those born and raised on a Reservation/Prisoner-of-War-Camp, or within the on-going genocide of Native people, I include it here out of gratitude. Without it, and even without the controversy, it’s unlikely I would be here at all. Inquiring into the untold truths of Matoaka/Pocahontas/Lady Rebecca’s short life, but long legacy, has required me to question all I think I know, yet to also do my best to learn from how she bridged worlds.
I’m curious to have the conversations now that did not happen 500 years go, the conversations that cultivate peace and understanding between the native and invasive paradigms, between verb-based or process-focused cultures and those that are noun-based.
I was born in ancestral lands of Virginia but then raised in the NorthEast and went to school at both Temple and Cornell Universities. I like to think I have a good mix of Southern gentility and Northern directness! After working as a milliner, actor and costume designer/creatrix in Santa Fe, Idaho and New York City, I went overseas in 1999 and have not lived permanently in the US since then. Although I loved university, my greater education and blessing has come from living in India, Barbados, Puerto Rico, New Zealand and Australia, as well as having the enormous privilege to travel to many other lands.
In 2014, I returned to my homeland to visit family. I especially wanted to commune with my 101 year old grandfather before he died. On the road I began a blog called EarthWideTribe (now slowly being reposted on this Substack account) that had emerged out of a prior blog called Ear2Earth and my contributions to The YogaLunchbox.
It’s through writing that I feel most at ease communicating and how I integrate all that I learn on the journey of living. Over time I’ve become more graceful at moving between worlds, between hemispheres, between languages, between landscapes, between roles and between values. I’d love to see more of how we can connect beyond apparent blood ties – how we can come-to-be ‘Unity in Diversity’. I mean no offense to actual tribes striving to survive settler colonialist tactics to obliterate them. My intention is to use whatever privilege I have to enlighten from ignorance and uplift from struggle. I start with the only ground I can truly claim as my own - mySelf.
Those who have had their lands and culture taken from them do not appreciate the continuation of that taking, even by using the word Tribe. I get that. Yet I also get that, at this stage in our evolution, we are all craving a healing that will stick and a sense of belonging that is unshakable. Trust the Longer Journey (something I say a lot in my teaching and the title of my forthcoming book) means that we are perpetually unfolding and learning the wisdom of interdependent and conscious relations over time.
How we do what we do IS what we do.
In what small, immediate way can we live the dream now? How do we wake up to the injustices that rule our current world? Seems to me, working with a longer, wider, deeper view allows for the fact that the material world transforms more slowly than the lightening speed with which we can see it in our minds. In highschool I realized:
Balance is OVER time
not IN time.
From 2014-2018 I was blessed to go on unexpected “walkabout” when my elder/grandmother gifted me my first water song from the Northern Ojibwe in Ottawa. In those years of pilgrimage, my eyes and heart were more widely opened to the welfare of water, women, animals and children in our shared world. Since then, taking on the responsibility and blessing to pray to and for water each day has made me deeply aware of the plight of water everywhere on our finite planet. And water is life, so water is everything. I offer much gratitude to my elders, including Sharon Day for carrying on the water-walking ceremony of her elder Josephine Mandamin, and for the opportunity to prayer-walk both Seneca Lake and the Missouri River with her.
Although I continued to teach yoga in studios, the walkabout, water walks and exposure to ecological activism inspired me to seek ways to take the yoga off the mat and out more widely into the world. As we walked through Amazonia, Iowa and conversation turned to the ancient Amazons, I became inspired to research their ways through archery, horse friendship, survival skills and ally-ship.
By the start of 2019, The Amazon Academy was born and we had 4 expeditions in the South Island of New Zealand in line with the equinoxes and solstices. Awaken the Heart to Action is our focus and tagline.
Additionally, I’ve been intrigued with how we birth ourSelves and our next generations into being, as well as our relationships to pleasure. I graduated from an Ecstatic Birth Practitioner Training with Sheila Kamara Hay.
The direct-revelation practice of shamanic drumming journeys has grown in me since 2006 when my mother, ever my teacher, introduced me to her practice and also to her teacher, Pat Floyd, a longtime student of Sandra Ingerman.
Here you can view some of my acting work, including the 90 minute PocaHauntus–Shapeshifting History into HerStory, a solo show inquiry into my personal ancestry and the colonizing beginnings of the (so-called) United States.
More recently in my onstage life I’ve been stepping into comedy, as a means of coping with an increasingly unfunny world, and also out of respect for what I deem to be a very high art - the ability to speak truth in a way that it’s enjoyed. This has led me onwards into a search for “what is funny?” and whether it is possible to enlighten - to ‘free people from concern’ as Jim Carrey terms it - without doing harm, a decidedly Buddhist approach to onstage bumbling!
Through all of these (and more) explorations, I remain curious. I tend to move towards what frightens or confuses me, such as stand-up comedy, relationships and birthing! I speak of my own story as it’s the only perspective I have a right to speak from, but I share it here so we can mirror and grow from one another.
In 2022 I returned to the lands that made me to once again reconnect with family after the lockdowns and mandates in New Zealand. I was, once again, launched onto an unexpected walkabout, this time in the US. Over the year, I ranged widely from Oregon, Washington, California, Arizona, Arkansas, and then on to New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and back again. Having left the US - and specifically Ithaca - more than 20 years ago, I felt like Odysseus returning to Ithaca from his odyssey. My Instagram account is a great visual scrapbook of my wanderings since 2014.
In early 2023 I ventured into Australia to write with dwarf planet astrologer Alan Clay, with whom I have been training since 2018 and assisting since 2022.
However, after my brother’s unexpected death I realized I need to focus more on bridging between the arts and the sciences so I can be of greater benefit as we turn our relationship to our mother earth around. Masters of Environmental Management at University of Queensland, here I come!
Thanks to Creator for the vehicle, and Spirit for the fuel.
Thanks to You for being! May you walk in light and love all-ways!
