RESILIENCE

Melissa recently completed this film short sharing her healing journey through ovarian cancer. In these 11 minutes, she takes her audience into the painful and powerful transformative experience she had and how she used the arts to amplify her resilience.

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Melissa Michaels, Ed.D., guides individuals and communities through major life transitions through movement-based initiatory experiences. For over three decades, she has served as a movement mentor to people around the world, those in the birth cycle of life, in adolescence, and in life crisis and normal developmental changes throughout the adult cycle of life. Her recent journey through ovarian cancer transformed her understanding of how to be in a radically changing body. This journey deepened her devotion to the process of excavating soul-centered treasures from all of life’s passages.

Melissa is also the founder of Golden Bridge, a nonprofit organization dedicated to our collective renewal through the liberation of the creative Spirit. She is a first generation teacher of the 5Rhythms® and a Master Somatic Educator and Therapist (ISMETA). Her doctorate in Education, Leadership, and Change is from The Fielding Graduate University. She also held a post-doctoral fellowship at Fielding’s Institute of Social Innovation.

Whether she is tending to individuals transitioning from one life cycle to another or to communities in the midst of major change, Melissa dedicates her life to dancing along life’s edges and guiding others as they do the same. Her forthcoming book, Threshold Dancing, will tell the story of how this body of work that she calls SomaSource weaves together the arts of body, heart, and soul to support the journey from birth through death and through the many mysterious, maddening, and miraculous adventures in between.