Meet Melissa

Melissa Barnes (“Mrs. Bee”) is a retired Air Force veteran, wife, step-mom to 3 amazing young adults and fur-mommy to 2 cats.  
 
She began practicing yoga and meditation during her deployment to Baghdad, Iraq in 2003, and has been a student ever since.
After leaving her career in corporate management for a fortune 500 company, she reached out to Larisa for help with her own sense of burnout and exhaustion and never looked back.
Melissa believes in the power and strength found in diversity and wants to change the world one act of kindness, love, and compassion at a time!
Throughout her military career, she served as a suicide awareness and prevention instructor as well as an advocate for improved access to mental health care. She led by example, sharing openly about her own experiences with depression and cognitive behavioral therapy, striving with each engagement to eradicate the stigma around help-seeking behavior.