Awaken Your Power — Presence, Power, and Belonging to Ourselves (with Mellara Gold)
In this episode of Awaken Your Power, host Keri Mangis sits down with Mellara Gold, a longtime meditation and mindful yoga teacher whose work centers on awareness, self-compassion, and embodied presence in a complex and often overwhelming world.
Their conversation opens with a question many spiritual practitioners quietly wrestle with: how do we remain rooted in love and light without turning away from real suffering, injustice, and cultural upheaval? Keri and Mellara explore the delicate balance between spiritual practice and honest engagement with the world—without bypassing, numbing, or pretending.
Mellara shares her personal origin story: a debilitating spinal injury at seventeen that led her, reluctantly, into yoga. What began as physical rehabilitation became a profound awakening. Through breath and movement, she discovered not just relief from pain, but a way of being with herself—perhaps for the first time. Awareness, she explains, is not something she chose; it was something life demanded.
From there, the conversation unfolds into a rich exploration of:
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Awareness as a daily, embodied practice rather than a spiritual concept
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Self-compassion as the gateway to dignity and sovereignty
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The ways women are conditioned to abandon themselves in order to belong
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Belonging to oneself as a prerequisite for healthy community
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Rejection as redirection, not failure
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The cultural addiction to external validation and how mindfulness interrupts it
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Ritual as presence rather than performance
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Solitude, hermiting, and silence as essential—not indulgent
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The generational ripple effects of inner work and healing
Mellara speaks candidly about the necessity of solitude and learning to say no—not as withdrawal, but as responsibility to one’s own consciousness. She reframes ordinary tasks like washing dishes or folding laundry as devotional acts when done with presence, reminding us that transformation does not stay contained; it moves outward through families, relationships, and communities.
The episode closes with a simple but powerful reminder: presence is power. To offer yourself even a moment of undivided attention is to come home to your wholeness.
This episode is especially resonant for anyone navigating midlife, burnout, identity shifts, spiritual fatigue, or the quiet realization that pushing through no longer works.
About Mellara Gold
Mellara Gold has taught meditation and mindful yoga for over two decades. She is the author of A Life Worth Living: A Journey of Self-Discovery Through Mindfulness Yoga and Living in Awareness: Deepening Our Daily Lives Through Prayer, Ritual, and Meditation. A former actress trained at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, Mellara is also a regular contributor to OM Yoga & Lifestyle Magazine, Elephant Journal, and other spiritual publications.
You can find Mellara at mellara.com and on Instagram @mellaragold
Email here at [email protected]