Melissa Michelle DeGasperis is the founder of Mādhava Unite, LLC and she is committed to keeping the dialogue of holistic living as a healing art open, resourceful, and transcendental. She would state the founding of such work stems from the original thought seeds planted by the great teachers who have come before us. Through their wisdom, love, and compassion, we flow supported in a sea of infinite possibility.  

While growing up, Melissa always had an interest in storytelling. She graduated from Hofstra University in 2007 with a bachelor’s degree in broadcast journalism and landed a job in mainstream media right after college. It was during this pivotal life experience as a field producer that she became curious to study acting and film. She enrolled at The William Esper Acting studio, moved to New York City, and worked as an actress in theatre arts. 

Shortly after moving to New York City she began a daily yoga practice at the Jivamukti Yoga School and became fully immersed and fascinated by the yoga teachings and its positive influence on her life. In 2016 she graduated from the Jivamukti Yoga Teacher Training at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck New York, and has since worked in a variety of settings which include, yoga studios, schools, and hospitals. With over a decade of yoga experience and study, she weaves together the yoga teachings as a holistic life practice.

In the spring of 2021 she completed 1,000 hours of in-depth nutrition and herbalism training and received a Holistic Health Practitioner certification from the Natural Healing Institute of Naturopathy, Inc.— a nationally accredited vocational college of holistic health.  

Mādhava is a sanskrit word and one name for Vishnu or the all-attractive preserver aspect found in the Hindu pantheon.  Vishnu, along with Brahma the creator, and Shiva the destroyer, are the three holy or holistic concepts apart of the Trimurti or Holy Trinity that symbolize our cyclical nature of existence from birth, preservation, and destruction to our then embedded regenerative abilities.

As the sweetness of a flower attracts the bee to fertilize, as the seed then develops to hold within it anew possibility, so too are we pollinating great change from the knowledge gained and shared of our diversified life experiences. So too are we remembering our role, interconnected-ness to the whole of existence, and what it means to unite.