"By coincidence I came across Melanie Willsher's yoga studio, situated in Bosa. A wonderful town where life seems to pass in only half speed, food is fantastic, the beach is awesome and the number of tourists is very limited.

Approximately once a month Melanie arranges yoga retreats where you in small groups, 3 hours a day, practice yoga, hearing the angels sing (Danish expression - don't know if you use that in UK?). Being a novice or an advanced practitioner of yoga, you will enjoy a week of travelling with and within yourself, pure balm for your soul.

In a very easy understandable English language, Melanie instructs yoga exercises with her extraordinary skills of advising you individually, taking basis in the individual talents and needs. An extending and giving experience, from which it is hard to return to your stressful normal living. But with you, you bring the exercises for continued practising."

Kirsten Tolstrup, Denmark (24 January 2010)

The Being of Yoga, Karen Newby (October 2009)

"According to the understanding of yoga that Melanie offers, it is through applying oneself in an act of an alert, attentive undoing that we can achieve the state of being in yoga. Giving oneself permission to undo, in order to open the pathways that will let the being of yoga happen. Put this way, it might sound a bit metaphysical. Although, these familiar lines from William Henry Davies, give shape to the contrast between being and doing:

What is this life if, full of care
We have no time to stand and stare

Through gentle verbal, visual and tactile prompts, Melanie reminds us that we have nothing to do and nowhere to go. Balancing, not arriving. She invites us throughout our practice to concentrate on un-doing, not doing. She shows us as she demonstrates the asanas, how to bring awareness to habitual tensions, and how this leads on to discover new ways of moving. We learn how to free our breath, spine and whole body/person. Resting deeply into the earth with gravity, in order to go lightly up through the spine. Developing a relationship to the breath as it is. So that, in time, the breath naturally meets the poses. And through touch, and emphasis on individual attention, she gently and astutely adjusts our asanas, as we practice them, smoothing and easing the doing out of our postures, to let the being happen.What Melanie gives, carries on developing, because it's not a set of instructions, but a feeling of curiosity for what the practise can show us.

The focus is on undoing and freeing up the tensions that arise from rigid habits, unblocking nerve pathways that have become “sclerosed”, literally and figuratively, through over emphasis and over striving, in a linear fashion. The underlying principle is that if you stop trying to do, and let be, the blockages will be released of their own accord, thus allowing energy to flow naturally to where it’s needed. In my case, this translates into a loosening up of the rigid habits and the tension that have a tendency to settle in, both in my body and my mind, from pushing, pulling and conforming to ideals and demands. I'm invited to give up holding and to move towards a looser, more grounded way of being with myself.

I often think of my yoga and I as partners in a relationship that, like any other, can become stale through routine and lack of variety, or cease to develop because of all those hindrances and obstacles that tend to build up in a relationship over time, if we let them. And like any other healthy relationship, sometimes all it can take is a bit of a change, a new outlook, some space in which changes can be explored safely, to relieve the tensions and freshen it up. And that’s why I look on my practice with Melanie as a real yoga retreat."

"Melanie is a yoga teacher who offers through yoga, the possibility of feeling our connection with the earth again. What a nice surprise it was for me to discover! So, since September I have experienced her course with enjoyment and curiosity. At the end of each practise my body has felt alive and energised. There is a clear feeling that without force, but by breathing and becoming aware of the breath, the body naturally lengthens, loosens, releases and comes alive. Melanie's teachers were students of Vanda Scaravelli. Vanda, together with the philosopher Krishnamurti, with whom she shared a close friendship, had been a student of BKS Iyengar and Desikachar. When she stopped having lessons and became her own pupil she found her way to express herself, and developed her unique, simple and open approach to yoga practise, which really touches an inner chord with me. Here is an interview with her when she was 88 years old and still practising (see: the DVD Vanda Scaravelli on Yoga):

"And what was the way?" The way was to do it relaxing, without effort, with the wave, with movement, with breathing. All this makes the practise of yoga very agreeable. You can reach the same things without strain, with 'allegrezza' and then that took over.

"Would you explain 'allegrezza'?" This means the 'intelligent heart'. You are relaxed, you are not a slave to ideas. You become intelligent and at the same time you are happy. The poses come better. In our education we are trained to become. You try to become. You have examples, and the examples kill all possibility of being, because you have a model, and you want to copy that model. This is all imitation, and this takes you away from the possibility of being. When you are, you are what you are. You don't become. You are. The becoming is like a ladder. You want to climb a ladder up to an ideal, to a form that society has created. This is the wheel of education."

Few of us have the good fortune to study privately with some of the world's greatest teachers, who led Vanda to her own creativity. This way of practising yoga is ideal for me. Thanks Melanie for your passion that you transmit as... 'from the ground we feel the lightness go up through the spine'."

Ilaria Meschi, Italy, avillavillacole.blogspot.com (15 May 2009)

Yoga Italian-style is just out of this world
Ciara Ferguson, Independent (25 March 2007)

IT IS cold as winter. My back is stiff. I am in need of a cat with which to curl up, a sphinx to contemplate, a dolphin to play with and perhaps, if I'm thinking like this, a few deep breaths to bring me back to earth. Melanie Willsher and her own unique approach to yoga are on hand.Take a deep breath, expand, stretch and imagine two magical places in Italy. Far up in the stunningly beautiful tamed hills of northern Tuscany is a villa called Il Borghino and on the wild western coast of Sardinia is a small town called Bosa. Each is easily accessible and each, depending on your temperament, a paradise of its own where yoga teacher Melanie organises sublime week-long yoga retreats.

"I don't believe in pushing and pulling the body into positions from without. The body is invited to unravel into yoga positions from within. Everyone knows their own limits. We need to start paying attention to our own intuition and experiences. This yoga helps bring awareness to habitual tensions and then leads on to discover new ways of moving. Let's be curious about what the practise can show us,'' she says simply.

First to Tuscany, in spring or autumn, to sit by a still pool with the rolling hills, olive and cypress trees laid out before you like so many familiar paintings. The scent of the air is sweet and lavender-tinged and the only sounds are the birds at play. In the distance, eight kilometres away lies the walled city of Lucca. A day of yoga and breathing later, all is calm.Yoga has the power to change. Beneath me, underneath the pool and with surreal underwater views is the large quiet room where Melanie teaches her own ever-evolving , original style of yoga in which she balances deep knowledge with gentle intuition and individual attention. Her approach is also influenced by her training as a Music Therapist. Melanie is a yoga enthusiast - it's what makes her such a patient teacher - and her philosophy and practice encompass all levels of experience. She began practising yoga as a teenager in South Africa 25 years ago and her style of yoga is gentle yet intense, directed by the breath, gravity and the mobility of the spine.

"The idea is to allow the breathing and poses to unfold gradually, without effort or strain. Attention is focused and a form of meditation in itself," she says.

The morning is spent internally cocooned like this, while upstairs Fiona prepares a wonderful buffet lunch. In the afternoon, shiatsu massage is available or you can walk into the woods behind the villa. Alternatively take a taxi and arrive in Lucca in 15 minutes; it's half an hour to Pisa to see the Leaning Tower, an hour to Florence. The accommodation at Il Borghino is elegant and comfortable in three wooden-beamed villas recently restored in typical simple Tuscan country style and these yoga breaks are available spring and autumn. Melanie has recently based herself in Sardinia, in the small town of Bosa where she lives with her husband and son. They left England for Italy and the pursuit of their dream three years ago and together have created these pockets of yoga heaven.