The Story of the Founders

How R&R Alchemy came to life

R&R Alchemy began long before Melissa and Xenia knew they were creating something together.

They came to yoga from different places, but both returned to it during seasons when life was asking them to become someone new. In many ways, their stories had been running in parallel for years.

Their lives shared unexpected similarities: East Coast roots, the responsibilities of being the eldest, motherhood, creativity, and a deep appreciation for family and connection. Both had built full lives before Root & Rise ever entered the picture. And both found themselves, at different moments, needing a place to slow down, reconnect, and feel grounded again.

For Xenia, yoga became that place after moving to Colorado in 2020 and returning to the corporate world. Her life had always blended discipline and creativity: competitive tennis at Georgia Tech, a career in tech sales, business ownership, and professional photography. Photography taught her to notice natural light, human connection, and the way an environment can shape how people feel. That curiosity grew into a love of plants, biophilic design, and the connection between nature and well-being. Alongside her career at IBM, she began exploring how natural materials, greenery, light, and connection to the outdoors can create spaces that feel calmer and more restorative. For Xenia, yoga and nature became deeply connected paths to restoration, inspiring her vision of creating intentional spaces where people can slow down, reconnect with themselves, and find renewal through movement and the natural world.

For Melissa, yoga deepened during a season of major change. After a devastating house fire in 2021, she found herself rebuilding not only a home, but a rhythm of life. Around that same time, ceramics became another form of mindfulness and eventually grew into Fat Bottom Pots. Inspired by nature, her pottery and yoga share a foundation of patience, presence, creativity, and the ability to begin again. As an instructor, Melissa brings that same intention into her thoughtfully curated flows and accompanying music, creating an immersive journey where practitioners can lose themselves in the practice and reconnect with who they are. Through movement, breath, and music, she guides them from grounding to building powerful energy, releasing what no longer serves them, and making space to absorb what does. It is this gift for creating deeply meaningful experiences that draws so many people to Melissa, including Xenia, and makes her talent integral to the heart of Root & Rise.

And yoga is where their worlds began to collide.

For months, Melissa and Xenia found themselves in the same yoga classes without truly knowing one another. Xenia noticed Melissa long before they became friends. There was something about her presence that felt grounded, creative, authentic, and completely her own. When Melissa began teaching, Xenia found herself drawn to her classes, and a connection began forming long before their first conversation.

Nearly two years later, they finally sat down for coffee. What began as a casual conversation revealed a shared love of nature, creativity, movement, meaningful connection, and the desire to build something beyond the lives they already knew.

Their personalities were different but deeply complementary, with just enough organized chaos to turn coffee into friendship. Coffee became hikes. Hikes became retreats, yoga festivals, travel, and long conversations about the lives they wanted to build and the kind of place they wished existed closer to home.

Then, during one of Melissa's 7:30 a.m. yoga classes, the idea arrived.

In the middle of the flow, Xenia envisioned a place that brought together intentional yoga, nature, creativity, and community. Not simply a yoga studio, and not a destination retreat that required a plane ticket, a week away, or a major investment.

Something restorative and reachable, close enough to become part of everyday life, yet surrounded by nature in a peaceful sanctuary that feels worlds away. A place where the renewal of a retreat becomes a repeatable experience, making it possible to step away, reconnect, and restore whenever you need it.

Nature would be essential to that experience. Time spent in natural environments has been associated with reduced stress, improved mood, and greater feelings of well-being. The vision was to create a place where people could step away from the demands of everyday life, reconnect with their bodies and breath, and allow the natural world to support their restoration.

Because before we rise, we root.

And Xenia knew, almost immediately, that this vision was meant for Melissa and her to bring to life together.

It wasn't simply that the idea had arrived during Melissa's class. It was everything that had brought them to that moment: their shared journeys, their friendship, and the way their individual talents complemented one another.

Melissa could create the journey within, guiding people through movement, music, mindfulness, and creative expression. Xenia could create the environment around it, bringing together nature, plants, biophilic design, and intentional spaces to encourage grounding and restoration.

Together, they could create something neither could create alone.

The missing piece was the place.

And then came Menka, a remarkable soul many in the local yoga community may already know as the quiet, graceful practitioner on the mat nearby. With him came an extraordinary dome beside the Wise Silent Forest.

Suddenly, the idea had somewhere to grow.

Menka's dome and the surrounding natural space became the physical foundation of Root & Rise. The dome creates a place to gather, move, breathe, and connect while remaining surrounded by trees, light, air, and the rhythms of the natural world.

Here, nature is more than scenery. It is an essential part of the experience, creating an environment where movement, breath, creativity, and community come together to support restoration.

The space allows Melissa and Xenia to bring their vision to life: a place where people can step away from everyday demands and immerse themselves in an intentionally curated experience, grounded in the natural world.

Root in nature. Ground in the present. Restore. And from there, rise.

That is the alchemy behind Root & Rise.

R&R Yoga is the first expression of that vision: restorative experiences built around yoga, nature, creativity, connection, and belonging.

And through R&R Living, Melissa and Xenia hope to carry those same principles beyond the retreat, bringing the restorative benefits of nature, intentional design, and creativity into the places people live every day.

Their hope is simple: that people leave Root & Rise feeling more grounded than when they arrived, more connected to themselves, to nature, and to the people around them, and carrying some of that restoration back into everyday life.

What began as two separate journeys became a shared vision.

And somewhere between breath, clay, plants, friendship, nature, a dome beside the forest, and one morning yoga flow, R&R Alchemy was born.