school of myth & movement arts

Established 2009

The School of Myth & Movement is the home of the innovative work of Laura Melling. Myth and embodiment are woven in all we do. Our methods are based on cultural history.

How so?

In wise, sustainable cultures, past and present, symbolic-embodied forms of experience play a central role in socialization, initiation and wellness. These dynamic cultural practices are needed for our human nature to unfold in a healthy way.

Ready for some science?

Cognitive science confirms what sustainable cultures have already proven: A sense of safe, embodied attunement AND a learned capacity for emotional-symbolic cognition combine to allow the development of higher-order (neocortex) cognition.

The neo-cortex is the seat of logic, planning, cooperation and self-regulation. It develops well only if the older aspects of the brain where attunement, emotion and symbol live have already been well-developed.

Cultures that do not tend to embodied attunement and symbolic cognition cannot do sustainable ‘seven-generations’ thinking because this thinking requires the neocortex to work in harmony with the more foundational forms of awareness.

Without a functioning neocortex we are caught in patterns of dysregulation, which is the neuroscience word for trauma.

The way forward?

It is essential that we all learn to feel and embody our part in a harmonious, loving Cosmos, in the most imaginative ways we can. To do this will require healing ancestral wounds disconnecting us from the Earth and our bodies.

This creative participation involves a reanimation of the timeless realm of Symbol. Traditional initiations involve participation or witnessing of dance, drama, music, ritual, dreams and such, to open our capacity for multi-dimensional Symbolic perception.

At the School we provide spaces for learning, art, and healing experiences that participate with the many ways people near and far are helping this way forward. We hope to contribute to a future where beautiful, cooperative, imaginative, artful ways of life once again prevail.

Director Laura Melling grew up in New Jersey, and is of Irish, Quaker and Native American descent. She learned yoga from her mother in childhood. As a teen, she was a near-Olympic athlete and received training in body-mind integration and sports psychology.   

From these formative experiences, Laura became fascinated with the complex relationship between her body and spirit. She experienced how modern culture had little appreciation of the expanded states of consciousness that come through athleticism.  At 16, her first exposure to ancient philosophy led to a radical decision to leave many opportunities in athletics in search of a wiser path.

For her undergraduates studies, Laura pursued a self-developed program combining Jungian psychology, Native American and Western philosophy, Human development and Quantum physics.  Given a full fellowship for her doctoral studies at the age of 20, Laura studied in the Anthropology of Human Development. She prepared dissertation research on the question of whether it is philosophically possible to socialize human beings without a definition of human nature and its well-being. This research considered the ways contemporary Western educational culture blocks discussion of wellness as an aspect of education, whereas sustainable cultures place a vision of fulfilled human nature at the center of socialization.  

Laura left her doctoral fellowship to seek out personal experience of the wellness-oriented, initiatory learning her studies convinced her were necessary.  This led her to extensive travel and also to training and performance with the Isadora Duncan International Institute. The Institute upholds Isadora's original approach to visionary holistic education grounded in ancient culture.  Laura is a fourth generation lineage holder in direct connection to Isadora and a certified teacher of the Institute.

In 2004, Laura began creating festival celebrations combining dance, music and drama for large groups of children in the Botanical Gardens of NYC.  During these New York years, she also co-directed a small dance school, trained in Waldorf education, danced with butoh artist Atsushi Takenouchi and created an arts-based ESL-program for Catholic Charities NYC. 

Laura's understanding of initiation expanded through travel.  As a college freshman Laura used her college scholarship to travel to South Africa where she worked in the Zulu community in KwaZulu-Natal and traveled throughout southern Africa.  Later, Laura was befriended by Quechwa-speaking people of highland Ecuador who invited her to their community.  Acknowledged by local medicine people to be a medicine carrier, Laura spent six months on her first trip creating rituals and nature-arts programs in collaboration with native teachers.  She has returned to work and live in this community several times.  

Laura's touring with the Duncan Institute took her to Europe where she spent several summers performing and immersing in ancient sites and art.  She performed extensively in Greece and was crowned in laurels at Delphi after lecturing and performing at the Delphic festival.  She settled for three years in Connemara, in the west of Ireland, where she collaborated with local artists and poets and directed a dance troupe.  In Ireland, Laura's poetry was supported by a grant from Irish National Arts Council.  

Laura returned to the US and established the School of Myth and Movement in the Arapahoe land now called Boulder, Colorado.  For eight years the school's most popular program was Fairy Tale Forest, which attracted children from all over the country to attend summer immersions in land-magic-music-art-myth adventures.  This program attracted scholars of Sustainability education who came to the school to study its unique methods. The School offered many other events and programs that gathered adults and teens into learning and celebration.           

Since 2018, Laura has been living on 30 acres of ancestral Tewa land in current-day New Mexico. Continuing her lifelong interest in Jung, she is pursuing training in somatic-Jungian therapy.

FORMAL TRAINING: Laura carries a Masters in Anthropology of Human Development from New York University, a Bachelors in Cultural Psychology and Human Development from Rutgers Honors College, a post-graduate degree in Isadora Duncan Studies, and post-graduate training in Myth and Movement.  She was privately mentored for ten years by philosopher Bruce Wilshire. Laura is a trained, experienced Waldorf teacher and selected Waldorf teacher-trainer.  She has more than 15 years of training in Jungian psychology, Bioenergetic psychotherapy, the Body-soul work of Marion Woodman and is currently pursuing certification in Jungian-somatic trauma therapy.  Laura trained with RJ Stewart and Anastacia Nutt in the indigenous esoteric traditions of Europe. She was previously part of a Lakota ceremonial community and is now under the tutelage of Mohawk medicine woman Okhi Forest.

AWARDS/POSTS: Her studies and work have received generous support from the National Arts Council of Ireland, New York University, Isadora Duncan International Institute, Rutgers University, the state of New Jersey, Boulder Arts Council, Boulder County Arts Alliance, Galway North Beach Poetry, and a generous anonymous patron. Laura has held teaching and directing positions at National University of Ireland, Shining Mountain Waldorf School, Boulder Waldorf Kindergarten, NYC Botanical Garden, Galway Dance Centre, The Meadow Studio NY, Catholic Charities NYC, among others.