Be Free Is Rebirthing This Fall
The Be Free Story: 20 Years in the Making
Be Free started small — a yoga and dance studio tucked into the Blue Mountains of North Carolina, founded in 2007 by Melanie and her friend Barb. From those humble roots, Be Free has lived many lives: a personal brand, a healing center, a Covid survival sanctuary, and a community anchor.
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In 2019, Melanie co-founded The Be Free Healing Center in Fort Collins with Alexandra Jenkins — a vision of deeper connection and belonging. Through partnership, growth, and transition, the studio found its rhythm. After four and a half years, Alexandra passed her ownership torch to Bee Myers, who brought fresh energy, strong traction, and growth to the community. Due to some health issues and a deep need for less, Bee passed her torch to Melanie at the close of 2025, and Melanie became sole owner. She quickly felt the truth: this community was never meant to be held alone.
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That realization cracked open the next chapter.
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What's Coming
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What we do is inherently spiritual: Yoga. Breathwork. Sacred circles. Ceremony. As of fall 2026, Be Free will become The Be Free CommUNITY Center — a registered, non-profit church. We are boldly reimagining the energy of "church": embodied, dogma-free, and radically inclusive. Our vision is to continue to grow a commUnity where all people have access to belonging, healing, growth, and can truly be free.
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The Be Free CommUNITY Center is under contract to buy a church building (601 S Whitcomb- see picture below) that will house a larger main studio, a basement studio, a kitchen, wellness practitioner rooms, and an open community space. Our future mortgage? Less than we are currently pay in rent.
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What's Changing
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Let's start with what's staying the same... weekly classes, workshops, Wellness Practitioner offerings... will all stay! When we move into the non-profit model in our new space (November), everything you donate from that point forward for your yoga practice will become a tax deduction for the year! Our vision is having a solid fund that allows anyone and everyone to come receive, regardless of their ability to pay. Having a second studio space in the basement will open up our capacity to offer so much more! We feel deeply committed to expanding our kids/teen programing, which will open up multiple times a week when parents can come receive at the same time as their kids. As we anchor into our own building, we're calling in more connection, more commUnity, and more growth together.
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The Ask
We are asking for your support to grow into our vision. By mid-August, The Be Free CommUNITY Center needs to raise $250,000 for the down payment and renovation costs of our new home.
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Here's how you can join us:
1- Donate- If you believe in what is growing here, please donate any amount. It is the thing that turns vision into walls, floors, and open doors for all of us.
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One Time or Recurring Donation - Donate once or set up a monthly donation to continue your support throughout the year! Your gift is not a transaction — it is nourishment. CLICK HERE
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Help Us Fundraise! - Set up your own peer-to-peer fundraising page and ask your network to support our collective goal! CLICK HERE
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Looking to Go BIG? If you feel called to make a large tax-deductable donation ($5K+), we would love to connect with you directly! Please reach out to melanie@befreehealing.com
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2- Share your story — Has Be Free been your home? Has Be Free held you? By sharing your transformational Be Free story, you are helping us find those who can provide financial support. Has something shifted in you within these walls? We invite you to say so. Out loud, online, over coffee. We are looking for the people who are ready to believe in this vision — help us find them and ask them to donate.
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If you're on the socials and feel inspired to share your story, please tag the studio! @thebefreehealingcenter
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If you set up your own page on our fundraising platform (see above), you can also share your story there while inviting others to participate or check us out!
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3- Meet our Board — A powerhouse team guiding this vision into being. Be Free has never grown alone, and it won't now. An incredible Board of Directors has gathered to guide this space into its next form. Read their stories. Learn their WHYS (see below). These are the hands we are growing through.
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Twenty years of becoming. This is the chapter we've been building toward.
Our Mission
We nurture a sacred sanctuary for personal, spiritual, and social transformation through embodied practices that (re)connect us to the Earth, the power of the breath/body/mind, love, and commUnity.
Our Vision
A commUnity where all people have access to belonging, healing, growth, and can truly be free.
Diversity Statement
We embrace every body, identity, background, and human. We value the strength and richness that is cultivated in our community through diversity, and actively work to identify and remove systemic barriers to ensure equitable treatment and opportunity for ALL. We are committed to fostering an inclusive environment guided by our Values & Community Agreements that honors, dignifies, and respects each person.
The Values We're Committed To
Inclusion: We cultivate diversity, equity and accessibility so that healing and belonging are available to all those open to honoring the shared mission/vision/values.
Connection: We nurture CommUnity, belonging, love, and care for each other and the planet.
Freedom: We create a sanctuary for courage, creativity, diverse perspectives, & self-expression.
Transformation: We foster both individual and collective transformation, life-long learning, & regenerative growth.
Consent: We create a culture of safety rooted in consent, transparency, & confidentiality.
Repair: We embrace conflict as part of community growth and commit to working towards repair.
Rest: We believe that authenticity, aliveness, creativity, and vitality come from rest.
Meet The Board
Kelly Burns
Kelly Burns is a somatic educator, embodiment coach, storytelling guide, and equity advocate with over two decades of experience helping individuals and organizations reconnect with their bodies, their authenticity, and their power. As the owner of Earth Eagle Somatics in Northern Colorado, a writing instructor at Colorado State University, and a Professional Learning Coordinator in learning institutions across the country, Kelly brings her signature human-first, dignity-based approach to hundreds of professionals each year. She holds an M.Ed, a CMI, and a 200H+ CYT, and is currently deepening her practice through her C-IAYT and Integrative Somatic Trauma Therapy certifications. From New York Times bestselling authors to national ultra-running champions, Kelly's work spans communities near and far — all grounded in the belief that true transformation lives in the body.
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My WHY:
Saying yes to the Be Free CommUNITY Center board felt less like a decision and more like a homecoming. Be Free's commitment to embodied healing, equity, and sacred community mirrors the very work Kelly has built her life around. As a somatic educator whose practice is rooted in the breath-body-mind connection, she deeply resonates with Be Free's vision that belonging and transformation should be available to all people — not just those with access and privilege. Kelly's work in equity education, somatic literacy, and trauma-informed practice aligns directly with Be Free's values of Inclusion, Consent, and Repair, and she is honored to bring her voice, her skills, and her heart to help steward this next chapter of Be Free's evolution.
Carah Campini
I've spent fifteen-plus years leading operational and financial transformation across mission-driven, venture-backed organizations in healthcare and social impact — most recently helping scale a health platform from founding to $25M in revenue and a $200M valuation. My work has always lived at the intersection of structure and soul: making clarity out of chaos, and pulling systems back into alignment with the purpose they've drifted from. But it started long before the spreadsheets: I studied anthropology, and somewhere in learning how humans have gathered, healed, and made meaning across millennia, I came to believe that the practices we're reaching back toward at BeFree aren't new ideas -- they're among the oldest and truest things we have. Becoming a foster parent taught me the rest: what trauma actually asks of us, and what real healing requires.​
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My WHY:
In 2025 I went through a profound loss, and the BeFree community held me in a way I had never been held before. I kept trying to explain it to friends and running out of words — it's a yoga studio, but not like any studio you've ever been to. It's a community. A spiritual community. It's… kind of like my church. That was the moment I understood what I'd been quietly searching for across twenty years of church shopping: a place that could hold the whole of a person, body and spirit alike. So I reached out to Melanie. We're expanding on the work and the mission she's already built, and I'm here to do what I know how to do: give something sacred the structure to grow and last.
Leora Hafri
Leora Hafri is a nonprofit executive, consultant, and curious lifelong learner with more than 20 years of experience advancing mission-driven organizations and communities.
After beginning her career as a Peace Corps volunteer, Leora discovered a deep passion for service that has guided her professional path ever since. She has spent the past decade in executive leadership roles, including Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer, leading national nonprofits focused on health, wellness, and community. Her work has supported youth, LGBTQ+ individuals, people with disabilities, and young adult cancer survivors, with a particular focus on expanding access and opportunity in under-resourced communities.
A dedicated, values-driven leader, Leora is passionate about building inclusive, equitable, collaborative, and sustainable organizations. In 2023, she began consulting, partnering with emerging nonprofits to help them build strong foundations. She has also served on the voyage leadership team for Semester at Sea, a global higher education study abroad program.
Beyond her professional work, Leora has served on nonprofit boards and volunteered in mentorship and peer-support roles. An outdoor enthusiast, fitness advocate, and avid traveler, she believes that meaningful connection, curiosity, and community have the power to transform both individuals and organizations.
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My WHY:
I’m honored to serve on the Be Free commUNITY Center Board and jumped at the opportunity when I learned Be Free was transitioning to a nonprofit. It felt like the perfect intersection of my professional experience and a community that has given so much to me.
When I moved to Fort Collins, I was hoping to find community. What I found was so much more. I found a place where people are welcomed exactly as they are and encouraged to show up as their authentic selves.
Through yoga, mantra, ecstatic dance, breathwork, and simply being in community, I’ve had the opportunity to explore what it means to truly be free while feeling deeply supported, seen, and held by a community that has become like family.
After a recent trip away, I met with Mel to discuss some nonprofit work. As we were saying goodbye, she simply said, “Welcome home.” It was such a small moment, but it meant everything to me. As someone who has lived a somewhat nomadic life, I’ve spent many years searching for a place that felt like home. Through Be Free, I found that sense of belonging.
That’s why I serve on the Board. I’m honored to help steward and strengthen this community so that others can experience the same connection, healing, growth, and sense of home that Be Free has given me, and to help ensure these opportunities remain accessible to all who seek them.
Katie Hoffner
Rooted generationally in the Colorado landscape and shaped by a lifetime of global exploration, leadership, and contemplative practice, I love co-creating spaces where people can reconnect with their authentic voice, inner wisdom, and highest potential - and radiate that energy into the world. I have served as an executive leader, entrepreneur, strategist, fundraiser, and storyteller, helping bring big ideas to life. My work has spanned business, social impact, political arenas, renewable energy, women’s leadership, and cross-cultural initiatives, always guided by a belief in the power of human potential, meaningful connection, and collective wisdom.
My WHY:
First and foremost, it is an honor to have been invited by Melanie to join this vision, team, and community. Having been part of BeFree since its inception, I've witnessed firsthand its profound impact on people’s lives. I feel called to help steward a community where belonging, transformation, and collective well-being can flourish - and serve as a model for what is being called forth in the world today. Being on this Board is one way I can actively participate in creating the change I hope to see: a more connected, compassionate, and conscious world.
Vina Ketty
I am a friend, mother, woman, communitarian, seeker, yogi and devotee of life! I am committed to healing through connection, and co-creating spaces where people feel embraced, seen, and reminded of their wholeness.
After 13 years in the biotech industry, burnout led me into deep surrender and a search for more authentic ways of being. I spent the next several years traveling while living and serving in spiritual intentional communities in Hawai’i and Oregon, where I learned about devotion, humility, leadership, and the beauty and complexity of shared life. A volcanic eruption brought me to Fort Collins in 2021 with my daughter and our nonprofit spiritual community development project. Since then, I have continued serving through community building, nonprofit board leadership, and my Master of Social Work studies at Colorado State University.
At my core, I am a root-tender, devoted to cultivating conditions where healing, belonging, recovery, creativity, and community care can take root, so people feel grounded, connected, and free to be.
My WHY:
I am honored and delighted to join this inspiring circle of strong women as part of the Be Free CommUNITY Center’s founding board! I come with a full, enthusiastic YES because I wholeheartedly believe in this natural expansion from the beautiful foundation that already exists. Since walking through the healing center’s doors, I felt an immediate warmth that has drawn me back again and again for yoga, chanting, breathwork, workshops, and most of all, connection with the loving community gathered here. Be Free has felt like the home and community hub I had been longing for: a place where deep healing happens, where people can show up as they are, where unique gifts are honored, and where every voice matters. It is pure magic. Through my social work path, I feel especially called to bring healing practices and belonging to children, caregivers, families, and communities who have historically had less access to them. I envision Be Free as a place where parents receive support, children build resilience, and people of all ages gather for shared meals, connection, and healing.
Melanie Lighthouser
Be Free has been my baby since its inception in 2007. I never imagined it would become the space it is today. Shepherding this space for the last 7 years has grown me in ways I never could have imagined. I am so deeply grateful for the community that thrives here.
Outside of keeping the lights on at Be Free, I've been teaching yoga and doing massage therapy for the last 21years, and facilitating breathwork since 2012. I am a Be Free Breathwork (TM) facilitator and teacher, and I am the lead teacher for Root to Rise, our 200hr Yoga Teacher Training program.
My WHY:
Continuing this journey with this board feels like a dream come true. I trust these women and I know that together we can grow Be Free into a space that serves SO MANY. I'm here for it. ALL IN. Body, mind, soul. What a gift to give and receive and grow with incredible humans. This new space is going to be FIRE! I hope you'll join us.
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I wrote a blog post about my journey with this transition and you can READ IT HERE.
Claudia Menendez
I proudly serve as the Equity & Inclusion Officer for the City of Fort Collins, building trusting relationships and partnerships that deliver programs and services reflecting the full diversity of age, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, and language of the people who call Fort Collins home. I do this work with great patience, intention, creativity, and compassion.
I have practiced yoga since high school, and in 2025 I took a yoga teacher training course at Be Free with Melanie Lighthouser, a life-changing experience for anyone who knows her. Studying the Eight Limbs of Yoga and the Chakra system has deepened my own self-discovery as a woman, daughter, sister, wife, mother, and friend. I love creating class themes that bring dynamic, rhythmic movement together with guided meditation for an uplifting, grounding experience. I am from El Salvador and proudly teach in English and Spanish.
My WHY:
I am thrilled to join the Be Free CommUNITY Center board and help co-design this evolution of a space that already feels like home. I bring my passion for inclusive community-building and my belief that true belonging is built when people from all backgrounds, identities, and walks of life feel genuinely welcomed, valued, and seen. I'm excited to work alongside a board, staff, and friends who put inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility into practice. For me, this project is my heart's work: cultivating a safe, trusted, joyful space where community can connect, discover, and grow.
Priscila Rodriguez
Priscila Rodriguez (she/her/ella) is a bilingual (Spanish/English) holistic wellness practitioner that believes that all human beings deserve to experience lives full of joy, alignment, and ease in their bodies. Through a series of life circumstances filled with dis-ease–including navigating the physical/emotional pain and grief of unexpected loss, being confronted with the challenge of treating chronic pain, and addressing lack of professional fulfillment–Priscila transitioned out of her career in K-12 & Higher Education to re-awaken her heart and re-attune to the guidance of her intuition. As the owner of Respira y Sana Wellness, her mission is to offer human-centered body-focused support that helps individuals find connection to the transformative power of their breath, ease in their body, and flow in their life. Priscila is a Licensed Massage Therapist (LMT), a Certified Yoga Teacher (CYT), a Certified Reiki Practitioner, a Certified Breathwork Facilitator, and holds a Masters in Education. Priscila fundamentally believes that each individual carries what they need inside themselves to feel whole in their lives, but sometimes need support to access that magic. She offers Integrative Energy Healing Massage and Energy Balancing Reiki Sessions, at the Be Free Healing Center. Priscila is a lover of travel–often to her ancestral homeland of Guatemala– and learning, and firmly believes that through embodied learning, we can transform our lives which ultimately changes the world.
My WHY:
When I heard that Be Free was growing into a new re-imagined spiritual commUnity center, I knew in my heart that I wanted to be involved in that process. It felt so fitting to be a part of an expansion and transformation of Be Free, when that is precisely what being a part of this community has helped me do in my own life: expand and transform. My introduction to Be Free came a few months after moving to Fort Collins in 2021 while searching for a yoga studio that aligned with what I needed: a judgement-free, inclusive, financially accessible space where I could connect with my body. After my first class, I kept coming back, again and again, to different classes, to new workshops I’d never tried before, allowing myself to take baby steps towards expanding out of my comfort zone supported by the safety that this yoga studio offered. Over time, Be Free became so much more than my yoga studio; it became the place where I learned to better understand my nervous system, where I learned what mind/body/spirit connection really felt like, where I built strong community connections and friends, and where I became a Certified Yoga Teacher; it has truly become my second home. In the last five years, by participating in and experiencing the magic offered at Be Free, I have been able to radically transform my life and my connection to the deepest parts of myself; this community has helped me expand my own understanding of what I thought was possible in my life and I am eternally grateful. Because of my profound experience at Be Free, I proudly serve on this board with the intention of supporting this new Be Free CommUNITY Center in continuing its mission to be a sacred sanctuary for growth, embodiment, and deep connection. Together, may we create a commUnity where we all are able to expand, transform, and be free.
KC Trujillo
KC (Phoenix) is a ceremonialist, yoga teacher, breathwork guide, sound healer, ecstatic dance facilitator, herbalist, and companion through sacred transitions, dedicated to creating spaces for healing, connection, and transformation. Her work bridges the mystical and the everyday, supporting individuals in cultivating greater presence, resilience, and authenticity in their lives.
In addition to facilitating classes, workshops, and ceremonies at Be Free, KC offers personalized one-on-one and small-group healing experiences, as well as private ceremonies, through her practice, Artemesia Roots & Ritual LLC. Rooted in reverence for community, ritual, and embodied wisdom, her work supports individuals in navigating life’s transitions with greater intention, connection, and care.
My WHY:
I discovered Be Free while returning from a solo international journey, where I experienced a deeply rooted sense of community for the first time. After experiencing ceremony, unconditional acceptance, joyful co-creation, and the felt sense of being held in grief, I realized I wanted to find a community that embodied those same values back home.
A Google search for “cacao and ecstatic dance” led me to Be Free. I traveled from Wyoming to attend an event, and walking through those doors changed my life forever. Shortly afterward, I moved to Fort Collins, mostly driven by trust in the deep knowing that I had found my spiritual home.
Through Be Free, I learned to meet my grief with compassion, cultivate presence and devotion through yoga, and discover a sense of sovereignty and celebration of my queer identity through my ecstatic dance practice. I found a chosen family, a deeper connection to myself, and an undeniable desire to serve others on their journey to wholeness.
Because of the incredible impact this community has had on my life, the decision to serve on the board was an easy YES. It is truly a profound honor to support the continued expansion of Be Free so that more people can experience the belonging, healing, and transformation that this community has made possible for me and so many others.
Hanalei Cohn
Hanalei is a student at Mountain Sage Community School and enjoys making new friends everywhere she goes! She loves to sing, laugh, dance with the fairies, play in the river, and express herself through art.
My WHY:
As an honorary board member of Be Free, Hanalei brings a child’s voice to the vision, ensuring our commitment to their inclusion and priority in the community. She cares about helping children feel safe with a sense of deep belonging. Hanalei proposed this idea to Melanie: “I want to be on the board to represent kids and children’s programs. I know kids - because I am one!”
