Why Community Matters: The Power of Belonging
When I opened Just Plain Yoga in 2003, I was opening a yoga studio.
At least, that is what I thought I was doing.
I wanted a place where people could practice yoga without intimidation or pretense. A place where you did not have to look a certain way, move a certain way, know the language, or already consider yourself a “yoga person.”
What I did not fully understand then was that over time, we would be creating something else too.
A community.
More than two decades later, I have a much deeper appreciation for what that word actually means.
Community Is More Than Being in the Same Room
It is easy to confuse community with proximity.
Put a group of people in a yoga studio several times a week and technically, yes, they are gathering.
But belonging is something different.
Belonging happens when someone notices you have not been there for a while.
When the person beside you knows where you usually put your mat.
When you walk through the door after a difficult day and do not have to explain yourself.
When you are new and someone makes room for you rather than making you feel as though you have entered a private club.
Sometimes community grows through long conversations and friendships.
Sometimes it is much quieter.
A familiar face.
A hello.
Someone remembering your name.
The comfort of knowing where the bathroom is and where the blocks are kept.
Those things may seem small.
They are not.
You Don’t Have to “Fit In” to Belong
This distinction matters to me.
Belonging should not require sameness.
A healthy community is not one in which everyone looks alike, believes the same things, practices the same way, or agrees with one another about everything.
And a yoga studio should certainly not require you to adopt a new identity before you are accepted.
You do not need the right clothes.
You do not need the right body.
You do not need to be flexible.
You do not need to be spiritual.
You do not need to know Sanskrit.
You do not even need to particularly like chanting.
You are allowed to be yourself.
At Just Plain Yoga, “Come as you are and we will meet you there” has never meant, “Come as you are and then we will turn you into one of us.”
It means come as you are.
Period.
Twenty-Three Years Is a Lot of Life
When people practice in the same place over many years, life happens around the yoga.
People begin practices and leave them.
They move away and sometimes come back.
Jobs change.
Relationships change.
Bodies change.
Children grow.
We age.
There are joyful seasons and extraordinarily difficult ones.
There have been students who practiced with us for years and others who were with us for a much shorter chapter of their lives.
All of them have been part of the story.
That is one of the privileges of having operated a studio for this long. You realize that a community is never really static.
People enter.
People leave.
New teachers arrive.
Classes change.
The physical space itself can change.
And somehow there remains a thread connecting what came before with what exists now.
Yoga Gives Us an Unusual Way to Be Together
One of the things I love about a yoga community is that much of our connection happens without conversation.
We practice beside one another.
That is a strange and rather beautiful thing when you think about it.
For an hour, we may move, breathe, wobble, rest, struggle, laugh, and occasionally wonder what on earth the teacher has asked us to do.
Together.
But largely within our own experience.
There are not many places in adult life where we gather regularly without being expected to perform socially.
You can come to class and talk to everyone.
You can come to class and talk to almost no one.
Both are okay.
For someone who is lonely, the interaction may matter enormously.
For someone who spends all day taking care of or talking to other people, the ability to simply be quietly among others may be exactly what they need.
Community can hold both.
Community Does Not Have to Mean Clique
Yoga studios can be intimidating.
I know that.
Walking into any established group can make you wonder whether everyone already knows everyone else and whether there is a place for you.
That is something we have to remain conscious of even after all these years.
A strong community should not become an exclusive one.
The goal is not to create an inner circle.
The goal is to keep widening the circle.
That means remembering what it feels like to walk through the door for the first time.
It means teachers introducing themselves.
It means helping someone find a mat or a prop.
It means not assuming everyone understands studio customs.
It means making room.
And sometimes it simply means smiling at the person who looks as though they are wondering whether they have made a terrible mistake by coming to yoga.
The Community Extends Beyond Our Walls
From the beginning, I have believed that a yoga business should participate in the larger community in which it exists.
That is one reason our community classes have supported local organizations and causes over the years.
The yoga itself is only part of the point.
We gather.
We practice.
We learn about an organization doing meaningful work.
We contribute what we can.
And hopefully the circle gets a little wider.
Our studio also exists within a larger ecosystem of local businesses, nonprofits, healthcare providers, workplaces, teachers, students, and community partners.
Being locally owned means those relationships matter to us.
We are not simply operating in Central Pennsylvania.
We are part of it.
Community Changed When Yoga Went Online
There was a time when I would have said that the studio itself was the community.
I no longer believe that.
Livestream and on-demand yoga changed the geography of practice.
Some people practice with us from home because it is convenient.
Others do so because travel, health, work, caregiving, weather, or life makes coming to the studio difficult.
That person on the screen is still part of our community.
Community is not defined by whether your mat happens to be on our floor.
Connection can take different forms.
I still believe deeply in the value of gathering physically. There is something irreplaceable about sharing a room with other human beings.
But accessibility matters too.
Sometimes belonging means having a way to remain connected even when you cannot be in the room.
We Need Places Where We Are Known
We live in a world that is simultaneously hyper-connected and strangely isolating.
We can communicate with hundreds of people without actually being with anyone.
We can order food, work, exercise, shop, bank, and entertain ourselves without leaving home.
There are tremendous conveniences in that.
But I think we still need places where people know our faces.
Places that are not our homes and not our workplaces.
Places where we participate rather than simply consume.
A yoga studio can be one of those places.
Not because everyone in it becomes your best friend.
But because being recognized matters.
Being welcomed matters.
Having somewhere to go matters.
Belonging Is Something We Create Together
After more than two decades, I know that I cannot manufacture community by myself.
A business can create the conditions for it.
We can try to make the space welcoming.
We can hire teachers who care about people.
We can remember names.
We can create opportunities to gather.
We can make accessibility and inclusion part of our decisions.
But ultimately, the community is created by the people who participate in it.
The student who moves over to make room for someone new.
The person who asks another student how they are doing.
The teacher who notices somebody seems uncertain.
The longtime member who welcomes the first-timer.
The person practicing from home who still logs in every week.
The student who drops five dollars into the community-class donation because that is what they can give.
Those little acts accumulate.
That is how a room becomes something more than a room.
Real Yoga. Real People.
Our tagline is Real Yoga. Real People.
The longer I do this work, the more important the second half of that sentence becomes to me.
Yoga is practiced by people.
Complicated people.
Funny people.
Quiet people.
Talkative people.
Young people.
Older people.
People who are comfortable in their bodies and people who are trying to make peace with them.
People having wonderful years and people barely making it through the week.
There is room for all of that.
We do not need everyone to become the same in order to practice together.
Perhaps that is one of the things community can teach us.
We can belong to one another without belonging to one another.
We can share space without losing our individuality.
We can support someone without needing to fix them.
We can practice together while each having our own experience.
And sometimes, simply knowing that there is a place where you can walk through the door and be welcomed is enough.
After 23 years, that may be one of the things I am proudest to have helped build.
Not simply a place to do yoga.
A place to belong.
Come As You Are
If you have been thinking about trying Just Plain Yoga but feel nervous about walking into an established studio, we understand.
You do not have to know anyone.
You do not have to know yoga.
And you do not have to figure out how to fit in.
Come as you are. We’ll meet you there.
Want to experience one of the ways we give back together?