I almost didn't go.
The invitation my friend texted sat with a “maybe” in my messages for weeks. An invite to a reunion with people I'd practiced, trained, and worked alongside at CorePower Yoga years ago. People who, honestly, had shaped me in ways I was still unpacking. But there was history there. Some warmth, some deep friendship, and some things I wasn't sure I was ready to walk back into.
I went anyway.
Walking through the door felt a little like holding my breath. There were faces I recognized instantly and others I had to place. A few hellos that were easy, a few that were careful. And then- somewhere between the first shared memory and the second - something shifted. We were trading stories about our time there, about the people we'd been, about what that chapter had meant, and I felt something settle in my chest that I can only describe as coming home.
And then I remembered. The ones I think of as my soul mates, the people I found at CorePower who became something I don't have a better word for than family. We don't see each other the way we used to. Life has taken us in different directions; some have moved away, some are deep in their own chapters. But there is a particular quality to those friendships that time and distance don't seem to touch. They hold a space in my heart that is entirely their own.
I'll be honest. I miss it. I miss the version of us that existed when we were all in the same city, in the same studios, in the same chapter of life. That community doesn't look the same as it once did, and some days that absence is something I heavily carry. But standing in that room, seeing those faces, I was struck by a deep and quiet gratitude. It was still there - changed in form, but not in feeling. Some connections don't need constant tending to stay completely alive.
I would not be who I am today without that community. Not just the yoga - the people. The specific, irreplaceable people who held space for me when I needed it most (and I for them). You see, before CorePower, I was on a path I needed to find my way back from. I won't go into detail, but I will say that what I found in those studios, in those people, helped me find my way to my true self. That community set me on the road toward healing, toward counseling, toward my doctorate and all of who I am now.
Standing in that room, I felt complete and full.
Community wasn't a concept in my household. It was just how we lived. My parents modeled strong friendships. They threw parties. There were always people in our home - family, friends, neighbors. Some people drifted in and out of our lives across the years, welcome every time, no explanation needed. No expectation of consistency - just an open door whenever our paths crossed again.
And then there were the others - the ones who weren't just friends, but something more like family we simply always had. Friendships that didn't start with us. My grandparents were close with another family; that friendship passed to my parents, and then to us. We grew up alongside each other. We called each other cousins - not because we shared blood, but because we shared everything else: vacations, milestones, the particular shorthand that only comes from knowing someone across your whole life. Community, in my family, was something that got tended across generations. It wasn't accidental. It was chosen, repeatedly, by the people who came before us.
I see it in my nephew now - the way he has built deep, rooted friendships throughout high school, college and beyond that remind me exactly of what I watched my parents model. Some things don't need to be taught explicitly. They move through families like a current, just beneath the surface.
It wasn't until I began my doctoral research that I had language for what I had always felt.
My dissertation explored the lived experiences of licensed mental health counselors who use yoga as a self-care practice - specifically those who work with trauma. What I found, over and over again in the words of my participants, was that the yoga itself was only part of the story. The community around it was just as transformative.
Participants described their yoga studios as places of genuine belonging - welcoming, nonjudgmental, and relationally rich. One participant said that when she moved to a new city, the friendships she made in yoga classes became her community. Another described walking back into a studio after time away and being welcomed with open arms - she said it felt like coming home. One participant put it simply: "When I'm on my mat, I feel like I belong. I feel connected to myself, the community, and to the universe."
These weren't incidental details. They emerged as a distinct theme in my research: yoga communities functioned as sources of connection and belonging that buffered against professional isolation, compassion fatigue, and burnout. For counselors who carry the weight of other people's trauma every day, community wasn't a luxury. It was a lifeline.
I remember reading those words in my data and feeling a deep recognition. This was not just something my participants experienced. It was something I had lived.
So here is what I know, both as a researcher and as a person: community is not a nice-to-have. It is not a feature of a full life - it is the life. It is the thing that catches you when you are falling, that reminds you who you are when you've lost the thread, that holds you in love even across years and miles and changed circumstances.
I have built community everywhere I have ever worked and lived - not by accident, but because it is one of my deepest core values, one I absorbed long before I had language for it. It is something I intend to keep building, in my own way, through the work I do now: helping people explore the intersection of yoga, mental health, and the fundamental human need for connection.
But this post isn't really about yoga, or counseling, or even community specifically. It's about something underneath all of that.
It's about the values that quietly shape everything - the ones planted so early and tended so consistently that we forget they are there, forget to name them, forget to honor them. And then something happens - a reunion, a holiday table, a conversation with someone who has known you for decades - and suddenly you feel them again, vivid and true, like a compass needle swinging back to north.
Community is mine. It always has been.
I want to invite you to sit with that question for yourself - not just about community, but about whatever value lives at that depth in you. What did you learn, before you knew you were learning it, about how to move through the world? What shaped you in ways you may have drifted from over time, or simply stopped noticing?
Because those values don't disappear. They wait. And there is something quietly powerful about turning back toward them - about asking yourself not just what do I believe, but how am I actually living it?
That question is worth returning to. And it's one I hope we can explore together.