Yoga community a welcoming place

Being a grown-up is hard sometimes. Not only is there all of the responsibility that comes with adulthood: mortgage payments, children (for most people), car maintenance and so on, but there is the inherent lack of community.

In high school, it's easy. You always have a circle of friends, comrades from the basketball or soccer team, or the debate or chess clubs. You see each other almost every day, eat lunch together and see movies on Friday nights. There are sleepovers and even slumber parties (I miss those), school dances and football games that everyone goes to.

You graduate, maybe go to college and make friends with the people in your dorm or in clubs you join. You see each other constantly, especially if you're the one to clear all the furniture out of your room to have a party, or if you have a television and DVD player.

Then you are an adult, and you are suddenly without that automatic group of friends. Maybe you return to the town where you grew up, and there are some friends left there, or maybe you make friends with the parents of your kids' friends. But it isn't quite the same. Adult obligations often prevent us from having the kind of social contact that we are used to, and have come to rely on.

In yoga, there is the concept of satsang. Traditionally, it involves devotional chanting and working together with a guru, asking questions, meditating and looking for the Higher Truth. According to Wikipedia, it is: "Company with an assembly of persons who listen to, talk about and assimilate the truth. This typically involves listening to or reading scriptures, reflecting on, discussing and assimilating their meaning, meditating on the source of these words, and bringing their meaning into one's daily life."

What it has really come to mean, in our great American-ness, is a community of like-minded individuals, perhaps discussing Higher Truth, but more than likely, discussing whatever is on their minds.

I'm sure there are people who will argue with me on this, the ones who like to stick to tradition more than I do, but I believe that a satsang can be any group of like-minded people who get together and enjoy each other's company. I believe that every person who comes into our lives affects us and helps us bring new perspective on our daily lives. And I have come to believe that, in a modern society, it is more about community.

When you've been going to a yoga class for a while and you walk in and see people you have grown to like and trust, you are changed by it. You are made better by it. Now you have a group of people put together not because of housing coincidences at Tufts University, but because you are all there looking for something, whether it is a deeper meaning to life, or more flexibility in your hamstrings. And the people are nice. Usually.

I know that when I left the yoga studio where I had taught for more than three years, I felt a bit like a lost puppy. I no longer saw my satsang every day. And, naturally, adult responsibilities got in the way of seeing the people from that community because then it was about scheduling social time around work, family and so on. Fortunately, I found another welcoming community at Masters Studios, the dojo where I take karate and t'ai chi. It took a little while to build that level of comfort, but it happened. And once I was ready, I started going to other yoga studios, reconnecting with the people I had very sadly left. It was as if no time had passed, only the hugs were bigger and longer.

Community is hard to find once we leave the cliques in high school and college. We have to look to find people with whom we have things in common. A yoga studio is a beautiful place to start. But anywhere — and I mean anywhere — you find a group of people you like, a community into which you fit is a good place to be.

Suzanne Gannon is a yoga instructor in the Charleston area. Reach her at suzygannonyoga@yahoo.com.