Journal Entry #5: Yoga Practice as a Community

             My practice space for yoga promotes a strong sense of community through practice. My teacher establishes common goals for the group to achieve while not interfering with the personal goals of the individual that vary from person to person. Through achieving common goals we build relationships through hard work and training and grow stronger as a community. It also helps that many of the people that I practice yoga with are not yogis in the traditional sense and are using yoga as a supplement to other methods of training in order to enhance certain qualities of their workout regimens.
             This sense of community can only be defined as a team mentality. The group that I train with achieves goals together, fails together, and tries again as a group. The yoga room in which I train is a team of developed athletes looking to improve themselves using an alternative method such as yoga. The purpose of a team mentality is to instill a sense of belonging and oneness with your training partners. We believe that suffering together is much more enjoyable than suffering alone and that yoga is a great way to build stress-free, meaningful relationships between each other.
             I feel a strong connection to this community and have no trouble belonging. The group that I train with is very intense and goal-oriented, much like myself, and they are there to work hard and never give up. The sense of belonging that I get stems from a commonality in the goals and values of my training partners. It is much easier to feel a sense of belonging with your training partners when your values overlap both in the training room and in life. My teacher always tries to establish bonds between himself and the students as well between other students in order to strengthen the sense of camaraderie in the room.