Yoga Is Where I Found My Friends
When I first started doing yoga, I thought I was adding another workout to my routine. I thought I’d get to a class once a week and still do my long runs and cross-training classes. But yoga became my primary workout. One of the reasons I became so obsessed was this feeling of being part of a yoga community.
When I moved to New York, I didn’t know many people. I didn’t know anyone outside of work. My co-worker Sam invited me to come to Powerflow in Hoboken. It was my first real yoga class. When we got to the studio that first day, everyone knew Sam. She was friends with all the yogis and karma yogis. I thought that was pretty cool. I had never been to a gym where people were close like that.
When you’re in a new city in your mid-20s, making friends isn’t the easiest thing to do. It’s not like college. Over the next few months, I went to the studio a few times a week and made lots of new friends quickly. These aren’t just people I see at yoga, but people I actually hang out with after class and on the weekends. I had never been so excited to go to a workout before. Usually, when I’m getting ready to leave work and head to a workout, I think of every excuse to skip it. I don’t do that anymore. Now I actually look forward to going to yoga. I’m not just going to exercise, I’m going to see my friends!
Being a part of the yoga community has opened up doors to so many other fun things. The PFY Hoboken studio does workshops about once a month on a weekend afternoon. That’s two hours of learning a different kind of yoga or working on a specific type of pose or meditation all with my friends. In the summer, the studio does fun outdoor classes in different locations in New Jersey. It’s always fun to practice outside the walls of the studio. It doesn’t even feel like you’re working out. I’m just having fun.
Almost all of my yoga instructors put together outings and retreats for us. We practice yoga and go for a drink. I even want to go on a week-long Yoga retreat in Bali! I definitely never thought I’d use vacation time to go do yoga in another country. But now I am dying to do it! I have some friends going on a week long Yoga retreat to Greece at the end of the summer. Fingers crossed I can save up the money to join my yogi family.
Yoga is much more to me than yoga. It’s where I go to be with my best friends. It’s where I found my community.
–Colleen Shea
