Happy Labor Day: Come as you are and fight capitalism
A love letter to the awesome community you all create in the Galaxy
Happy Labor Day, Galaxy. I’ve written this dispatch a multitude of different ways, and I’m going to try to get straight to the point: I love the community we’ve created here. You all are something special.
There have been so many little moments that I’ve witnessed, or someone has told me about that show me, again and again, that you all show up to the space with fiery, open hearts. And when you show up with that energy, it tells people who maybe don’t know quite yet what we’re about that it’s OK… more than OK… it’s celebrated, to show up exactly as you are.
Here are a few things that I heard or heard about, that make me thing we’re doing something right:
One time, after OMG, someone brought along some cheese, and was offering everyone a post-workout cheese snack, and someone else heard that and remarked, “I love it here.” I’m here for the spontaneous post-workout cheese sharing.
Two people who hadn’t seen each other in a minute ran into each other coming/going from class and gave each other the biggest hug. One told the other about how they are about to start teacher training, and the other got so genuinely excited, I think everyone who witnessed it got teary.
One of our regulars to our weekday evening strength class offerings reflected that they feel like they can show up wearing absolutely anything (like… not a matching pilates set, let’s say…), and they will feel comfortable and totally at ease.
People have made real, life long connections by sharing our practices in this studio space. These are the kind of connections where, if you haven’t been around recently, other people want to make sure you’re okay and will ask if you need anything. People can show up and know they can share and celebrate something in life that is making them joyful. People can show up and know they can be sad, depressed, a little bit heavy and a little bit messy, and they’ll be held exactly as they are.
I never imagined the amount of hugs I would get to give out on a daily basis, and I’m not sure how many other jobs feature this amount of hug opportunities.
Because whether we’re working on our pushups in OMG, or making your iced tea and washing the yoga blankets in the back room, or sharing in a yoga practice, we are practicing yoga, which tells us that we are more than the confining definitions of what we do for a living, or what our wellness and workout culture might be trying to sell us as a “healthy” body, or the stories we might tell ourselves about the thin-to-nonexistent reality of social media, social niceties, and all the ways that our modern world tells us we are lacking. The performative and reductive nature of how we live, love, and relate these days might feel real right now, but it’s not even a sliver of the whole story.
In the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali (our theme for this month… see how I did that…), the 17th sutra of the 2nd book says that one cause of avoidable pain is when we wrongly associate our impermanent reality with the ultimate reality of the true self. One of the ways we can sort through and navigate that avoidable pain - and there are a lot of suggestions in the sutras, btw - is through delight in what is; the practice of contentment.
Capitalism will tell you that you aren’t enough. Or it’ll tell you that your job defines you. Or it’ll tell you that you need to look a certain way, act a certain way, conform to certain standards to make that well-oiled machine move with less resistance.
Yoga will tell you that you can connect to a sense of joy that reminds you of your sweet, blissful essence by being delighted in exactly what you are. And by doing that, you are showing that there is another way to be and move through this world.
I know that I only know a little sliver of who each of you are. We spend a little over an hour practicing together, we say hello and we say goodbye, and maybe, hopefully, we slowly connect more deeply and form real, lasting friendships. But I also want to celebrate that the goodness you bring to this studio, to our practice time together - the way you care for each other - the way you help set the welcoming, come as you are energy - that is the realest of the real. Every day, I get to see the best of who each of you are and see you share the best of yourselves with each other. It takes guts, work, bravery, and fierce love, as well as a lot of not caring about what people think to keep doing that, day after day.
On this Labor Day, when we celebrate 8 hours for work, 8 hours for rest, and 8 hours for what we will - let’s keep doing this kind of fucking awesome work with each other. We could be somewhere else in our matching pilates sets, showing up to please and fulfill someone else’s idea of what we should be.
Or we could be in the Galaxy, being exactly who we are, and making it okay for others to be exactly who we are. I know which one I want.
With all my love for this community you help create every day,
Anna
