The importance of connection

Yoga communities around the world continue to be deeply affected by an invisible virus called Covid-19. Starting in 2020, our community in-person gatherings have been stunted, intensifying the challenge to make important new social connections. We’ve responded the best we can, and we’ve learned to use social media tools to meet our longing for contact with others. But we also noticed that while communities established through the internet were important, they were different.

I’ve taught online but it still doesn’t feel normal and it’s a bit strange for me to think of ‘communities’ generated virtually. These communities are happening though and are connected through a vast, unseen network with potentially far-reaching effects…just like the network of connections transferring a virus.

Still, dealing with fallout from the worldwide pandemic, we’ve learned to navigate a ‘new normal’ and attempted to go on as before. Concerned about the future and wondering what the next trend or challenge will be, it’s hard to be present, calm, and connected. But this new awareness of social space is upon us.

Noreena Hertz, author of The Lonely Century: How to Restore Human Connection in a World That’s Pulling Apart, wrote: “Even before Covid, three in five adults in the US considered themselves to be lonely.” She went on to cite examples in Japan where people were committing minor offences just be arrested and go to jail, so they’d have someone to talk to.

Social scientists tell us we’re re-learning how to reconnect after our forced isolation. This shows both the adaptability of the human species and our longing for a healthy life. We could argue that yoga is built to meet this need because yoga teaches us how to reframe the spaces we inhabit.

Reframing yoga space means redefining social distance and seeing it as the possibility for a new sacred space. If this happens, our yoga communities may become springboards for new forms of yoga and life in the present.

It’s nothing new, but worth repeating, that yoga comes from the word yuj, meaning yoke or connection. A yoke can be hard to bear, but today we know better than before that living without connection is perilous to our health and sanity. I don’t know anyone that wants their gravestone to read: “Lived a shallow life alone; buried in a shallow grave alone.”

Carl Jung was famous for having said that unless a person has a deep spiritual community to which they belong, they will fall victim to the lower denominators of base instincts or even evil. I don’t think humans are destined to fall into evil without a spiritual community, but without meaningful connections, isolation and loneliness can be a slippery slope to desperation and more.

The myth of rugged individualism, a notion that’s driven the ethic of individualism and ambition in a country like the USA really is a myth.