The Beauty of Community
Photo credit - Raul de Los Santos @unsplash
Today is International Women’s Day and I’m thinking about the need for, and beauty of community.
Just this morning, I was one of many women who celebrated a landmark birthday of one our fellow exercise buddies. For the last 6 months, I’ve been lucky to move alongside other women from as far afield as Finland, Malaysia, Oman and Switzerland, from the comfort of my home. This has been a big boost during the winter and the recent lockdown. It’s the first time I can remember connecting with people from so many different ages and walks of life, unlike university or work communities that can be more homogenous.
Although I’m not one for too much screen time, I’ve found online communities such as the London Writers’ Salon (where we share our writing intentions for the session and then sit together in silence to write), and the Creative Doer (a community for creatives and change-makers) spaces to support and encourage one another. It’s a palpable sense of a web of support where noone is left behind and everyone is cheered on. I’ve been in communities that haven’t felt safe nor welcoming, but it’s important to listen to your internal radar and seek the sense of ease and comfort.
When I was a little girl, I often went to satsang with my grandmother. Satsang means ‘gathering together for the truth’ or ‘associating with good people’ in Sanskrit. For first-generation immigrants like my grandmother and her friends, satsang was a spiritual community and place of belonging in an unfamiliar place. Each time, we would meet at a different person’s house for worship. We would leave our shoes at the entrance in a higgledy-piggledy pile. The furniture would be cleared out of the living room and sheets laid so that people could sit cross-legged on the floor. Pictures of loved ones who had died as wells as symbols of various gods and goddesses and offerings such as fruit and flowers were laid at a makeshift altar at one end of the room. The group would sing bhajans or devotional songs and chant together. There was a distinct lack of good singers, but it didn’t matter - the sounds came together and created an escape.
And womens’ circles have become an important part of my life. For the last couple of years, I’ve been lucky to travel to Amsterdam four times a year to gather with other women in Michaela Boehm’s group. It’s a chance to practice various embodiment approaches together and receive the magic of being truly seen and heard and not judged when in circle together. I’ll try and record an episode on circles together sometime, but in short there’s something vital about being together without hierarchy and in service of one another. This is a space where there’s no fixing nor ‘therapysing’ - the art of true listening seems to open up something in a seemingly effortless way.
Community is crucial for our health. The first chakra or energy centre in the base of the spine is all about survival, stabilty and security. When it’s in balance, fear is reduced and we are more grounding. Feeling a sense of belonging in our family or community is an important way of tending to the first chakra. It could be your group of friends from university, or your local sports club or religious community. When talk of Brexit first started, I started to notice the sense of dis-ease that people carried in their bodies, when the UK no longer felt like home or a place of welcome. Even if you’re in a place of flux or change, you can connect with your own skeleton (as the bones are the deepest, densest part of you) and ground so that you feel rooted.
Where does community fit into your life? Are you living in place where people look out for one another? Do you have a balance of in-person and online communities? Are you giving and receiving or do you tend to do one more than the other?