Yoga Is (Poplar) Union
Health & Wellbeing are incredibly important ingredients for a happy, balanced life. With this thought in mind, we’re delighted to have our resident Yogi Eve Veglio White here to teach us about inclusivity and community within yoga. When Eve is not practising yoga, she can be found dancing, or campaigning as part of Sister Supporter.
The philosophy of yoga and the definition of community have lots in common. Famous yogi B.K.S Iyengar said that “yoga means union – the union of body with consciousness and consciousness with the soul. Yoga cultivates the ways of maintaining a balanced attitude in day to day life’. Community also means union, the union of people from the same area, and/or the sharing of common interests. I believe something really special happens when the two come together in the same space.
“I passionately believe that yoga is for everyone and should be non-competitive, safe and available”
Looking at community historically, it’s essential for our survival as a people. I also think that it’s essential for our emotional survival. Community, or a sense of union with people can be incredibly healing, and even be life saving for some. Especially those who are on the edges of society, who are disenfranchised or don’t have a wide family or social circle. This combination of physical and emotional wellbeing via community is echoed in yoga. Yoga brings together the physical and emotional aspects of the individual, and is also very healing. Yogi Vini said ‘the only way to spread peace is to have peace inside you’. Having peace via emotional and physical stability puts you in a position to be able to share peace with those around you; your community. The peace shared with them, can then travel on through their community, creating a domino effect.
“In the words of Yogi Bhajan ‘feel good, be good, do good’”
I passionately believe that yoga is for everyone and should be non-competitive, safe and available. In this age of disconnection and elite yoga studios it is even more important to gather as a community, to work on bettering ourselves as a people and to give space to evolving as individuals. I feel incredibly grateful that Poplar Union is a space that facilitates this way of looking at yoga. As a space that is community facing rather than business-centric it allow us to gather in a powerful way that’s accessible to everyone. That can only have a positive effect on us as people and as community.
“Yoga is a space where you can be in a community with a purpose”
Lots of people believe that everything is energy and that energy omits a frequency. People gathering together to practise yoga together with a positive intention of doing good for themselves, and therefore others can only be sending out good vibrations. The more people, the stronger the vibration. In the words of Yogi Bhajan ‘feel good, be good, do good’. A group of people gathering with the same goal of doing some good in their own lives is powerful, and ripples out into the world.
One thought that sums up this idea for me comes from Paramahansa Yogananda; ‘Have only love in your heart for others. The more you see the good in them, the more you will establish good in yourself’. Yoga is a space where you can be in a community with a purpose and simultaneously work on yourself as an individual – the union of self, brought about by the union of people.
• If you would like to try yoga for yourself, Eve teaches our Feel Good Restorative Yoga on Wednesdays, and Feel Good Flow Yoga on Mondays. You can also check her out on Instagram!
