Gift of Community: Celebrating 25 Years
This year we honor 25 years of TriYoga in Central Pennsylvania, 2000-2025. As part of this anniversary, our series Celebrate 25 Years highlights important gifts and milestones of the organization as told by our founding director, Theresa Shay.
Community can help you grow in the direction you long to go. Finding that community must sometimes be accomplished by creating it.
I landed in Central Pennsylvania on the eve of the new millennium, after two years overseas. From my little apartment on Main Street in Boalsburg, I called my TriYoga teacher Kashi who lived near Philadelphia, to ask who taught TriYoga in Centre County. In one breath, she answered, “No one…yet,” and informed me of the TriYoga Teacher Training program set to begin in January. It was obvious to both of us that I would be there.
I was not exuberant about becoming the teacher. Nevertheless, I knew that to stay engaged with the TriYoga flows, a burning desire of mine, I needed people to practice with.
I appreciate activities where people work together to create a shared expression of joy. I pursued cello even though I was better at piano because I wanted to be able to participate in orchestras. I joined a rowing club in Germany to fill the last seat of a scull, mesmerized by the feeling of individuals merging into a singular, rhythmic expression of movement.
In the same way, I longed to flow in community as I set up life in Central Pennsylvania. I wanted to be with friends each week for classes. I wanted to chant in Sanskrit. I wanted to eat healthy plant-based food together. I wanted to be with others who were trying to apply the wisdom of TriYoga.
The community I sought needed to be created from scratch, and over the past 25 years, it has blossomed.
We’ve gathered as community to learn from Kaliji when she comes to town. We’ve come together to celebrate significant birthdays, to enjoy incredible vegan potlucks, to welcome new life, and honor passing ones. We gathered in shock as a global pandemic unfolded, and we’ve come together for evenings of Satsang, gathering in company with those seeking truth.
My experience of community has evolved since I first longed for it in 2000. Early on I didn’t believe I could touch the feeling of contentment without others. Perhaps I could only find my bearings by positioning myself in relationship, like knowing where to stand to hold my place in a constellation. I needed community to help me remember who I longed to be until I could realize, I am already that.
These days, community is less the source of inspiration and more the joyful expression of it. As friends, family, neighbors, neighbors across oceans, students, teachers, colleagues, ones who delight in each other, we connect. We rest in belonging. We pursue truth with compassion and with kindness.
At online gatherings of people from different towns, states, and countries, one sentiment rises frequently: the expression of gratitude for those gathered. People share how good it feels to be with people who value a peaceful vibration, care about the same matters, and are committed to knowing the Self. I see, hear, and feel the appreciation that exists for the web that holds us all, in whatever way we each choose to express ourselves within that web.
The place of community is woven into the mission statement that was crafted when TriYoga of Central Pennsylvania incorporated as a non-profit organization:
TriYoga of Central Pennsylvania shares, preserves, and promotes the teachings of TriYoga to foster physical, mental, and spiritual growth and healing within a supportive community.
We come together, physically, subtly, in body, in mind, in spirit, with one, with many, to remember and to be reminded. We are all helping each other find our way. Each one must travel their own path, because each of us has our own journey to make, but we travel together. “Until the last of us arrives, we will all keep travelling,” singer Krishna Das says.
Happy 25 Years, TYCP! For the light that is this community, shining in so many places and in so many ways, I give thanks for your precious being, right here, right now.
Jai Guru Devi ~ Victory to the Flow
Theresa Shay is the founding director of TriYoga of Central Pennsylvania, where she teaches weekly yoga and meditation online and trains others to teach TriYoga®. Each week, she shares wisdom cultivated from decades of TriYoga study and practice.
Learn more about her here. Theresa can be reached at Theresa@PennsylvaniaYoga.com. Find her on Instagram @theresa_of_triyoga for more inspiration and light.