Energize Your Health by Finding your People
As an introvert who is also a “recovering perfectionist,” finding community can be challenging. For one, I like spending time alone. Now that I’m a separated empty nester, my time is no longer beholden to others and I can (finally) be by myself. Don’t get me wrong, I love my kids and love spending time with them, but sending them off to college has been a boon for my sanity.
The fact that I love spending time alone makes me less likely to seek out the company of others. It’s not that I am a hermit, I love people, just for short amounts of time in small doses. That’s why I love the yoga community. We spend time together, but on our mats by ourselves. We can be both alone and together at the same time. Win-win!
However I also crave deep connection. The other part of being an introvert is loathing small talk, and instead wanting to get to know what is in someone’s heart. I want to understand their pain, share their joy, see them fully for who they are, and for them to see me.
But let’s back up a step.
You must show yourself in order to be seen
Not feeling seen was the background of my entire childhood and young adult life. As a young teen I would act out to get my parents to acknowledge my existence. While I didn’t understand that I was doing that at the time, in retrospect it was my unskillful attempt at being seen that drove my behavior.
While they didn’t actually see me, I also wasn’t fully showing up as myself. Steeped in my perfectionism, I tried to be the person I believed they wanted me to be. The good girl. The smart girl. The perfect girl. Of course in my bones I knew I wasn’t. I felt alone, and weird, and stupid, and unloveable as I was. As a child, that felt scary and unsafe.
Fast forward to when I graduated college and could finally live on my own by my own rules. I felt free. I could be whoever I wanted to be without having to live up to other people’s (my parents) expectations. That’s when I also started practicing yoga.
Although I started my yoga practice as a perfectionist, needing to do the poses “perfectly,” over time that softened. I softened toward myself. The harsh judgments and criticisms I had of myself fell away, a little chip at a time. I realized that I could show up as myself, my perfectly imperfect self, and that the world would keep turning. I was safe within myself, and from that safety, I could imagine showing that person to the world.
Of course that took another decade. Slow progress is still progress.
Finding your people
When you show up as yourself, you find your people. Those are the people who get you and love you exactly as you are. In her book Braving the Wilderness, Brene Brown talks about the concept of True Belonging:
True belonging is the spiritual practice of believing in and belonging to yourself so deeply that you can share your most authentic self with the world and find sacredness in both being a part of something and standing alone in the wilderness. True belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are; it requires you to be who you are. ~Brene Brown
True belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are (perfectionism, trying to fit in), it requires you to be who you are (your authentic self). This is where true freedom lies. When you live in that freedom, and own your true self, you can find people who resonate with you.
During the time I spent being who I thought other people wanted me to be, I found people, but they connected to that version of me. The scared version, the version that kept people at a distance so that they wouldn’t see my cracks and my flaws. I believed that version was unloveable so I kept her hidden.
When I let her out, I discovered that what I believed were my cracks and flaws were what made me, me. They became my strengths. My “too muchness” allowed me to feel empathy for my students and patients. My big feelings allowed me to feel compassion for myself and others. They allowed me to deeply connect with other humans, and for us to show each other our humanity. No judgment, just acceptance.
Power of community
When you fully show up as yourself, you find people who love and accept you as you are. There are many studies that show how important community is, not just socially, but to both your mental and overall health.
A Canadian study, with over 700,000 people, showed the connection between belonging to a community and having positive general and mental health outcomes.
Community belonging is increasingly being recognized as an important determinant of health, and hence is an important metric to monitor and understand for population health. This 1-item measure provides a multidimensional insight into individuals’ perception of their place in the community, their social relations within it, and overall neighbourhood satisfaction (Schellenberg et al., 2018). Our study showed that this measure was a strong and independent predictor of both self-rated general and mental health across all life stages. When comparing those reporting a middle-ground sense of belonging (somewhat strong or somewhat weak versus very strong), the magnitude of the association with poorer health was largest among older adults. However, when comparing those reporting the weakest sense of belonging (very weak versus very strong), the magnitude of the association with poorer health was largest among middle-aged adults.
The overall findings presented in this study echo that of previous research, wherein significant and consistent associations between sense of belonging and health have been observed. 1
My words of the year for 2025 are Connection and Community. It has been my goal this year to explore what that means in a tangible way. While I am living on my own, I feel like I am more connected to those who matter to me. I am more present with my people because I have time by myself to recharge. When I am not running on empty, physically and emotionally, I can spend time in community in a nurturing and nourishing way.
Even introverts need community.
Community events, online and in person
On the 4th Sunday of each month, I hold an online event called Sangha Sundays. I send out journal prompts on the first of the month related to that month’s topic. Through the month you journal to explore the topic and how it applies to you, and how it may positively or negatively affect your life.
Previous topics have been making mistakes, what is anxiety, non-harming with our words, practicing self-kindness, setting boundaries, and more, all through the lens of yoga. We don’t practice poses, we use yoga philosophy (yoga off the mat) to look at the stories we’re telling ourselves so that we can learn and grow. Click the button below for more information!
The 4th Annual Yoga Book Club Retreat is coming January 2026 in Plainfield, MA! We’re reading Brene Brown’s Braving the Wilderness: the quest for true belonging and the courage to stand alone. This retreat is for anyone who feels untethered and tossed about by the current state of the world and wants to reconnect to themselves and others. Through yoga, meditation, journaling, and discussion, we’ll figure out how to move forward through connection and community. Click the button below for more information or to sign up!
1 From the NIH National Library of Medicine, article called “Relationship between sense of community belonging and self-rated health across life stages” https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7585135/
