Community of Practice: Change Happens in Community

The words hang in a floral white frame in my office. Lyrics from a Beatles song, “We all want to change the world.” At times they make me feel less alone as someone who envisions a better world. On the days when the opponents of social justice feel unbeatable, the words sound flip or even condescending. If we all changed the world as we each saw fit, would it actually get better?  

Before I was a graduate student for the Master of Social Work program, I taught a Yoga for Beginners class on campus. I came to recognize the same drive among my students as I heard their stories. Though their fields of study varied widely, each one shared their drive to help others with their careers. DU students want to change the world. When I was accepted as a graduate student, I was honored to join their ranks with the hope of one day making a difference myself. When I joined the Graduate Community of Practice, the word “myself” got lost.  

The first cohort meeting was familiar. I was again in a room with passionate and compassionate individuals seeking to affect change across a wide range of fields - across the world. But no one ever talked about doing it alone. The Graduate Community of Practice solidified my belief that change happens in community. I will never change the world without the “we.” And these incredible people, many of whom are already deeply entrenched in the work in their own communities, were the first to admit that working in community is messy. Working in community means sharing power, negotiating practices and desired outcomes, and in practice it hardly ever looks how one person envisioned it from the start.  

But this same group of graduate students also proved that working in community makes greater change. And taking the practical step of involving the community in the process of organizing, researching and implementing change ensures it lasts and acts counter to oppressive systems that organized so much of our lives in the past.  

My field of study specifically is healing from trauma. For many, trauma-informed yoga can be a life changing answer to symptoms of post-traumatic stress - healing the mind from the “bottom up” while reclaiming the body as a safe place and restoring natural processes I often take for granted like sleep and balance within the nervous system. One day, I hope to help expand access to evidence-based mental health healing services with community-based practices like trauma informed yoga. As I approach the conferral of my degree, the next step is clear: find my community. I believe healing from trauma will one day be accessible to all and accomplished in the community. And I will never see that day alone.