Building Community
Community Class Every Wednesday at Wailea Village Courtyard.
Community within Island Power Yoga
What does it mean to build a community? Since our inception, community building has been at our core and is a backbone of our decision making as we continue to grow and move forward.
Prior to the creation of Island Power Yoga, we were a few friends who knew each other from the Oahu yoga community. Through various life events, we ended up in Maui and were missing that strong community we had found and cultivated in Oahu, and so the idea was born.
As humans, we are a social species and connection is in our nature. According to neuroscience, we have special cells called mirror neurons in our brains that are stimulated when we are interacting with other people. Furthermore, in Maslow’s ‘Hierarchy of Needs’ theory, the need for connection and belonging is recognized as a need such as food and sleep that must be met before other, higher needs can be achieved.
We are grateful to Wailea Village for recognizing our vision early on, and for their continued partnership as we grew into the brick and mortar space we all share and know as Island Power Yoga today. In the late spring of 2021, Chieko and Katie, along with the help of our tech support, rolled out the Silent Disco Wireless Headphones to a brand new Wednesday Community Class Yoga Crew— a class that continues to be it’s own entity in the class offerings at IPY. In these sunset yoga classes in the courtyard at Wailea Village, we began to plant seeds of community. As the weeks began to build, we began to see familiar faces coming back week after week. We began to see friendships being born in class, and regular students bringing their friends with them to join our Wednesday evening crew.
From this seed of community grew the tree of the Island Power Yoga Studio. Chieko searched and dreamed and found the perfect home for the dream to take root.
In building the teaching staff for the studio, we once again looked to the community— always seeking to uplift and build from within. Despite many restrictions still in place from the covid pandemic, we found a strong, passionate team of instructors who were ready to build with us.
On November 25, 2021— Thanksgiving Day, the first two public classes were held at the Island Power Yoga studio! These classes were filled with members and friends joined together by the mutual interest in wellness, connection and yoga. We celebrated by cheers-ing to many more yoga classes together in the new space with sparkling water and non-alcoholic beer by Athletic Brewing Company.
As the community has progressed, we have been honored to get to know so many talented, creative, smart and kind humans. From the community, we have partnered with photographers and videographers to continue to grow and create this growing entity. Through community connections, we’ve worked alongside various local organizations to celebrate holidays in 2022. We dug in the dirt to plant trees on Earth Day with The Kea Lani Resort at the Skyline Conservation Project in their ongoing restoration project. They are working to bring indigenous trees such as koa and sandalwood back to Haleakala. We celebrated Mother’s Day with treats from the food truck Maui Ono Doughnuts, which makes locally-sourced, delicious vegan doughnuts.
In March of 2022, our Founder, Chieko Garland was asked by lululemon Wailea to represent them as a brand ambassador. In this fun class, lululemon brought gifts and juice for the whole class and at the end of this Surprise and Delight themed class, asked Chieko to be a Lululemon Ambassador!
Fast forward to the studio being open now for 6 months, and we are starting to see the blossoms of community flowering! We have now trained and hired our first class of Yoga Sculpt Interns! You will see these new teachers co-teaching in live classes on the schedule, and soon with their own classes on the schedule! We opened the studio with two styles of yoga offered. In response to desires from within, we have expanded offerings to include not only our roots— power and sculpt, but also yin and restorative.
In our boutique, we feature a local Hawaii designer XIX Palms and are in the works to bring in more athleiusre, sweat gear and yoga accessories. Our studio is decorated with happy, whimsical art by local artist Welzie, who’s Signature Art Gallery is located in Wailea at the Andaz Resort.
To us, community is multi-faceted. It is growth. It is uplifting from within. It is creating new connections to integrate and welcome new folks from different walks of life, of all ages, races and identities. We look forward to more celebrations, sweat, connections and conversations! Kama’aina, we welcome you for a week of free yoga to see if we are a fit for your practice and for YOU!
Written by: Katie Mecklenburg
