Find Community in Yoga Trade’s Welcome Circle
An online community can feel counterintuitive. We tend to associate real community with intimacy, something experienced in person. Yet preserving that sense of belonging today requires adaptation rather than resistance. Connection doesn’t dissolve online; it reforms.
Yoga Trade facilitates expansion beyond local and familiar networks. The platform creates space to feel supported and seen through opportunities to meet and collaborate with people far outside your immediate circle. It’s a living example of how digital spaces, when rooted in intention, can nurture genuine community.
Yoga Trade’s free Welcome Circle connects yoga teachers, travelers, and wellness professionals in real time through mentorship and open dialogue.
Held on the last Friday of every month at 9 AM Pacific, the Yoga Trade Welcome Circle offers a free hour of grounding, conversation, and connection. Each session begins with a short centering practice led by the Yoga Trade founders, Erica Hartnick and Pat McMahon, followed by an open “ask us anything” dialogue. It’s informal, supportive, and intentionally designed to help community members learn more about Yoga Trade, share their stories, and connect with others globally.
Yoga Trade, founded in 2012, started as a way to connect teachers with global work-trade opportunities. Over time, it has evolved into a larger ecosystem for conscious travel, education, and collaboration. The Welcome Circle reflects the platform’s expansion from a bridge between teachers and work-trade experiences to an active, supportive community for conscious travel, education, and collaboration. Everyone is welcome to drop in, meet the real people behind the platform, and learn how to make the most of your experience, whether that’s finding a teaching opportunity abroad, creating a wellness exchange, or feeling more connected to a global network of mindful professionals.
The Welcome Circle serves as a reminder that the yoga world can be both global and personal. Teachers, students, and travelers meet to share, learn, and ask from a place of shared curiosity and lived experience. It’s a chance to return to the roots of why Yoga Trade was created: to remind us that no matter where we are, we’re part of something larger. The following stories embody this.
Photo: @adi_shakti_rising
Adi Shakti: Living Dharma Through Service
Adi Shakti, founder of Soul Work, has spent over a decade guiding yoga teachers and leaders toward what she calls “dharmic legacy work”, lives and careers that integrate spirituality, structure, and service.
Adi started WWOOFing in Costa Rica, trading yoga classes for room and board. Those early years taught her the importance of humility and perseverance. Her volunteer work eventually evolved into a global movement characterized by spiritual depth, practical structure, and a commitment to service.
Adi reminds us that depth and sustainability often grow from discomfort. “It’s easy to start,” she said. “What’s harder is staying. Most people stop when it gets uncomfortable, but that discomfort is the doorway to depth.”
Her philosophy aligns closely with Yoga Trade’s purpose, connecting practice and livelihood. She believes yoga professionals thrive when they treat their work as an extension of their practice, balancing inspiration with integrity and structure, and building stability through systems and service. When asked what to do when reaching out to studios with no response, she recommended keeping momentum; rejection is redirection. Stay devoted to your work, and your community will meet you there.
Photo: @laurenlee.yoga
Lauren Lee: Lineage, Values, and Beginning Again
Lauren Lee, an E-RYT 500 Anusara Certified teacher and faculty member at the Bindu Institute of Learning, represents another facet of the Yoga Trade spirit as a teacher who blends exploration with embodiment. From New England to years of teaching across India, Costa Rica, and Europe, her story reflects the common yogic theme of evolution through experience.
“We are always ready and never ready,” she said. “So start anyway.” Today, she resides in Ibiza, where her work focuses on mentorship, teacher training, and cultivating clarity in teaching through the lens of values and lineage.
Lauren believes every teacher’s path begins with self-definition. She encourages new teachers to define their core values: three to five guiding principles that shape how they show up in practice and service. Hers, for example, include safety, intimacy, and clarity. Knowing your values, she said, creates direction when opportunities feel uncertain.
Lauren also suggests a grounded approach when seeking yoga work, emphasizing presence over persistence. Go in person if you can. Practice, introduce yourself, and let people experience your energy. If that’s not possible, follow up once and let it go. Start where you are. Teach your friends, your neighbors, in the park, or online. It all counts.
She often reminds teachers that teaching experience is built one class at a time: “My first retreat had ten people; nine were family and friends. That’s how it starts.”
Lauren emphasizes the importance of lineage as an anchor in a world of seemingly endless hybrid styles: “Lineage is what keeps the teachings alive. You return to it to remember and recharge.”
And on travel versus rootedness, her perspective is clear: travel expands you. Stillness deepens you. Both are teachers.
Photo: Rishikesh, India 2017 200hr YTT @amandabertucci
Global Community in Practice
Yoga Trade’s Welcome Circle embodies the same values that Adi and Lauren have modeled: connection, humility, and a shared devotion to learning. The global gathering transforms a digital platform into a vibrant community by fostering genuine connections without pretense. Participants can ask questions, gain clarity and inspiration from real practitioners who have built their lives around yoga, wellness, and travel.
Sign up to receive the Welcome Circle link and join. Bring your curiosity and add your voice to the circle.
Join the Circle
Yoga Trade’s Welcome Circle is free and open to all.
When: The last Friday of every month, 9 AM PST
Where: Online (link HERE and available via Yoga Trade’s website and newsletter)
Who: Yoga teachers, students, travelers, and wellness professionals
What:
- A short grounding meditation
- Space to learn about Yoga Trade and its story
- Open Q&A and community dialogue with the founders
Coming Soon…
In 2026, Yoga Trade will expand its online offerings with new gathering spaces designed to foster deeper connections and learning within the global community. More details coming later this year!
