The Story of the Circle: Why I Created Sister Circle & Yoga

Jasmin Jennifer
Oct 1
4 min read

Fantasies of the Village

Is it just me, or does anyone else ever stare into space fantasizing about what it would be like to live the way our ancestors did? In my daydreams, I imagine a slower, softer and more humane way of life immersed in nature. It’s a life that is drastically different from the toxic grind, competition, and ego driven nature of modern life.

I picture us sitting around fires like the Indigenous communities used to: laughing, crying, sharing, supporting.

Now don’t @ me! I know it’s true that our ancestors faced extreme hardships, but I’m fantasizing here! Despite the challenges our ancestors faced, I still find myself almost envious of a life where collaboration ruled over competition and it truly “took a village.”

Why Are We Like This?

Even with caring friends and family in my life, I feel like we’ve strayed so far from this "village energy”. I could go on forever about why this is but to name a few reasons:

🎭 There’s the pressure to smile and claim you’re fine.

⛓️ And then there’s the lack of time and/or energy because of the ol’ ball and chain of The Grind.

🤷‍♀️ And then, let’s be really real…how many of us were raised by emotionally mature caregivers who taught us how to handle conflicts and effectively express our emotions? The lack of education around emotional intelligence, conflict resolution, and effective communication is definitely a thing.

These aren’t just random quirks of modern life…they’re symptoms of trauma. And because it seems these struggles are more common than not, it’s led me to a painful conclusion: most, if not all of us, are somewhere on the hot mess of trauma spectrum. We’re all living in a culture that’s systemically and collectively wounded and mostly unhealed.

Fighting Fatigue and Finding Purpose

For me, the effects of trauma have shown up as chronic fatigue that I’ve had to heal from. At it’s worse, it was so debilitating that I barely recognized myself. I spent years visiting all the -ologists — endocrinologists, gastroenterologists, dermatologists — and endlessly researching and trying diets, supplements, exercise and talk therapy. I knew the exhaustion was physiological. But I also knew the physiological symptoms were the effect of unresolved emotional weight. As much as the support of friends and family sustained me, and as much as diets, exercise, and talk therapy helped, I knew I needed to go deeper.

The first piece of the puzzle was learning that somatic and nervous system healing was at the foundation. With two Yoga Teacher Training certifications under my belt, I experienced first hand how mind and body connection and somatic healing was necessary for regulating my nervous system out of chronic fatigue. Whether it shows up as chronic fatigue or in another form of fight, flight, freeze, or appease, trauma has to find a way out of the body.

As I learned to regulate my nervous system with yoga and somatic healing work, I learned that the subconscious brain could be rewired. Releasing trauma from my body was a necessary precursor, but it was still a precursor. I had to go even deeper with the mind-body work. I had internalized an identity as “a traumatized person,” and I needed to reset that mindset and rewire my subconscious. So on a trip to rural South Africa to earn my Yoga Nidra certification, for 21 days straight, three times a day, my yoga teacher facilitated Yoga Nidra sessions that allowed me to shift my mindset and beliefs around healing on a subconscious level.

Slowly but surely, a shift occurred…and it became clear that the healing I was experiencing was part of something bigger.

It’s Not Just Me

I’ve come to a place where I’ve accepted that:

💆🏾‍♀️🪷One: I need to continue to heal from the effects of trauma and

🌐💔 Two: So does everyone else.

We are still living within a culture where unresolved pain and trauma shape the way we move, connect, and live.

While this is a heavy reality, the silver lining is that it keeps my fantasies at the forefront of my mind. The fantasies of the ancestors sitting in circles around the fire. The Village. The dream of consistent, genuine connection where there is uninterrupted time to process through how we’re actually feeling and how we’re navigating through life.

Healing individually is another precursor….but again, it’s still a precursor. What follows is genuine communal care.

I want to share the lessons around the mind-body work that have gotten me to this point. I want to teach, I want to be taught, and I want like minded women to heal with me. And because necessity is the mother of invention, I decided to use this motivation to create Sister Circle and Yoga.

Coming Full Circle

Sister Circle & Yoga is my way of bringing ancestral wisdom into modern practice. It combines the lessons I’ve learned from yoga, somatic healing, and Yoga Nidra with the power of collective care.

In the Circle, we journal, we share, and we connect. On the mat, we move, release, and integrate. Together, the fantasy of balancing personal and communal healing comes full circle.