JoyLabs presents a new kind of fitness space for healing, community building and systems transformation through deep embodiment and somatic practices meant to address long held traumas on both the social and individual levels. We are a community of practice exploring how movement and working out can serve as a vehicle to transform our world and move us towards healing ourselves and our community.
We seek to shift practices in the mainstream fitness industry, moving it from its roots in misogyny and violence towards healing, community building and systems transformation. Deep embodiment is when the internal meets the external and shifts the way we move through this world. When you approach physical fitness in an embodied way, the external power accelerates the internal transformation thus accelerating collective healing and transformation as well. When you’re able to notice what you’re holding in your body and in your community, you can shift what is possible in the world. The modern mainstream fitness industry continues to thrive on upholding problematic and outdated notions of physical beauty, aesthetics and ideals rooted in misogyny, violence and instilling fear. These notions perpetuate the idea that fitness is an individual practice intended for self-serving purposes only, rather than a group practice intended for both individual and community uplift and health. The mainstream fitness industry is not an inclusive space and does not serve as an agent for individual or community healing. JoyLabs is a different kind of grassroots movement. In 2020, it began with our physical movement in a garage on a zoom call. We wanted to experience moving our bodies in ways that were healing, inclusive, and transformative. JoyLabs became a space where physical health met emotional resilience in a beloved community. Train the Resistance.
