Commusings: More Than the Sum of Its Bits by Jake Laub

A year into our relationship, I told Julia I was going to have a baby without her. 

It would cry in the night, occasionally poop its pants, and generally require a lot of love and attention for many years. I’ve done this before, I told her, so let me know if you’re feeling overly neglected as I care for this fragile, developing creature.

Oh, and I’m having this baby with another man; his name is Jeff.

We’ve named the baby Commune.

That was more than six years ago, and, as predicted, my business baby required late nights and early mornings. In a variety of non-literal ways, it filled its diapers.

I have a three-year-old (human) daughter now, and her favorite bedtime prompt is, “Daddy, tell me about when I was little.” Or, more specifically, “Tell me how I was born.”

I remember when we showed up to film the first lesson of the first course we ever released, Yoga for All with Adriene Mishler. We wanted to make yoga less intimidating, to invite everyone and anyone with a body to discover the life-changing benefits of moving and breathing mindfully. So we arranged to record classes of Adriene teaching police officers, BBQ cooks, weightlifters, a roller derby team, and – to kick off the series – some farmers in a field. 

One thing I’ve learned producing 150 courses since then: The more variables you can control, the less stressful the shoot.

That day we had zero variables under control. Within seconds of starting, two farm dogs and a black barn cat decided to join class. The dogs were content to settle into a doggy savasana, but, as chickens pecked inquisitively at my shoelaces, I watched the cat attempt, with increasing insistence, to get scratched.

He began with several circles of Adriene, flicking his tail against her hands with each pass as if to say, “You missed my ears this time, but I’ll come around again.” Giving up on Adriene, he matched the Cat Pose of one of the farmers, nose-nuzzled the next, and so on, for 10 minutes. In the realm of production crises, it is downright endearing compared to the wildfires, floods, power outages, and pandemics we’ve navigated on set since then. Not to mention the time we accidentally locked a high-profile teacher out of the house at 5am while a pack of coyotes howled with delight.

And yet that was the very beginning and everything felt so delicate.

Now, as we mark six years since Commune released that first course, I reflect on how you couldn’t even call Commune a toddler anymore. She’s a vibrant young lady already making her mark on the world — and yet with so much still ahead.

Maybe I’m stretching this metaphor too far, but what is a living being but something that somehow, magically, is greater than the sum of its parts? At an atomic level, the oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen forming the bulk of your anatomy are not discernibly different from the quadrillions of nearly identical atoms under your feet and in the air around you. And yet, in coming together they become the incredible, dynamic, organism that is you. 

I’ll paraphrase a common Jeff-ism (which he surely pilfered from elsewhere): When you write a book or essay, it’s yours, but the moment it goes out into the world it becomes a thousand different books, each in unique relationship with its reader. 

Before September 9, 2018, Commune was a handful of people with a few suitcases of second-hand cameras and a common vision. Within a few weeks, more than a hundred thousand students had signed up to take Adriene’s course. Since then, Commune has welcomed in more than 6 million students.

It’s something much greater than a few trillion pixels and bits comprising 150 courses and hosted on a few servers.

If you are reading this, you are (most likely) one of those students. Did you take a course on meditation or metabolism, leadership or self-care, relationships or the nature of reality? How did your life change because of what you learned?

6 million of us intersecting through this ephemeral entity. 6 million ripples spreading out as a result.

What will the next year hold? What will the next decade hold? 

Like a bright-eyed six-year-old, we are full of hope.