Welcome to Commune, a global wellness community and online course platform featuring some of the world's greatest teachers.

We are on a mission to inspire, heal, pass down wisdom, and bring the world closer together.

This is the Commune podcast, where each week we explore the ideas and practices that help us live this healthy, connected,

and purpose-filled life. In addition to our courses on yoga, meditation, and personal development,

Commune also offers an array of social impact courses, including unwinding prejudice,

redefining leadership, and organize a march.

If you are interested in enrolling in any of those course offerings for free,

please email me at Jeff K at Onecommune.com.

Right now, I think we can all benefit from learning and growing in order to better serve our communities.

I have started writing a weekly Sunday article called commusings, where I wax

alternately poetic and pathetic around spirituality, philosophy, and culture.

And on occasion, I will also record these screeds as bonus episodes for this podcast.

So today, in honor of America, my soulful, complicated, beautiful country that I love,

I share with you a piece entitled Interdependence Day.

I am in my happy place, snug in the middle lane of the 101, coasting at a modest 60 miles per hour,

listening to the daily, driving to Topanga with Micah. Skyler thinks I drive too slowly. I prefer

cautious. It might be genetic. My beloved Nana, barely five feet in heels, seldom broke

25 on the speedometer. As a young boy, I would often accompany her to her sacred weekly

hairdresser appointment. There was a soda fountain there in which I enthusiastically indulged,

creating madcap paper cup cocktails of Mr. Pib and Fanta.

Eventually, she'd emerge from the chair,

grip my hand, her long, glossy red nails digging at my forearm skin,

...