As the American workforce continues to hold the title for most overworked developed nation in the world, freelancers are spearheading a Quiet Revolution by taking the most important thing they’ve got into their own hands: their health.

More than any other sector of the workforce, freelancers understand the importance of work/life balance. They understand that a meaningful life means not only taking time out for friends and family, but also taking time out for themselves and their physical and mental well-being.

It’s for this reason that freelancers from around the country are coming together to create everything from collective yoga studios to midwifery and doula cooperatives to pioneering entirely new ways of providing insurance for freelancers and others within their local communities.

Freelancers realize that keeping themselves healthy means more than having a steady income. It means taking time to breathe, meditate, and exercise. It means taking the time out to ensure peace in their physical bodies so that they can focus on achieving peace in their emotional and personal lives, as well as their bank accounts!

We can’t map the movement without you, so we’d love to hear about where you go to get healthy! Don’t forget to map your favorite place right here.

Supporting lives
We’ve seen so many amazing submissions to our map so far. One example is The Birthing Tree Cooperative in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The Birthing Tree was founded by a group of mothers, midwives, doulas, and educators who wanted to create a place that could help mothers through the entire experience of bringing a child into the world. From parenting consultants and childbirth preparation classes to doula services and postpartum care, The Birthing Tree is one community coming together to help their community as a whole.

Improving lives
One of the ways that people are coming together to focus on their health is through the formation of collective and cooperative institutions based on improving their community’s well-being. One organization on our map, the Brooklyn Yoga Collective, came into being when a number of yoga practitioners and educators of different schools of thought and backgrounds came together to form a collective yoga studio. This structure allows them to charge affordable rates (sliding scale of $7-$15 per class), pay each instructor an equal rate per class regardless of the number of attendees, thereby eliminating competition amongst teachers and allowing them to teach based on the value to their students, not the amount of people who will attend.

Maintaining lives
As you know, working outside of the traditional 9-5 work place has a lot of perks. Unfortunately, one thing it often doesn’t include is a dependable health care plan. It’s for this very reason that the members of Freelancers Union came together to build an insurance company from scratch. In addition, they built two brick-and-mortar Freelancers Union Halls that offer a patient-centered primary care practice focused on the well-being of freelancers. These Halls also serve as a community hub for independent workers by offering education events and free wellness events like yoga and meditation. By coming together, freelancers have pioneered a new way to actually do insurance. Freelancers are the vanguard.

**Freelancers, where do you go to get healthy in your community? Be sure to submit your idea to our Quiet Revolution Map! **