Turning twenty one felt like stepping into adulthood, and that’s the part I remember being excited about. Getting blacked out was never the draw. It just didn’t call to me. No shade here, if a wild night out, dancing till 3am, doing something wildly out of character, sounds like your kind of fun, it has its place, and it genuinely is fun. Dancing especially, sign me up for that any night of the week. But the rest of it never quite fit who I am. I’ve always leaned toward the chiller end of things, the person who’d rather wake up to actual sunshine than nurse a hangover.
Here’s the thing about wellness, though: it’s picked up a reputation for being rigid, like you’re only doing it right if you’re asleep by nine with a magnesium drink in hand. That’s not the version I’m talking about. Sometimes wellness looks like dancing until 3am because that’s what fills your cup. Sometimes it’s frolicking on the beach past midnight, or chasing a sunrise, or an aimless drive with the windows down for no reason at all. Sometimes it’s just eating the cookie you actually want. None of this was ever about abstaining from anything. It’s about balance, and about noticing what you actually want instead of defaulting to what you think you’re supposed to want.
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For a long time, wanting the quieter version of a night out made me feel a little out of step.
Then I moved to California.
The Social Scene Nobody Warned Me About
Something about how much of the social world out here is built around wellness genuinely caught me off guard. Not wellness as a private, solitary ritual, but as the actual reason a room full of people shows up together. Once that clicked for me, I started seeing it everywhere.
And it’s not just a feeling I have. Gallup’s long-running data on drinking habits shows a real drop among adults under 35, down from about 72% who drank regularly in the early 2000s to roughly half now. Add to that the 2023 advisory from the U.S. Surgeon General naming loneliness a public health epidemic, with health consequences comparable to smoking, and a note that Americans now spend a fraction of the time connecting face-to-face that we did two decades ago. Somewhere in that gap, a new way of gathering had to step in. I’d argue this is a real piece of it.
Finding friends, or a partner, really comes down to one question: does this person care about the same things I do? That’s the entire search, distilled. And I’ve noticed that a sound bath, a beach cleanup, a group hike, reveals more about someone in twenty minutes than an entire night at a bar ever would.
Not long after I moved here, someone invited me to a beach club wellness day. I went in without much of an idea what to expect, and somehow ended up back there every single month afterward. A small nonprofit called Superbloom Collective runs it out on the west side, worth a look if you’re local and want a low-cost, genuinely fun way to meet people who are into the same things you are.
More recently, I hosted a free night at Ceremny, one of the studios where I teach, centered entirely around expression, no other agenda attached. People got to show up as their most authentic, expressed selves for a couple of hours, meet strangers, and actually talk. Sitting in that room, it hit me how many of us grew up in households where none of this got discussed, where feelings stayed locked in the car instead of making it to the kitchen table. Watching strangers have the kind of real conversation you don’t usually get with someone you just met felt like watching repair happen in real time.
This, to me, is what nightlife looks like now. Conscious instead of numbing.
The Most LA Thing I’ll Ever Write, and I’m Owning It
I met my current boyfriend at a cold plunge and at a wellness reatreat.
If you caught my recent post, you already know where I land on cold plunging these days, when it helps, when it doesn’t, what it does to your hormones depending on where you are in your cycle. Back then, though, I loved it for a completely different reason: it was a place to meet people. Shivering next to a stranger has a way of skipping past several rounds of small talk.
We actually found our way back to each other a few months later, after a breathwork class at a retreat in palm desert. I’m aware of how that sounds. If you’re my freinds reading this from Nashville or family in Utah, (my other home turf), I can practically feel the eyebrow raise from here. Don’t worry, fried chicken and mountain air still have my heart, I haven’t drifted off into some alternate plane of existence. But there’s something genuine underneath the LA cliché of it all. The nights that actually stuck with me were never the ones we can’t remember. They were beach day parties, pool afternoons, lake dates, breathwork classes that turned into conversations worth having. Those are the ones that stay with you.
What I See in the Room
The part of teaching that fills me up most isn’t the class itself, it’s the ten minutes on either side of it, watching something shift across someone’s face.
Some days that’s a power yoga class, everyone sweat soaked through, dancing a little, pushing hard, laughing at their own mess. Other days it’s a yoga nidra so quiet you can hear the whole room breathing together. Different energy entirely, but the same core ingredient underneath both: everyone in that room chose to be a little vulnerable in front of people they don’t know. That’s the thing that actually matters. Not the sweat, not the stillness. The willingness to let your guard down at all.
I’ve also watched men’s circles multiply across the city lately, and I think it’s one of the genuinely good things happening here. Men getting an ordinary, unpressured space to actually say something real feels long overdue.
And since we’re being honest, run clubs deserve a mention too, mostly because they’re inescapable right now. I will say plainly, I am a genuinely terrible runner. When I first landed here I threw myself at becoming a run club regular because it seemed like the quickest route to belonging. My body disagreed. Some health issues shut that particular door fast, and for a stretch, I took it as a personal failure, but i did in fact make some great friends from it.
So rather than keep pushing against pavement I was never going to love, I found my own version indoors. Power yoga classes where nobody cares about your mile time. Dance-driven sessions where the sweat looks different but does the exact same job on your nervous system and your social battery. Becoming a runner was never the requirement. Finding my own route to that same feeling was.
If You’re Lonely Right Now, Here’s Where I’d Start
Here’s what’s genuinely worked for me and for people I’ve talked with about this.
Start by journaling it, even two honest lines on what kind of connection you’re actually craving. Then put yourself somewhere people already gather, a class, a walk, some kind of group, and walk up to one person. Brace for a flat, uninterested reaction sometimes, that’s part of the deal. Open up and say something real anyway. Most people are exactly as unsure as you are. They’ve just gotten better at hiding it.
Someone genuinely wise in my life told me that great friendships need the same two ingredients as a great relationship: consistency and vulnerability. That thought crosses my mind every time I walk into a room of strangers to teach.
Community matters. I believe that as much as anything I write about here. But so does the willingness to walk in alone first, before you’ve found your people, before a single face in the room is familiar. That part is the harder one, and it’s the part no flyer ever mentions.
Where to Go From Here
If any of this sounds like the kind of night out you’ve been missing:
Free sessions on YouTube: This is where I’m building a library of guided sound baths, meditations, and breathwork you can return to again and again. Before bed, when you’re overwhelmed, when you need ten minutes that are actually yours. Subscribe and it will be waiting for you whenever you need it. youtube.com/peacefulplacewellness
Bring it to your space: Private sound baths and corporate wellness events are my favorite thing to do. I come to you, whether that’s your home, your office, a retreat, or an event. If you want to build a night around real connection instead of another happy hour, fill out this form and let’s put something together.
Attend a class: I teach sound baths and yoga nidra at studios across Los Angeles, such as ceremny marina del rey, unplug santa monica, soho warehouse downtown, mudwtr gather santa monica. Come sweat, come sit in silence, come meet the people already showing up. See the full schedule at angelawrightmusic.com/classes-schedule.
This essay first appeared on my Substack. Subscribe for new writing on sound, rest and the nervous system.
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