JuJu Faragher Finds Healing in Practice, Not Perfection

For JuJu Faragher, wellness is not a destination. It is a practice that is inherently messy, imperfect, and—most importantly—deeply human. As a yoga practitioner, storyteller, and community healer based in Houston, Faragher approaches health not as something to be achieved, but as something that is lived moment by moment, breath by breath.

“To be super-specific, I typically go by he/him pronouns, but I also love he/they pronouns,” Faragher says. “I came to that conclusion a few years back, when I was really trying to understand my gender identity.” That exploration was less about labels and more about loosening his grip on rigid ideas of masculinity. “There are a lot of things around masculinity that I didn’t identify with,” he admits. 

Yoga offered a language for that unlearning. “Within yoga, through the practice of non-attachment, I realized I was really clinging on to these ideas of what masculinity is and what it isn’t,” Faragher says. “So that’s where the he/they pronouns started to come in. I felt like they gave me permission to express however I wanted to.”

That permission to soften, to explore, and to exist without apology threads through Faragher’s story, which began long before he ever stepped onto a yoga mat. “If I had to pick a place where it began, I think it has to go back to when I was a teen,” he says, recalling a deep love of fantasy worlds and storytelling. “That’s where all of the ideas around fantasy and magic came through.”

Yoga entered his life later, out of necessity rather than curiosity. Living with scoliosis since middle school, Faragher turned to yoga in his early twenties as a way to manage chronic pain. “Living with a chronic condition is wild,” he says. At the time, he was also navigating depression and uncertainty after graduating college. “I didn’t really know what it was that I wanted to do. I was super-depressed for years on end.”

What followed felt almost cinematic. After a moment of “intense clarity” that he had never experienced before, Faragher encountered a group of yoga teachers. “They’re the ones who asked, ‘Have you ever thought about doing yoga?’ And that’s how the journey started.”

As his practice deepened, Faragher began to wrestle with yoga’s contradictions. “Sometimes yoga can be a new-agey space,” he admits. “And sometimes that new-agey space is fabulous and it works for you. But sometimes those new-agey spaces are not beneficial to everyone, and are not rooted in social justice.” Rather than walking away, Faragher asked a different question: “How can I now turn this into something else?”

At the heart of that “something else” is a phrase Faragher returns to often: practice makes progress. “That concept came from my dad,” he says. “He used to tell me, when I was practicing my multiplication tables, ‘You don’t need to be perfect, but just practice.’” For someone who once identified as a perfectionist, this idea became truly transformative. “If you get caught up on the mistakes, you get caught up in this narrative that you’re doing something wrong,” Faragher explains. “All of those mistakes are really just learning opportunities.”

Yoga, he insists, extends far beyond physical postures. “Yoga can absolutely show up as, ‘I’m going to go on a walk outside,’” he says. “I’m just going to notice the trees, I’m going to notice the breeze and give myself some space and some breath just to be, exist, and feel.” His own mat has borne witness to all of it. “I have cried on my mat. I have been very angry and yelled on my mat,” he explains. “My mat has seen me at my best. It’s seen me at my worst.”

Community is where that practice deepens. “There’s something really powerful to be said about engaging in the practice in a shared community space and process how you’re feeling in the world, and to know that you’re not doing it alone,” Faragher adds, especially alongside other Black, brown, queer, and trans people.

That belief carries into Faragher’s work within Houston’s LGBTQ community, including his involvement with the Montrose Center. “The idea of making wellness an individual pursuit really grinds my gears,” he points out. “When we’re only focused on our own wellness, we’re missing out on the intersectionality of lived experience.” For Faragher, collective care is not optional. It’s essential. “Wellness has to be something that is community-focused.” Returning recently from Guatemala, where retreat and rest reinforced that philosophy, Faragher found himself recommitting to practices rooted in flow rather than fear. Looking ahead to 2026, he emphasizes rest as resistance, especially for LGBTQ people navigating burnout. “Rest practices are really important,” he says. “You’re down regulating your nervous system and you’re letting go of the part of your brain that’s doing all of the executive functioning.”

For readers beginning their own wellness journeys, Faragher offers something simple and powerful: affirmation. “I would start with daily affirmations,” he advises. “One of the things I used to tell myself all the time is ‘You’re safe, you’re loved, and you are protected.’” Repetition, he explains, can be transformative. And this includes writing affirmations down on Post-It notes and putting them on surfaces like mirrors. “Seeing and repeating those affirmations was mentally enough every day for me to start to rewire the neural pathways in my brain.”

In a culture obsessed with arrival, Faragher invites us to linger in the practice, to embrace the wobble, to trust the process, and to remember that progress, however small, is still progress.

Keep up with JuJu Faragher on Instagram @/juju.thewizard.