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Winter 2001
NAMASTE,
The old saying says, "The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step." Which is to say that you take one step, then another, and another and another, and after a bunch of them, you’re a thousand miles down the road. You might have had absolutely no intention of traveling a thousand miles, but there you are.
That’s sort of what has happened with Unity Woods. After spending years during the 1970’s and 80’s hauling myself and a box of props and books from church basements to rec rooms to teach my classes, two developments developed. One was that I got tired of schlepping from pillar to post, sometimes to find the church basement occupied by a rummage sale or the rec room unavailable because the kids had come down with a case of chicken pox. The other was that over those years, I acquired a fairly substantial number of students.
Along around that time, I really began to long for a place where I could offer a consistent and conducive environment for my students to do yoga. And I also began to think that such a thing was actually possible. This being the mid-80’s, no full time professional yoga studios existed in the Washington area, so the idea was novel and risky. Where to begin?
Common sense dictated several things. I needed enough money to live on (I lived cheaply in those days) and pay the rent and other expenses of doing business. I knew how many students I currently had in my classes, so I used that information to estimate how many students might come per week. Based on that estimate, I figured out what I would have to charge to cover everything. I made all my estimates conservative -- fewer students than I really believed would come; expenses half again greater than I expected. After all, what did I know? I felt I had to leave an adequate margin for error. After these calculations, it still seemed like it could work.
To make a long story short, I found a location central to the area where most of my students were: Bethesda. I borrowed $10,000, signed a one year lease, spent the money to fix up the space with an 850 square foot studio and a tiny office, let folks know where I was, and opened for business. From the very beginning, each thing I thought of or was told about or observed led me to the next step. I simply put one foot in front of the other.
I was overjoyed when I was able to pay back the loan within the year, make ends meet, and renew my lease. Several years went by, some of my students became teachers, and the classes began to fill up with students from all over the area - especially downtown DC. With teachers and students coming from the District to the Bethesda studio, it was a reasonable step to open a studio in DC. Having already done it once, getting the Woodley Park studio going was a matter of following an already established format.
One step continued to follow another, years passed, and now I find myself with a center with four locations, fifteen teachers, eight employees, and over two thousand students. Whodathunkit? All I wanted to do was share my fascination with yoga with whoever was interested.
Now, with yoga exponentially increasing in popularity, many of our classes in Bethesda are full with waiting lists. Two teachers are ready to be added to our faculty. And the Fates have conspired to open up a space adjoining our current Bethesda studio. So the next step seems to be to open another studio.
It is not a case of getting bigger for bigness’ sake. Opening another studio simply serves a number of useful purposes. It will help to reduce the waiting lists for some of the classes and give students a greater choice of times and levels. It will allow us to conduct more specialized classes, in addition to the gentle, pre-natal, and special needs classes we currently have in Bethesda. For example, we will offer classes for parents and children that will run concurrently, thereby enabling parents with young children to have the dual benefit of taking a yoga class for themselves and simultaneously having their children exposed to the fun and healthy, non-competetive exercise of yoga.
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I am especially pleased that we will be able to have a class for teens at a more convenient time for them than we have had in the past. Young people are under such stress in our culture -- academically, socially, culturally, and spiritually. They have so much to gain from the wholistic benefits of yoga: enhanced physical well-being, increased concentration, and perhaps most important, effective methods for coping with stress. Another particularly valuable addition will be that the wonderful work that Helen McVey has been doing in Arlington with her yoga classes for breast cancer survivors will now be available at a very accessible time, Saturday morning, in Bethesda.
Besides the space becoming available, another thing that makes the opening of the new studio possible is, as I said, the addition of two teachers.
Colleen McClintock left Unity Woods and the Washington area near the end of 1999 to go out West to accept an irresistible job offer in her other profession as a computer consultant. Professional and personal developments have now conspired to bring her back to Washington. Because Colleen was such a talented and popular teacher, not to mention an excellent student and friend to me, anytime would have been a good time for her to come back and to return to teaching at Unity Woods. That it should occur at the same time as the opening of the new studio is synchronicity at its most evident.
Most of you who regularly receive this newsletter know Suzanne Siguenza as the assistant administrator at Unity Woods. Unity Woods’ students know Suzanne as the cheery voice on the phone who will gladly help with just about any problem or request they might have. My Tuesday and Wednesday night students know her as the knowledgeable and conscientious apprentice who assists me in helping students as they work to find the most effective way to do their yoga. Having had the pleasure of watching her develop as a teacher -- in her two years of apprenticing with me and while teaching her own classes at Metro Fitness, I am delighted and proud to welcome Suzanne to the Unity Woods faculty. I have no doubt that she will add to the (what I think by this time I can call) tradition of excellence that marks the family of teachers at Unity Woods.
As far as I can see, there is only one part of the puzzle missing in the opening of the new studio. The administrative staff is already as busy as they can be handling the workload of running the center. We are going to need to add two receptionists to handle the flow of students that begins early in the morning and goes on until late at night coming to and going from both studios. The hours have some flexibility; the pay is negotiable, as are the benefits (paid vacation, health care, retirement, great work environment). Anyone interested in a position with one of the most prominent yoga centers in the country and an opportunity to work with very special people - our staff, faculty and students - is invited to contact Unity Woods’ administrator, Esther Geiger, at extension 101 to discuss details.
In the meantime, happy holidays to you all. We join you in looking forward to enjoying the new year and all that it holds as we move into the 21st century -- step by step.
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