John's Letter Archives
WINTER 2005
NAMASTE,
I am pleased and a little amazed to announce the celebration of Unity Woods Yoga Center’s twenty-fifth anniversary.
The "little amazed" part is about the rapid and unnoticed passage of time. I say "unnoticed" because this celebration is actually a year overdue. Since Unity Woods began its formal existence in January 1979, we really completed our twenty-fifth year at the end of 2003 and should properly have celebrated our silver anniversary at the beginning of 2004. This is, of course, a significant milestone and one of which we’re very proud, but to tell you the truth, I just didn’t think about it until this fall. I’m not sure what this says about my mental faculties, but, in any case, I did not want our Silver Anniversary to go by without notice, even if belatedly.
When I began teaching under the name Unity Woods Yoga Center in the winter of 1979, I had just finished wandering around the country in a converted school bus. Following my return from the bus tour, I felt that I had reached a place in my life where I needed to settle down and focus my energy and attention. When I had first begun teaching yoga in 1973, it was as much to supplement my meager income as a musician as anything else. Now, after nine years of yoga practice, six years of teaching, and much soul searching about what was important, I decided to dedicate my life to the practice and teaching of yoga.
As a result of that decision, shortly after my return I purchased a 48 acre wooded property between Thurmont and Frederick, Maryland. My intention was to open a residential center modeled a bit on the Feathered Pipe Ranch. It was going to be a place to which people could come to step outside their ordinary routines and immerse themselves in a yoga-oriented environment. The property was ideal, but the house wasn’t big enough to carry out my idea on the scale I intended, so I began to explore ways to raise the money I thought I would need to pursue my plan. In the meantime, I resumed teaching yoga for the Montgomery County Recreation Department and also started classes at private homes and rented locations in Bethesda, DC, and Frederick as well.
One of the first things I did as I embarked on what was now both a mission and a career was to come up with a name for what was to be the center in Thurmont as well as my business identity as a teacher. The word yoga, derived from the Sanskrit word yuj, means yoke or union, reflecting the basic concept of interconnectedness, or unity, that underlies yoga philosophy. Of course, I wanted the name to relate to yoga in some way. The property in Thurmont, on which I intended to open the center, was primarily wooded. I’ve always felt at home in the woods and find a sense of serenity in the soft majesty of the forest. Hence the name: Unity Woods.
Another thing I did right from the start was to publish the newsletter. "Publish" is a rather grand term for what actually took place. In the beginning, I typed the newsletter at home on an old electric typewriter, copied it at the local copy center, hand addressed the copies, and carried them to the post office. There were maybe a couple of hundred newsletters. Later, when it became too overwhelming to do them all myself, I used to have a newsletter day at which I taught a free class, served a brunch of bagels, cheese, fruit, and juice, and whoever came to the class stayed and helped paste pre-printed address labels on the newsletters and sorted them for bulk mailing. Although it has changed in a lot of ways over the years, the newsletter has always had the Namaste column. The photo was added early on. Some of you may remember that, for a while, it was underlined by a corny pun that related to the pose pictured on the cover (e.g., for Kapotasana [Pigeon Pose] the caption read, "Unity Woods is bending over backwards to bring you the finest yoga instruction"). Now the newsletter is as you see it. We print 10,000 of them and mail about 6,000 to nearly every state in the union and every continent except the Arctic and Antarctic.
For the next six years, I taught classes and built up the number of students and the level of their practice. A couple of pupils emerged from the ranks of my most dedicated and accomplished students, and I set up classes for them to teach. Liz (who was known as Betty in those days) was the first teacher besides me to teach at Unity Woods. She was joined a couple of years later by Stan Andrezejewski, who after teaching at Unity Woods for thirteen years, left to attend to his own studios in Baltimore and Annapolis. That was the teaching staff when Unity Woods opened its first fulltime studio at Triangle Towers in Bethesda in 1985. We had about three hundred students. (In the Winter 2001 newsletter, I chronicled the events leading up to that opening. You can read that and other newsletters in the archives section of our website.)
In January 1986, one year after I opened the Bethesda studio, my house in Thurmont caught fire and burned to the ground. I moved into Bethesda, to Triangle Towers, where the studio was located. My thought was to stay in Bethesda until I could work out the arrangements - financial and logistical - to organize the center in Thurmont and move back out there. As it turned out, I never returned to Thurmont. The numbers of students and teachers in Bethesda grew, several satellite classes began, and in 1991, we opened the Woodley Park studio. In 1996 the Arlington studio opened. The demands of the three centers, coupled with logistical problems with the Thurmont property, caused me to postpone and eventually abandon the plans for a center there. It’s funny. Even to this day, people come to one of Unity Woods’ fulltime centers, all of which are in urban areas, and say, "Where are the woods?"
As yoga took hold in mainstream America during the 90’s, Unity Woods was one of the centers that led the yoga boom, and we grew exponentially to become one of the largest, best known, and highly respected yoga centers in the country. We have over two thousand students a week attending classes. We have been featured in magazine articles in Time, Newsweek, and Yoga Journal and newspaper stories in The Washington Post and The Washington Times, among others. Other yoga centers regularly contact us to find out how we conduct our classes and operate our business and ask our advice.
I am proud of what Unity Woods has become over this past quarter century. But what I am most proud of is the truly remarkable and outstanding group of teachers and the superb administrative staff who have come together to apply their considerable talents and energies toward Unity Woods’ purpose of offering the profound benefits of yoga to the greater Washington community in particular and to the world at large. They are outstanding examples and a powerful inspiration for their students and colleagues.
As gratifying as it is, the celebration of our Silver Anniversary would be hollow without acknowledging our tremendous gratitude, love, and respect for the source of our own inspiration, B.K.S. Iyengar and his daughter, Geeta, and son, Prashant. Their intense devotion to yoga and their unswerving dedication to their teaching have provided all of us, directly and indirectly, with the unshakeable foundation upon which Unity Woods has been built.
And finally, in celebration of our Silver Anniversary, a word of appreciation for you, the students of Unity Woods, without whom none of this would be possible. For in the end, if there is no student, there is no teacher. Your participation and support over all these years have encouraged us and challenged us. It is because of you and for you that Unity Woods has persevered and prospered for the past twenty-five years. And it is only through your continuing participation and support that we may have the privilege of another twenty-five years. Thank you for a wonderful quarter of a century.
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