Regular readers of the magazine look forward to the monthly Home Practice feature for fully illustrated sequences of ten poses. This month’s sequence is designed to build the strength and flexibility needed for arm balances, such as Bakasana (Crane Pose). Each pose is photographed, with John’s precise descriptions guiding readers through the work in each asana.

Arm balances are challenging because they require both abdominal strength and flexibility to bring the arms and legs into position. John encourages students to cultivate a playful, adventurous spirit in exploring the poses. He likens the attitude the the explorations of children. “Kids will try to stand on their heads, laugh, and have fun–not get mad– and try again,” he says. “See if you can maintain equanimity as you discover what your response is to a difficult situation.”

Download the three-page article Here.

It’s such a cliché to remark on the speedy passage of time. Nonetheless, I have to trot out the “how time flies” line to comment on the arrival this year of Unity Woods’ 30th anniversary. To tell you the truth, things are tumbling by so fast and there so much going on that I might have missed noticing it altogether had I not been prompted by the ubiquitous accolades to local (and national) media star, Diane Rehm, on her 30th anniversary. That’s when I said to myself, “Hey, Unity Woods has been around for 30 years, too.”

30 years! Wow! Hard to know what to say. I can’t say it seems like we jut got started yesterday. It doesn’t. On the other hand, there is certainly nothing stale or routine about it either. Each day brings new challenges and new adventures…sort of like a yoga practice. Same poses; brand new experience. And in a way, Unity Woods has been a reflection of my yoga practice and the practice of the many wonderful people who throughout all these years have made up and continue to make up the creature known as Unity Woods.

That’s a noteworthy point right there, the one about the practice of the Unity Woods’ folks, because every person who has worked at Unity Woods – the teachers, obviously (or maybe not so obviously in this day and age), and the administrative staff as well – has been a yoga practitioner. I have no doubt that the great reputation we have and the steadiness that we are known for are a result of the fact that the actual practice of yoga, Iyengar Yoga specifically, is at the heart of everything we do.

Anniversaries are, of course, milestones, opportunities to take stock of where the path has led, to reflect on choices made, to reminisce about people and events, to contemplate what it all means. There have been some very significant events in our 30 year history which help to define who we are and describe the trajectory that has brought us to this point. There is no way to include them all in the space available here, but I will share a few of what are to me the most noteworthy. I’ll be able to expand on the story at the discussion group on March 7.

I guess the place to start is at the beginning. Unity Woods came into being, as I said in the Channel 8 interview, as a result of my desire “to share my enthusiasm and the benefits of yoga with as many people as I can.” I had already been practicing yoga for nine years and teaching for six when I decided that yoga was going to be the focus of my life. Since that meant doing what I needed to do to support myself by teaching full time, I decided to give myself a business name. The word yoga, derived from the Sanskrit word yuj, means yoke or union and reflects the basic concept of interconnectedness, or unity, that underlies yoga philosophy. Naturally, I wanted the name to relate to yoga in some way. At the time I lived on 48 acres near Thurmont, MD where I intended to open a retreat center: forty acres was wooded. I’ve always felt at home in the woods and feel a sense of serenity in the soft majesty of the forest. Thus, in 1979 Unity Woods Yoga Center was born.

I taught by myself – I was Unity Woods – until the summer of 1984, at which point I asked my most advanced pupil, Betty Marx (Liz was Betty in those days), to begin teaching with me. From that point on, Unity Woods was no longer just John Schumacher.

By 1985, I was longing for a space to focus my teaching energies. Our student population had grown to the point (about 200 students) that I felt that it might be financially possible to rent a space and open a fulltime yoga studio. I say “might” because at that time, as far as I know, no one in the Washington, DC area had operated a full time self-sustaining yoga studio devoted solely to yoga, so who knew if it could really be done. We opened the Bethesda, MD studio that year, offering classes in the Triangle Towers building in downtown Bethesda. Needless to say, things have worked. From a small space on the third floor, we later moved to a penthouse studio on the sixteenth floor, which gradually expanded to two studios and a suite of administrative offices.

The next significant event in our history occurred three years later. By then, running the business part of Unity Woods had become more than I could manage by myself. I had had some help before then, but in 1988, Esther Geiger took on the job of administrator. There is no history of Unity Woods without Esther. From the day she took the job, she has been an integral part of every aspect of the center.

The summer of 1990 saw a major red letter event in the history of Unity Woods. We were extremely fortunate and highly honored to have B.K.S.Iyengar visit us for several days. Very few centers have ever had the privilege of hosting Mr. Iyengar. On that trip, he came to see the Bethesda studio and found time to take in the sights of Washington. The entire yoga community had an opportunity to experience the power of his presence at a talk and a demonstration of yoga therapeutics sponsored by Unity Woods at the main auditorium of the University of the District of Columbia.

We were doubly blessed to have Guruji return to Washington in fall of 2005 as the last stop on his tour to celebrate the release of his wonderful book, Light On Life. He capped off his tour with a program we sponsored at Lisner Auditorium at The George Washington University. He is now 91 years old, so this was probably his last trip to visit his North American Iyengar Yoga community. Nothing in Unity Woods’ history can top these two visits by B.K.S. Iyengar, the source and inspiration for the yoga we practice and teach at Unity Woods.

In 1991, one year after Guruji’s first visit to Washington, Iyengar Yoga came to Washington, DC proper when we opened the Woodley Park studio.

Five years after that, we opened the Ballston studio, which gave us a presence in each of the three major jurisdictions in the area. By 2002, we were the largest studio in the area, and with nearly three thousand students weekly, one of the largest yoga centers in the country. We were and still are the largest Iyengar Yoga center in North America.

When contemplating the numbers, we estimate that we have taught yoga to more than 40,000 different students in our 30 year history. That means that yoga has become a part of a lot of people’s lives as a result of the efforts of all the folks who have made up Unity Woods – teachers and staff alike.

Our influence has not been limited to only our own students. Many of the more senior yoga teachers in the Washington area – Suzie Hurley, owner of Willow Street Yoga Center; SusanVan Nuys, owner of Health Advantage Yoga Center; JJ Gormley. Founder of Sun and Moon Yoga Center – were long time Unity Woods students, and members of the next generation of teachers and studio owners are coming to classes and workshops to refine their practice and teaching and see how we do things.

Since we were the first yoga center in town, we also published the first yoga center newsletter in the area. “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. If you look at the newsletters of the centers that publish them, you will see they look remarkably like Unity Woods’ newsletter. And our business model, particularly structuring classes in a session format rather than the ongoing drop-in class card method favored by gyms, fitness clubs, and some of the newer studios, has provided a template for most of Washington’s largest centers.

Even so, we cannot rest on our laurels. The one constant in the universe (which includes yoga centers) is change. Word of mouth has always been and will continue to be the most important and productive way for people find out about Unity Woods. We used to rely on the Yellow Pages and newspaper advertising as the next line of support for marketing ourselves. Not anymore. Now our online presence has become the way to reach out to let folks know that we’re here and what we’re about. With that in mind we are getting ready to redesign our website to be even clearer and more user friendlier. And check out our fan page on Facebook as well.

That’s just one example of the dynamic quality and creative vitality that has marked the 30 years of Unity Woods’ existence. We have changed and grown in so many ways over that time, but I’m proud to say that we have done so without sacrificing our principles.

In an age where everything is instantaneous and superficiality abounds, we have continued to stress excellence and commitment as the means to fulfilling our mission as stated in our newsletter and online: “to offer uncompromising, quality yoga instruction to as extensive an audience as possible.” That is the reason for Unity Woods’ existence, and it’s why we will continue to do our utmost to serve our students and our community.

One more thing: anniversaries are also opportunities for expressing appreciation and gratitude – sorrow and regrets, if that’s the way it is – for what has happened over the years. For us at Unity Woods, it’s appreciation and gratitude for the unswerving support that you, our students, have given over these three decades. Without you, we wouldn’t have been here at all. You have provided us the opportunity to take the yoga we love and cherish so deeply and share it with you in the hopes of making your life healthier and more serene and with the intention of awakening the awareness that will make the world a better place for us all.

Thank you so much.
John

I felt very honored when I was asked to give the keynote address to this conference. This is the largest group of senior-level Iyengar yoga teachers ever gathered for a weekend
conference. And it is the first regional conference ever put on by the IYNAUS. Because of that it is a wonderful opportunity for all of us to experience Iyengar Yoga in a deeper
and broader way. So in light of that I’ve thought long and hard about what to say on such an occasion.

I chose the topic, Iyengar Yoga and The Power of Intention for several reasons. The first is that it is relevant to all of us. Each of us here has an interest in yoga – obviously, or we wouldn’t here. But each of us has our own particular reason for pursuing the path of yoga. Back in the old days, when my classes were smaller, I used to
ask my beginning students why they had come to class. As many students as there were, that’s how many reasons there were for their being there.
For some it may be have been to try to heal a back problem; for others a chance to get a little more flexible, or stronger. Some wanted to learn to relax and relieve some of the
stress in their lives; others wanted to get high on movement or meditation. Some wanted to explore their spirituality in a system that had been doing so for thousands and
thousands of years. The reason those students were in that beginning class – and the reason you are here is
your Sankalpa. That’s the Sanskrit word for intention. So everybody starts on the path of yoga with some purpose, some goal in mind, some
intention.

Another reason I picked this topic is that it illustrates the importance in yoga of the movement of our consciousness from the gross to the subtle, from the temporal to the
timeless, from individual consciousness to cosmic consciousness. On this amazing journey, we travel from the external to the internal…. AND THEN BACK OUT
AGAIN! I want to come back to the “then back out again” later on, but for right now, let’s see how this evolution of involution, or curling inward of consciousness – which is what yoga is really all about – works in relation to intention.

Those of you who have been doing yoga for a while, think back to what your intention was when you first began. Now think about why you’re doing yoga at this point in your
practice. I’m pretty sure that very few of you have the same reason for practicing now as you did at the outset. And I would guess that for many, maybe most of you, your reason
for practicing, your intention, is more sophisticated, more refined, subtler than it was in the past. As we go on practicing, moving nearer to our goals, we continue to refine and redefine our intention. For me, that’s one of the amazing things about yoga: the practice itself invites the continual refinement of intention. Just by doing what you do in your practice, you are changed, and because of that your motivations and expectations are changed as well.

Now with respect this involution of consciousness, in Iyengar Yoga, we are very explicit about this intention of taking our consciousness inward to the core of our being.
In his superb book, Light On Life, our Guruji, B.K.S. Iyengar, titles the first chapter, The
Inward Journey. In the second paragraph he says, “The yogic journey guides us from our periphery, the body, to the center of our being, the soul. The aim is to integrate the
various layers so that the inner divinity shines out as through clear glass.” No matter what your Sankalpa at this stage in your practice, though, I think that one of
the beauties of the Iyengar tradition is that the path to fulfilling your intention is within the scope of this method.You can come at it for purely physical reasons. That’s how I began. Lord knows, with our emphasis on asana and pranayama and the use of props and therapeutic techniques, you’ll find what you’re looking for on that level. With the focus on alignment, balance, and breath, you can learn to harmonize yourself with the powerful energies within yourself and discover emotional equilibrium and personal empowerment.. The subtleties and precision of this practice draw you into a deeper and deeper experience of ekagra – a one pointed, sharper, clearer state of mind.

In Iyengar Yoga, we work to develop and enhance our powers of discrimination. With respect to that, I think of Iyengar Yoga as the yoga of “What if?” “If I have this sensation
in my hip when I press my inner heel, what happens if I press my outer heel?” “What is my state of mind after 8 cycles of Viloma I? What if I make the pauses longer? Then
what? What does that do to my awareness?” This is the process of developing discriminating wisdom. In this way, we refine our intuitive understanding of our bodies,
our world, ourselves. And as we go deeper and deeper inward in our practice, we may begin to taste those moments of joy and freedom that open our hearts and make our lives
sing.

So as we go on practicing, our reasons for practicing change. In light of this, I think it is really important to ask yourself – often, really – “Why in the heck am I doing this?”
Because it is important to understand that unless we are clear in our intention, our chances of fulfilling our purposes are greatly diminished. We need to ask ourselves “Why
am I doing this?” because the clarity of our intention gives us much greater power to move toward our goal.
B.K.S. Iyengar is fond of quoting the 22nd sutra of the Ist Pada of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras: mrdu madhya adhimatratvat tatah api visesa, which he translates as “There are those who are mild, medium, or keen in their practice.” Patanjali tells us in the preceding sutra: tivra samveganam asannah, which Guruji translates as “The goal is near for those who aresupremely vigorous and intense in practice.” If the goal is near for those who are supremely vigorous and intense in practice, the
question arises, “How do we become keen, intense in our practice so that we can move more readily toward our goal?”

Certainly one way to intensify your practice is to become clear in your intention. I think it is interesting to note that the words intense and intention have the same root, from the
Latin intendere, to stretch or intend. By understanding clearly what you intend to do, the intensity with which you can act is greatly enhanced. By consciously establishing your
intention, you can stretch out and reach for your goal much more effectively. John Locke has an interesting definition of intention. He says, “Intention is manifest when the mind, with great earnestness, and of choice, fixes its view on any idea, considers it on every side, and will not be called off by the ordinary solicitation of other
ideas.”

It is my experience that when we set our intention, when we choose to fix our view on something and consider it on every side, when we’re not called off by all the distractions
and impediments that surround us, something mysterious happens. What the sutras imply, and what I think you’ll find, is that many of the obstacles that loom in your way fall aside
when confronted with the clarity of your intention and the power of your intensity. Problems become manageable and interestingly, help, expected and unexpected, seems to
arrive from every quarter. Locke’s definition sounds a lot like the definition of dharana and dhyana, of meditation.

Now when you move nearer the core of your being through meditation, something mysterious happens. Yogis are, after all, mystics. A certain clarity that is beyond thought
arises that calls forth powerful forces within us. These forces, this shakti, is not only within us but all around. We swim (or sink) in an ocean of energy. The essence of our
practice is, as I see it, the process of aligning ourselves with the currents of energy our vessel moves in.

Alignment is not just getting your bones all pointed in the right direction and balancing the forces in your joints. It is becoming sensitive to the currents in which you move and
learning to align yourself with that flow so that you are carried toward your destination, your goal, so that those powerful currents are not in your face, not against you, but are,
instead, behind you, with you, urging you on with greater intensity than you could muster on your own. When your intention is clear and strong and you move forward with great
intensity and integrity, the Universe is on your side. So our journey inward is guided by our intention and is energized by our intention.
When I said earlier that our practice and its encouraging effect on our intention leads us ever more deeply into ourselves, I also said AND THEN BACK OUT AGAIN!
It seems to me that whatever awakening, whatever opening up to the mystery and grandeur of it all we might touch in our practice, we have an obligation to manifest that
awakening, to share it with our fellow beings. I mean, that’s the real reason for teaching, sn’t it? Because what arises from this awakening is a deep realization that we’re all in
the pool together and that what I do affects you and what you do affects me.

And that brings me to the final reason I chose Iyengar Yoga and the Power of Intention as the topic of this address. When the concept of this conference was first being developed,
there were several reasons for doing it. Gathering the local tribe together, which is always a rush; giving the more junior teachers an opportunity for greater exposure, and giving
the broader, non-Iyengar community a chance to experience the energy and joy that Iyengar Yoga gives to those of us who practice it. It is this last intention, the intention of reaching out to the larger yoga community, that I want to address here in my final words.

As yoga has grown larger and larger and more mainstream in the last couple of decades, I have noticed what might be called the Balkanization of yoga, its fracturing into various
sects and groups, and, more important, the tendency for those different tribes to view one another with less than benevolent eyes.
Actually this has been around since the beginning of yoga, but I think with the recent exponential growth of yoga, these tendencies have proliferated. Ever since my early years
of practice and teaching, I have been puzzled and disturbed by this tendency. As we all know, Yoga means Union, which implies a basic understanding that everything and
everyone are interconnected.

As Swami Satchidananda used to say, Paths are Many, Truth is One. This means that there is more than one way to do yoga, more than one way to see what is real and true.
Obviously, those of us who have a devoted practice of Iyengar Yoga have found the path we prefer, the one that works for us…or we’d be doing something else. Just as obviously
other devoted practitioners have found a way that works for them. And, of course, many haven’t found the way that speaks clearly to them, that helps them with their problems,
that carries them past their limited vision of themselves more deeply into the challenging and exciting quest for Self-realization. It is especially to these seekers that we want to reach out and say, “Hey, check out this stuff I’ve been doing. Look what is has done for me.” But before we go strutting our stuff around the barnyard, we need to look to see just what that stuff is.

Here’s what I see. Nearly every tradition borrows our techniques, our methods of practicing and especially of teaching. Why? Because they are so clearly effective and
powerful. For example, I started my practice in the Sivananda tradition. If you look at the practice instructions in Swami Vishnu’s Complete Illustrated Book of
Yoga and then compare that with the instructions in The Sivananda Companion to Yoga which came out in 1983, 23 years later, you will notice a significant change in the use of
anatomical instruction, benefits, cautions and contraindications, and terminology. I think that’s a direct result of the success of the Iyengar method in refining the practice and
teaching of asana. Beryl Bender, Baron Baptiste, Richard Freeman, various teachers in the vinyasa and flow approaches all acknowledge the influence Iyengar methods have
had on their practice and teaching. I also see that our teachers undergo the most rigorous certification process in the country. No one’s teachers are better trained than Iyengar Yoga teachers.

As I said earlier, and as most of you know, Guruji’s practice and teaching are steeped in traditional yoga, in the Raja Yoga system as described by Patanjali. In fact, in a recent
interview with Guruji in YJ (DEC.2008), when asked, “What is Iyengar Yoga?” he said with a laugh, “I myself do not know. I just try to get the physical body in line with the
mental body, the mental body in line with the intellectual body, and the intellectual body with the spiritual body so they are balanced. It’s just pure traditional yoga, from our ancestors, from our gurus, from Patanjali.” Iyengar Yoga, then, whatever it is, is a profoundly spiritual practice directed toward our very reasons for being and the nature of existence. So we are part of an ancient spiritual tradition – whose methods are recognized far and wide as extremely effective – and our teachers are top notch. Why, then, isn’t
everybody doing Iyengar Yoga?

This is a huge question, more than enough of a topic for another talk or panel or article or book, but if our intention is to reach out to the broader community, we need to ask how is it that our message is so persuasive, lauded and imitated, but in terms of numbers of practitioners, Iyengar Yoga is being caught up to and surpassed by adherents of other
approaches. I can think of lots of reasons frankly. We are uncompromising, demanding, challenging. Not everybody wants that. I do. I wouldn’t sacrifice that for popularity. Better to go down the tubes with integrity than sell out our principles for passing gain. We use Sanskrit. We are critical. We work on learning not just doing, which means we
ask for a commitment, not just a one-night stand. We aren’t satisfied with half-hearted or casual behavior, we insist on your best shot. These are perfectly understandable reasons why Iyengar Yoga is not everybody’s cup of tea. And certainly, there is the fact that no teacher or system can be all things to all people. But if our intention is to reach out to folks, to present the benefits of our method, to entice them to take a look, we need to examine the things we can do better without sacrificing our hearts and souls.

So what’s the knock on Iyengar Yoga and yogi’s? We are rigid. We are harsh. We are boring. We are arrogant. We are unfriendly and unwelcoming. I doubt any of this is a surprise to you, most of you anyway. And to those of you who are worried about hanging out the dirty laundry, I think it makes for good relations to hang around in the back yard chatting with the next door neighbor for awhile while you put your stuff on the line and take it off. So while we’re chatting, I’m reminded of my momma’s words (my mom always had
words for every occasion): You catch a lot more flies with honey than you do with vinegar. I’m not saying we should sugar coat what we do and come up with watered down tricks
that suck the real juice out of our yoga. It wouldn’t be Iyengar Yoga anymore, anyway. What I am saying is that we should look at how we manifest our yoga, especially we
teachers. What do people see when we step in front of a class? Are we healthy, vibrant, enthusiastic? Do we radiate joy, friendliness, compassion? Do the students see someone
that they want to be like, a presence they aspire to? And if we want folks in other traditions to be accepting, respectful, and friendly toward us, do we offer them the same?

I won’t speak for people from other tribes, but I too often hear comments from my fellow Iyengari’s that are disrespectful, pompous, full of pride. Those of you who know me well,
know that I am not without fault in this respect myself. Guruji in Light On Life says, “This pride lies in difference, not equality. I am fierce, but you are weak. I am right, but you are wrong. Pride blinds us to the quality of others. We judge by external and by worthless comparisons. We lose the joy in the existence of others. We expect others to perform according to our desires. We are consistently dissatisfied.”

Of course most of you practice and teach with joy and it shows. I have only to think of our dear friend, wonderful colleague, and shining example, Mary Dunn. Talk about
exhibiting qualities that one would find admirable, desirable, and eminently worth emulating. As far as I am concerned, she was the ideal poster person for the Light on
Iyengar Yoga in this country. As always, Mr. Iyengar provides us with excellent guidance on this whole issue. In Light On Yoga he says, “Maitri is not mere friendliness, but also a feeling of oneness with the object of friendliness (atmiyata). The yogi cultivates maitri and atmiyata for the good andturns enemies into friends, bearing malice to none….
Mudita is a feeling of delight at the good work done by another, even though he may be a rival…..Of upeksha he says, “The yogi understands the faults of others by seeing andstudying them first in himself. This self-study teaches him to be charitable to all.”

We Iyengar Yogis are fortunate to have been graced, either directly or indirectly, with ateacher, B.K.S. Iyengar, who has shown us a practice that is powerful, effective, and
time-tested. If our intention is to share with others the great joy we have experienced inthis practice of Iyengar Yoga, we will fulfill that intention by following his advice and we
will cultivate an attitude of friendliness, delight, and charity towards those with whom wecome into contact. For only to the extent that we feel atmiyata, oneness with our brothersand sisters, only by opening our eyes and hearts to see in everyone the same spark ofdivinity that unites us all, only then will our power of our intention to share the joy of Iyengar Yoga be realized.

When it came to the fitness benefits yoga can or can’t provide, yoga teacher John Schumacher had heard it all. A student of B. K. S. Iyengar for 20 years and founder of the Unity Woods studios in the Washington, D.C. area, Schumacher was convinced yoga provides a complete fitness regime. But many people, even some of his own students, disagreed. Yoga might be good for flexibility or relaxation, they’d say, but to be truly fit, you had to combine it with an activity like running or weight lifting.

Schumacher just didn’t buy it.

He knew three decades of yoga practice ,and only yoga practice, had kept him fit. He didn’t need to power walk. He didn’t need to lift weights. His fitness formula consisted of daily asanas (poses) and pranayama (breathwork). That’s all he needed.

Four years ago at age 52, Schumacher decided to prove his point. He signed up for physiological testing at a lab in Gaithersburg, Maryland. As he expected, Schumacher tested near the top of his age group for a variety of fitness tests, including maximum heart and exercise recovery rates. His doctor told him that he was in excellent physical condition and estimated that Schumacher had less than a one percent chance of suffering a cardiac event. “I’ve always maintained that yoga provides more than adequate cardiovascular benefits,” says Schumacher. “Now I have the evidence that regular yoga practice at a certain level of intensity will provide you with what you need.”

Evidence of yoga’s ability to bolster fitness, however, goes well beyond Schumacher’s personal experience. Yoga Journal’s testing of three yogis also yielded impressive results. Even physiologists who don’t do yoga now agree that the practice provides benefits well beyond flexibility and relaxation. Recent research (though preliminary)shows that yoga may also improve strength, aerobic capacity, and lung function. If you practice yoga, you already knew that. But if, like Schumacher, you’ve been told by friends, family, doctors, or even other yoga students that you need to add some power walking for your heart or strength training for your muscles, here’s evidence that yoga is all you need for a fit mind and body. Read More from Yoga Journal

Needless to say, health and serenity are not separate and distinct. Our physical health unmistakably affects our mental health. And this being a two way street, our state of mind plays a huge role in the quality of our physical health. Unity Woods teacher, Alyson Ross, recently presented a program at the Bethesda studio on Yoga and the Physiology of Stress in which she described the current state of research regarding the effect stress has on physical health. The data is powerful and unequivocal in connecting the importance of our reactions to stress to our physical well-being.

But serenity has meaning and importance beyond physical health. The word derives from the Latin word serenus, which means clear as well as calm. Clarity and calmness are important benefits of yoga. Indeed, one of the common portrayals of the yoga practitioner is that she is calm and serene. How many ads have you seen on TV and in magazines of a woman in a white leotard sitting in half lotus on a beach or in a forest glen, eyes closed, a gentle smile on her face, obviously in a state of quiet bliss? (Of course, it’s not the yoga that’s responsible for this, but the anxiety medication she just took or the new car she bought.) Even in everyday life, however, real examples of this common conception exist. People in the building where I teach have often commented on the calm demeanor of the students leaving from their classes, and unless these students are all secretly popping stress meds in the lavatory, the yoga is clearly having that effect.

There are a number of reasons why yoga has such a calming effect. The physical activity of doing the postures, just as with any exercise, stimulates chemicals in the brain that engender a state of happiness and contentment. And by directing attention to the subtleties of the postures, the mind is drawn from its usually scattered nature to a more focused, one-pointed state. This focused state allows the practitioner to let go, at least for a time, of many of the day-to-day worries that can produce distress and anxiety. Furthermore, the guided relaxation that comes at the end of class (or throughout the class if it’s a restorative class) teaches the student to recognize where she is holding tension in her body and mind and how to let go of that tension.

Breathing is also a powerful contributor to creating serenity. The shift in breathing that occurs when the poses (asanas) are done properly relaxes the mind, and the more direct practice of pranayama (yogic breathing) promotes this calming effect to an even greater degree.

On another level, one of the important things the sincere and persistent student of yoga learns through his practice is that there are things in his body and mind he can change, things he can’t, and that with practice, he can begin to distinguish between the two. This discriminating wisdom helps to foster an attitude of acceptance of the ways things are that brings about contentment. The realization that he also has the power to change the causes of his discomfort energizes him and carries him forward in his efforts toward that end. And finally the conflicts within him that come from uselessly struggling with the things he can’t change begin to fall away.

Every time I pick up a newspaper these days, I see something about the degradation of our environment: global warming, the melting of the Antarctic ice cap, the disappearance of polar bears; not to mention the ongoing problems that have been worsening for years. Oysters and crabs are disappearing from the Chesapeake bay, the oceans are being overfished and polluted, trees are being cut down in alarming numbers, heavy metals appear in the milk of a huge percentage of nursing mothers, and on and on. Of course, global warming is the overarching environmental dilemma confronting us today. I’m no expert when it comes to science and our environment, but if the consensus of nearly every responsible scientist is to be believed, we have only a very short period of time to take powerful actions to mitigate some of the dire effects that global climate change will have on us and our children’s and grand-children’s future well-being.

Yet by the same token, just as everywhere you look, global warming alarms appear, so, too, do green initiatives to begin to deal with these problems. In much the same way as yoga became ubiquitous in the media a few years back, now “green” is the “in” word on the pages of newspapers and magazines. And this is a good thing. It will take broad awareness of the seriousness of the situation to begin to galvanize people to support the changes that are necessary to avert the worst of the outcomes that appear to be facing us.

The yoga community has begun to recognize this need in a variety of ways. The Green Yoga Association was founded in 2004 (I am proud to be a founding member) and has been in the forefront of awakening environmental consciousness in the yoga community and beyond. Toward this end, an increasing number of articles have begun to appear in publications directed toward yoga, spiritual practice, and alternative lifestyles. A new book, Green Yoga, by Georg and Brenda Feuerstein, has just been published and has received high praise from a number of reviewers. More manufacturers and suppliers of yoga equipment and products are creating green alternatives. More centers are beginning to buy and sell green products and to use green technology in lighting, heating, and decorating their centers. More teachers are beginning to address the link between yoga and the environment in their teaching. (To find out more about the efforts of the yoga community to promote environmental consciousness, search “green yoga”.)

In the Washington area, the consortium of yoga centers that organize and sponsor DC Yoga Week, presented a day-long program at Lisner Auditorium last year in conjunction with Global Yoga Mala, an international organization dedicated to promoting awareness of global warming.

Here at Unity Woods, we have increased our offering of ecologically sound yoga supplies in our Beyondananda Boutique. We print our newsletter on recycled paper and use soy-based ink, buy recycled paper supplies in our office, and encourage our students to get their information and register online to save trees. In our recent renovation, we used low VOC paint and energy efficient, full spectrum light bulbs. We are replacing worn mats with new Jade yoga mats, which are made of natural rubber free of PVC’s. The flooring in the reception area is a special product resistant to microbial agents. We still have a way to go to be as green as we’d like, but like our Trikonasana, we’re working on it. We welcome your thoughts and suggestions.

Truth be told, however, from what I read, we aren’t going to make enough of a difference by using only one sheet of toilet paper, changing our light bulbs, or shopping with reusable shopping bags. Although they are important on a lot of levels, the problem is simply too large for these kinds of measures to be sufficient. We must encourage sweeping technological advances to deal with challenges of the scope we are confronting. Designing air conditioning in large building complexes after the same system termites use to maintain temperature in their mounds can reduce energy consumption by 90%, for example. Or by studying how seashells turn off the process of growing their shells, we can produce a nontoxic product that can be released into plumbing that sticks to the inner surface of pipes and keeps them free-flowing. This can prevent millions of gallons of noxious chemicals currently used for this purpose from being flushed into the environment. Redesigning our living and work spaces and the cities in which they’re built is crucial for developing a sustainable lifestyle for large populations.

To bring about these technological advances, we must create a social environment that demands them. Business and government respond to the demands of the market place and the populace. Already, partially as a result of massive federal government inaction and a burgeoning awareness of the severity of the crisis, a number of local and state governments and an expanding coalition of large corporations are coming together to do something to change our present course. Creating the demand for environmentally sound products and policies and sustainable development and infrastructure becomes then the job of us all.

The energy for that task will be greatest if it based on the consciousness that we are all in this together. We must realize in the very core of our being that we are linked one to another in a vast web of Being. We must truly understand, feel it in our bones, that our actions and the actions of others have and will have a direct and profound effect on us, our children, our neighbors, our planet. We must allow ourselves to feel the beauty of this our Mother Earth and the power of our heritage as divine dust from the stars. This realization, this understanding, is the true stuff of Yoga, and it can provide the inspiration and faith needed to embark on the difficult and essential quest to save our planet.