John Schumacher (founder of the Unity Woods Yoga Center)

Fall 1989 Letter

Many people who first come to yoga classes are stiff. They often find all of this bending and stretching to be terribly difficult. Their hamstrings holler and their calves cry out. It gets quite frustrating sometimes, and I occasionally see the glaze of despair drift over their eyes.

In what often proves to be a completely ineffectual gesture of consolation, I tell them that it’s really much more difficult to be flexible than it is to be stiff. Upon hearing this the glaze of despair disappears, and instead their eyebrows roll up and back and expressions of utter disbelief emerge. Occasionally there is outright laughter. When you bend forward and touch your toes, how can that be harder than being (barely) able to touch your knees, they say, either to themselves or out loud. The idea is dismissed.

What’s important to understand is that the more flexible you become, the more options you have, and thus the more choices you have to make. In the beginning of asana practice, for example, the idea is pretty much to stretch in one direction until you become a little uncomfortable, then stop. Later, as the signals from your body become more subtle, and you begin to explore nearer and nearer the edge of your capabilities, it becomes a bit trickier. How long to stay? Back off or a little further? How to rotate the thighs, where to align the hip, how to stretch the skin?

In some ways the progression is not unlike moving from childhood to adulthood. As far as the kids are concerned, the grownups have it made. They have all the neat stuff, and they can do whatever they want, whenever they want. From the adult’s point of view, it’s the children that have it made. Life is simple and straightforward, with few cares or responsibilities.

Of course comparisons are odious. Hard is hard. It’s hard for the beginner, hard for the experienced student, hard for the teacher. It’s hard for the kids, hard for the grownups. We each have our work to do, and we do it in our own circumstances in our own way.

All of this brings me to the subject of expansion, both at Unity Woods Yoga Center and in my own teaching schedule, which I discussed in the two previous newsletters and promised in the last to look at in more depth.

Needless to say, we at Unity Woods think that yoga has a tremendous amount to offer in fostering happiness, health and awareness. These qualities enrich our individual lives, the community, the society and ultimately the world as a whole. Thus one of our priorities is to provide quality yoga instruction for as many people as possible.

As the demand for classes has grown, we have been fortunate to have students who, through hard work and dedication, have developed their skills to the point where they are capable of teaching at the level people have come to expect at Unity Woods. We do limit the size and number of classes, however, so that we can be fair to students in terms of their comfort in the classroom and the attention they can anticipate receiving from their teacher. We’re constantly trying to maintain a balance between the need for space in the classes, the importance of offering quality instruction and the desire to make yoga available to the largest possible number of people. It’s a little like balancing your yoga practice to accommodate the time you have available, the things you want to accomplish, and what you’re capable of doing.

For me in considering my own schedule, many of these same issues of balance present themselves. In the last two years I have had increasing invitations to teach in other parts of the country, to write articles for various yoga publications, and to work with individual students on a one-to-one basis.

For years I took every opportunity that came along. I did this for several reasons: to learn by teaching in a variety of situations; to establish my reputation as a teacher; to put tofu on the table; and to turn as many people on to yoga as possible. As a result my initial reaction to every request to teach or involve myself in some project is to say yes.

At this stage of the game that is no longer possible. I find myself overscheduled, overworked and tired. Sound familiar? So many of us do this to ourselves that it’s nearly reached the point where we have to take out our appointment books to go to the bathroom. I call friends and colleagues to plan things with them, and we sit around with our calendars and look for space months ahead.

Now I’m not going to fool myself into thinking I can throw my appointment calendar away. I had friends who, after graduating from college, in a gesture of defiance against imposed structure and a statement of personal freedom, threw away their watches. Then they went around asking everybody what time it was. My schedule is essential to my functioning most effectively in the things I do. What I’m beginning to see, though, is the necessity for scheduling non-scheduled time. And in order to make space for this to happen, I’ll have to begin saying no to various invitations. Just as, out of fairness to the students already registered, we can no longer take every student who applies, so out of fairness to myself, my friends and family, and my own students, I can no longer take every opportunity that comes along.

I don’t really know how this is going to work yet. I’ve begun to consolidate my teaching schedule at the Center; I’ve set a limit on how often I’ll travel to teach; I’ve planned a time in the week for writing and correspondence; I’ve reserved time for taking care of things at home and for relaxation; and, of course, my personal practice time is firmly established and inviolable. There are still other issues to be decided: how to deal with the demand for individual one-on-one sessions; continuing to provide the extracurricular activities at the Center, such as group discussions and social events, that contribute so much to creating a sense of community; and time for the other aspects of the business (staff meetings, advertising, etc.). I’m working out the logistics of these things, but there is another whole dimension to be dealt with in addition and that is my own personal reaction to this process of change.

Frankly, it scares me. So much is tied up in all of this. The desire to fulfill my goals, the desire to be successful, to be loved and appreciated, my self-esteem, my ego. Things have been going so well in the last few years, maybe I should just leave them as they are, a little adjustment here a small change there. Maybe cutting back will undermine the momentum; maybe I should just keep going in the same direction as hard as I can.

And when I really begin to think this way I find myself coming back to the realization that from this vantage point, it sure looks harder to be flexible, to have more options, more choices, than it did when it was simply a matter of just trying to go further, one direction, straight ahead. There is the sense of having something to lose now, of a certain security, which intellectually, I understand is totally illusory. But when someone calls me to come to their city to teach, and I hear myself say “no,” that feeling of fear, of missing an “important opportunity,” that follows doesn’t care much about my intellectual consolations. It just feels scary all the same, and frustrating.

I know that’s how the beginners feel—scared and frustrated sometimes. And my telling them they really have it easy doesn’t help any more than does my telling myself that security as measured by numbers of students and teaching offers is illusory. What we both have to do is adjust to the changes as best we can, learn what we have to in the new circumstances, and keep going.

Have a happy autumn while you keep going.

Reprinted with permission from www.unitywoods.com