Our last in-person classes at the studio were on March 15, 2020. I expected we would take a two or three week break and then resume classes as if nothing had happened.  Clearly, I cannot predict the future.

Instead, we began living in a world where time seemed to pass slowly, but, without events to connect to our days, time also flew by. Suddenly, and yet not so suddenly, a year has passed. Many yoga studios around the country have closed, and that we have remained open is due to support from our community of teachers, students, and staff.

Last March while I was figuring out how to close the studio, Pat Pao began exploring ways to move classes online. Within days, she had created two short videos, and on March 20, she taught our first online class.

Over the next few months, more of our instructors began to teach virtual classes. Most had never considered teaching online, and it was a leap to go from the constant interaction with a class to the silence of muted Zoom streaming. Over time, our teachers became more comfortable in front of the camera as they learned how to explain and demonstrate, and also what to watch for during their classes.

Moving online was also a leap for our students, most of whom had never participated in online classes before. Finding a place to practice, learning how to use Zoom and Vimeo, plus the difficulty of learning two registration systems were all hurdles that were overcome. Now that the Zoom environment is familiar, there is chatting before classes as people meet and get to know each other.

Behind the scenes, our office staff has worked hard to keep everyone informed and the studio running. They have been at the studio for office hours, answered phone calls and emails, and delivered purchases to people’s cars.

Kathy Joyner has ghost written every weekly mass email. There have been 52 so far, and impressively, she has come up with new ideas every week. Kathy also handled closing out our interrupted Winter 2020 session and helped smooth the launch of our new registration system.

Marina Matthes has worked closely with Kathy in the office, kept our mailing list and database current, and has helped with the day-to-day bookkeeping. Plus, she designed and sewed all of the cute yoga masks.

Joanne Doolittle has written all of our Facebook posts, creatively publishing our schedule, news, interesting articles, and yoga tidbits several times a week. Additionally, she has kept our boutique supplied and is always on the lookout for new, helpful props.

The Health Advantage Yoga Center would not exist at this point without everyone’s work and participation. I am extremely grateful to all who stayed with us though the bumps of this past year. Thank you.

I am beginning to get questions about when we will reopen for in-person classes. Unfortunately, I can’t predict the future any better than I could a year ago. I hope, as our teachers and students become fully vaccinated, that we can reopen in the late spring or early summer.

When I began taking yoga classes in 1989, I was looking for an exercise class which engaged my mind as well as my body. I was a computer programmer, and I needed a way to take my mind off of my program when I left work. At that time, yoga was viewed as being a little odd, possibly cultish, but I thought it was fun, and I always came home feeling good.

I took my first class at The Health Advantage Yoga Center (HAYC) in 1994. Betsey Downing, Ph.D., the founder of HAYC, had begun teaching classes at Brown’s Chapel in Reston several years before. As her classes grew, she moved to our space in what is now half of the Purple Room. By 1994, the studio had grown to two yoga rooms and a meditation room, covering the area from the current Purple Room to half of the Green Room.

My first class at HAYC changed my view of yoga. The previous classes I had taken were mixed-level and not alignment-based, so the classes were either too easy or too challenging, and there were no consistent explanations for positioning various body parts. Often the level of difficulty changed drastically from week to week, and the instructions in one class would completely contradict the instructions of the class the week before.

In my first class with Betsey, she said, “Turn your left foot in to protect your knee.” A simple instruction, but for me, it was a lightbulb moment. There was a reason for each action! As I took more classes at HAYC, I saw that instead of just coming to class and moving, we were being taught. The instruction and poses fit the level of the class, and by the end of each session, I understood more than I had at the beginning.

I continued to take classes at HAYC and after a particularly difficult computer project during which I worked over 96 hours a week for several months, I recognized that though I enjoyed programming, this was not how I wanted to live my life. I switched to another programming job with more manageable hours, started practicing yoga at home, and began to look at other career options. I soon realized that yoga was what I truly enjoyed, so I took the HAYC Teacher Training Program and began teaching at HAYC in 1997.

Over the next few years, classes continued to grow, and Betsey expanded into the Blue Room. In 1999, Betsey moved to Florida. She opened another studio there and continued to run HAYC, coming back for a weekend or week each month to manage the studio and lead the teacher training program. I approached her about buying the studio in the summer of 2000, and we completed the sale in January 2001.

I had no idea what I was getting into, and I was very fortunate that Liz Wright, Betsey’s office manager, stayed on and remains our office manager. I was also fortunate that the teachers stayed, several of whom still teach at HAYC fifteen years later: Kelly Cleveland, Doug Keller, Kelly Kessler, Janet Kim, and Pat Pao. There are also a number of students who started taking classes with Betsey at Brown’s Chapel who continue to take classes with us today.

Our classes continued to grow, and in 2006 we expanded to fill the entire top floor of our building. Since then, we have weathered the recession and changed a Virginia law which would have made yoga teacher trainings too costly to hold.

In the 27 years that I have practiced yoga, the perception of it has changed. When I bought the studio in 2001, the view was starting to shift from offbeat to mainstream: yoga instructors began to appear on segments on TV morning shows and talk shows, and reputable magazines like Time published articles praising the benefits of yoga. Over the next few years, gyms and recreation centers went from holding a yoga class or two a week to scheduling several a day, yoga pants became popular, and stores and websites dedicated to selling yoga clothing emerged. Now there are yoga studios and classes everywhere, and new types of yoga arise as people blend different styles of yoga or add yoga to other exercise forms.

Over the years, I have changed too. Though I am still type A, I am more balanced and less stressed with yoga and meditation as part of my daily routine. Each week I look forward to going to the studio and to my classes. I have been and remain grateful to everyone connected to HAYC: the students, the teachers, and the staff. I have met so many interesting people and watched friendships form and grow. Thank you to everyone for making HAYC what it is today. HAYC has become a true community, and I cannot imagine what my life would have been without you.

When I was in college, courses were divided into three areas of study:

Area 1: Arts and Humanities: Classical Studies, Comparative Literature, Dance, English, Fine Arts, Modern Languages, Music, Philosophy, Religion, Theater and Speech

Area 2: Social Sciences: Anthropology, Economics, Government, History, Psychology, and Sociology

Area 3: Hard Sciences: Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Geology, Mathematics, and Physics

Each student chose a major in one area, but was required to take classes in the two other areas. With my computer science major, I was a solid Area 3 student.

Throughout college, I tutored students in computer science. Some students asked a question or two, and then could complete programs on their own. Other students required a lot of help. After a while, I saw a pattern in those asking for assistance.

In general, the Area 3 students understood basic programming fairly quickly, while many Area 1 students struggled. Instead of thinking in a step-by-step way like a computer, the Area 1 students tended to make huge leaps in logic. Though their thought processes were correct, we would spend hours working through the project sequentially.

When I took a college English class, I saw this difference in thinking from the other side.  After I turned in my first paper, the professor called me in and asked about my intended area of study. When I replied Area 3, he nodded and said I should stay there because I would never make it as an English major. My paper was too direct and lacked all the niceties of decent writing. I took that as a sign I should not take any more English classes and happily stayed in the sciences after that semester.

I did not write much besides technical papers until I bought this yoga studio. The previous studio owner wrote articles as the first page of our quarterly brochure, and I decided to continue her tradition.

It was a painful process, and I am grateful to Liz Wright, our office manager, who patiently explained transitions, linking sentences together, and how to make words and sentences flow. Writing fifty articles over thirteen years forced me to learn what I had not in school.

In yoga classes now I have noticed similar differences in natural skills. I see a wide range of people each week, and there are a variety of body structures and lifestyles, and different levels of strength and flexibility. Additionally, some people naturally bend forward well, while other peoples’ spines naturally move easily into a backbend or twist.

How someone is built can affect the ease with which they do various poses. For example, some of the advanced backbends require you to reach back over your head to hold a foot that you are lifting behind you.

This pose, Natarajasana, though never easy, is usually more accessible to someone who naturally backbends and has long arms and legs. People with other body proportions can do this pose, but it often requires more effort and practice, since people with shorter limbs need to reach back farther and backbend more.

It would be simple to do as I did in college and just avoid areas of difficulty. Since yoga is voluntary, there is no pressure to attempt poses that are challenging; you can just decide that you do not want to do a pose or a category of poses and move on.

However, like my ability to write, areas we avoid can come back to haunt us. For example, in yoga poses, if you consistently do forward bends and avoid all backbends because you cannot do them well, at a minimum you miss stretching the front of your body and strengthening the back of your body which over time can create imbalances.

It can be interesting to look at the reasons why you do not want to do something. Is there a good reason or is it just too challenging? What is the cost of not doing it? Is it worthwhile to make an attempt?

We cannot excel at everything, but that does not mean that we have to limit ourselves. In many cases, we can take small steps, learning as we go. Who knows, we may surprise ourselves with what we can accomplish.

When I was in junior high school, my mother volunteered to be a part of Meridian House’s orientation program for visitors to the United States. The visitors were mid-level government officials from a variety of countries and were here for school or for work. The purpose of the orientation program was to teach them the basics about the U.S., like our denominations of money. At the end of the week, each person or pair would go to an American’s house for dinner. My mother offered to host a few of these dinners.

One of the most memorable visitors was a kale farmer from Kenya. On the way to our house, he asked to see a grocery store. He walked into what by today’s standards was a very small Giant and stopped in his tracks. He had never seen so much food in one place. He was stunned when my mother showed him that we had fresh kale, canned kale, and frozen kale. This was so far beyond anything he had seen or imagined that he kept talking about it during dinner. My younger brother and I could not understand what he thought was so interesting since it was just our normal grocery store.

In May I went to India to visit my college roommate. She and her family have lived in southeast India for the past two years. For six days of the trip, I went by myself on a tour of the Golden Triangle: Delhi, Jaipur and Agra. I had a driver and we met a guide in each city. I had expected that the hours spent driving between cities would be dull, but I had not anticipated Indian traffic. Lanes are no more than suggestions, and any two lane road becomes five lanes: the two shoulders, the two lanes themselves, and the section in the middle of the two lanes. There are motorcycles with one to five riders and small motorized rickshaws called tuk-tuks, both of which zip in and out of traffic, plus cars, buses and trucks. In addition to motor vehicles there are handcarts, bike carts, bullock carts, and people walking on the shoulders and crossing in the middle of the street. Usually standing placidly in the middle of the swirling traffic is a random cow or two. Nobody drives very fast, and there are surprisingly few accidents.

Tuk-tuks

In the five hour trip between Delhi and Jaipur, I watched traffic stream by. After an hour or so, I began to see the logic of how everybody wove in and out. Suddenly, I spotted a camel cart coming down the road towards us. I pointed and said, “That’s a camel.” My driver, Subhash, agreed that yes, that was a camel. I had not expected to see any camels in India, so I pointed again and said, “There is a camel in the road.” Subhash agreed. I said, “We don’t have that,” which Subhash thought was very funny.

An hour or so later, a monkey ran across the road in front of us. I pointed out the monkey because I had not anticipated seeing monkeys on the roads either. Once again, Subhash agreed, and thought it was funny when I said we did not have monkeys on our roads.

Monkeys by the side of the road

Later that evening, while we were returning to Jaipur after a short tour, I spotted white circles about a foot in diameter appearing and disappearing just above the road a little way in front of us. As we drew closer, I saw a reflective bar several feet above us and realized we were approaching an elephant. The white circles were the bottoms of the elephant’s feet and the reflective bar was on the back of the driver’s saddle. I pointed out the elephant to Subhash and explained we did not have elephants on our roads. Subhash commented that our roads must be really boring.

Elephant in the road

I had never thought of our traffic that way, but I had to admit, he was right. A few days later we returned to Delhi from Agra on a new superhighway that was restricted to cars and a few trucks and motorcycles. It was similar to a U.S highway and in comparison to the Indian roads I had seen, it was dull.

I spent most of my time in India in a state of astonishment. Everything was so different than my normal life here. There were bright colors, crowded bazaars, ancient temples, and amazing forts and palaces. Every time I thought I had become acclimated, I would be startled by something new. Every day was a new adventure.

I hope to retain some of the sense of wonder in the world around me that I found on this trip. There is so much around us that is remarkable that we do not notice because we see it everyday. If we look at the world around us with new eyes, there is much to be seen and enjoyed.