History of Unity Woods

John Schumacher founded Unity Woods Yoga Center in 1979. He had been practicing yoga for nine years and teaching for six when he realized that he wanted yoga to be his life’s work. At that time, he knew no one outside of an ashram that sustained themselves teaching yoga and understood that to have a chance to bring his intention to life, he would have to commit himself fulltime to the practice, the study, the teaching, and the business of yoga.  

Having made the commitment, he decided that he needed to have a name for his yoga business. Yoga means to yoke or unite; John lived in the woods; hence Unity Woods Yoga Center.  Unity Woods, which at that time consisted of John’s teaching for county rec departments; in private homes, dance studios, and health centers; and at spaces he rented in church basements and abandoned offices, grew, until in 1985, John was able to move into a permanent physical home at Triangle Towers in Bethesda, Maryland. Unity Woods thus became the Washington area’s first full-time yoga studio.

As his students deepened their practice and understanding of yoga, some became interested in teaching. John began an apprentice program that exists to this day, mentoring his apprentices and helping them to develop their skills. Most went on to become Certified Iyengar Yoga Teachers (CIYT) and teach at Unity Woods.  

In 1991, Iyengar Yoga came to the District of Columbia when Unity Woods opened its Woodley Park studio, directly across the street from the Woodley Park metro station. Five years later, we opened the Ballston, Virginia studio in Arlington, giving Unity Woods a presence in each of the three jurisdictions in the Washington metropolitan area (DMV). 

By 2002, Unity Woods was the largest studio in the metro area, and with over 2700 students weekly, one of the largest yoga centers in the country. As interest in yoga exploded and more and more people saw that yoga could be a viable profession, the number of studios in the DMV grew exponentially. Having three studios within a three block area of our Woodley Park center, in 2015, we decided to consolidate and closed the DC studio.

We continued to operate the Arlington and Bethesda studios on a fulltime basis and rented space in the District a couple of days a week to provide Iyengar Yoga classes for our longtime DC students until 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic hit.

Iyengar Yoga teaches us that when something in our practice isn’t working, we need to adjust. Realizing that it was not financially viable to operate brick-and-mortar studios for an undetermined future when no one could come, in March of 2020, we transitioned to online classes. In one month, we changed the entire 40-year-old Unity Woods business model. We reduced the schedule, altered the session-based format, learned to use Zoom, and installed a more efficient and user-friendly registration system. And here we are.

Some things have not changed, though. Unity Woods continues our commitment to excellence in teaching and to sharing our love of yoga as the means to fulfilling our mission: To offer uncompromising, quality yoga to as extensive an audience as possible. That is still the reason we exist and is why we continue to do our utmost to serve you, our friends and students, and our community.