John began his yoga practice in 1970.
He was 25 years old, trying to sort out what was important and what wasn’t, and had an epiphany: Whatever else you set your sails for, without health, your journey will be a difficult one. He decided to take care of his health by eating better and exercising one hour a day.
John lived in a group house, and one day one of the other occupants noticed him practicing calisthenics (the only thing he knew about exercising). They suggested that he might find yoga more interesting and gave him a copy of The Complete Illustrated Book of Yoga by Swami Vishnudevananda. He did find it more interesting, and as there were very few teachers in those days, he practiced from the book for an hour a day, every day.
Three years into his practice, a friend came to John and told him they knew a guy, Joe Brennan, who was looking for teachers to teach yoga classes for the Yoga Institute of Washington. YIW did not have a physical facility but had contracts with Montgomery and Prince George’s Counties to provide yoga teachers for their recreation department yoga classes. John was hesitant since he had never had a class himself, but Joe, the head of YIW, told John that he would visit to check out his yoga. If he approved, he would show him how to teach the YIW program. After observing John’s practice, Joe invited him to teach for YIW. John taught his first class to 34 people at Riverdale Town Hall that September 1973.
Once he began teaching, John realized how little he knew and began to take occasional classes with local teachers and read further. A group of teachers began to gather periodically to share their studies and experiences. Eventually they established a formal organization, the Mid-Atlantic Yoga Association (MAYA), to promote yoga in the Washington Metropolitan Area (DMV). John was active in MAYA, serving as Workshop Coordinator, Treasurer, and President.
At a MAYA meeting, one of the teachers mentioned the book Light On Yoga by B.K.S. Iyengar. John hadn’t heard of it, and when they showed it to him, he was struck by the pictures of Iyengar doing the postures. He started practicing the sequences in the back of the book.
LOY guided his practice for the next five years, at which point he had the opportunity to attend a two-week intensive conducted by then Senior Iyengar Yoga Teacher Victor van Kooten. That experience affected him so deeply that he decided to travel to India to study directly with Mr. Iyengar.
In January 1981, John flew to Bombay, India, then took a train, the Deccan Queen, to Pune, home of the Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute (RIMYI). For three weeks he took class with B.K.S. Iyengar, two to four hours of asana six mornings a week and an hour and a half of pranayama each afternoon. By the end of the intensive, John was physically and emotionally drained. He canceled the week of vacation he had planned and flew home.
John had not intended to go back to India, but found his practice so transformed by what he had learned that he knew he needed to return. He returned in August of 1982. During that intensive, he realized that he had found his Yogic path, and for the next thirty years he traveled to study with Mr. Iyengar, whom he came affectionately to call Guruji, and with Mr. Iyengar’s daughter, Geeta, an amazing teacher in her own right.
In the early ‘80’s, Patricia Walden, with whom John had become close friends, introduced him to Dona Holleman, one of the most accomplished and well-known Iyengar Yoga teachers in the world. For many years, John practiced with, studied with, and assisted Dona. She was an intense practitioner, and her approach had a profound influence on John’s practice
As John’s practice evolved, so did his teaching, which had always derived from his practice. When he changed his teaching style after his first trip to India, the change was so radical that half his students left. But others liked the more rigorous approach, spread the word, and the classes grew. John began searching for a location to focus his teaching. After several false starts, in 1985 he found a space at the Triangle Towers apartment building in Bethesda and opened what was the first fulltime yoga studio in the DMV. Because John directed the most prominent yoga studio in the DMV, local outlets such as The Washington Post, the Washington Times, Washingtonian magazine, and the Almanac and the Gazette papers, ran stories about John and Unity Woods.
When entertainment and sports celebrities began touting the benefits of yoga, mainstream culture and media began to take notice. National magazines, including US News and World Report, Time, and W Magazine wrote yoga articles including John and Unity Woods. Yoga Journal, created by a group of Iyengar teachers in San Francisco in 1975, published an annual Yoga Journal Calendar and invited John to appear. They later described John as one of “25 American originals who are shaping yoga today.” He became a contributing editor and wrote numerous articles for YJ and other publications.
As his reputation grew, first in the US and then around the world, yoga centers and conferences began to invite John to teach and speak. In his nearly 50 years of teaching yoga, John has conducted classes and workshops in North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. In 2015, Yoga Journal awarded John its prestigious Good Karma Award for spending “40-plus years sharing [his] practice to help authenticate yoga in America today”.
The Covid pandemic put an end to not only Unity Woods’ physical facilities but to John’s traveling to teach as well. Now he is happy and fortunate to continue to share his love of yoga online.
John is grateful for all the support of students, staff, and his wife of 26 years, Suzie, and continues to be guided by the love, wisdom, and guidance he received from his teacher, B.K.S. Iyengar.
See more about John at Schumacheryoga.com