So why are we celebrating the Lunar New Year at Karma Yoga? You might notice that our floor is shaped in a yin and yang curvature. With dark emerging from light, and light emerging from dark.
Our practice area is on the light wood, and our community area is on the dark wood. Our practice area is simple, almost monastic. No mirrors or distractions, just you and your mat. Our community area is decorated, playful. Lots of opportunities to learn. Did you know we have a lending library?
Karma Yoga is a place where east meets west, where thousands of years of eastern traditions and spiritual practices meet you in your every day life, here right outside of Washington, D.C. in the form of a yoga studio.
Our particular flavor, or interpretation, comes from my personal effort to integrate my Confucian and Buddhist background and lineage in Chinese medicine with my American and Christian values in a western business and fitness environment. No small project, and no wonder I have many sleepless nights trying to crack the puzzle!
Yoga is a beautiful space where these two worlds meet. Yoga comes from Vedic cultures in the north Indian Himalayan mountain region between the East Asian and Western worlds. There is an incredible overlap and sharing between the yogic frameworks, the Abrahamic frameworks of the western world, the Daoist frameworks of the eastern world, and the indigenous practices of many peoples of the land.
With my obsession about frameworks, you might not be surprised to learn that I have a civil engineering background! And love studying religious history. If you’d like to get nerdy with us, we host Philosophy Nights on Wednesdays at 7:15pm.
Many of the yoga concepts overlap with daoist concepts. For example, the way we work with prana or breath in a vinyasa class, is similar to the way we work with qi or energy in a flowing tai chi class. Both practices work the mind, body and spirit.
You’ll see that our yoga classes are phrigorous, as are our intellectual discussions during Philosophy Nights. Even our restorative classes are rigorously restorative. As in, we truly honor the intention of the class.
In the Confucian and Buddhist styles, we also deeply honor our teachers by giving our teachers trust and autonomy. Rather than force a studio style onto teachers in order to deliver a consistent branded experience, we allow our studio to evolve with each new teacher that we bring on, and each new volunteer who lends a hand. You’ll often see teachers taking classes, as we are constantly learning and growing from each other. One of my favorite things is to arrive at the studio, and see a new plant or contribution from a teacher or a student. To see that this space is being cultivated.
This Saturday marks the beginning of the Lunar New Year, on the second new moon of the year, when the sky is darkest. It is the first moon cycle moving into spring. Many cultures around the equator, which rely on the ebbs and flows of the tide and monsoons, follow a lunar calendar - while northern cultures tend to follow solar calendars, where agriculture and winters are more impacted by the cycle of the sun.
As human beings, we are both lunar and solar, yin and yang, feminine and masculine, so here at Karma Yoga - in addition to the New Year of the sun, we also celebrate the New Year of the moon.
Speaking of yin and yang, did you know that yoga was primarily practiced by men in India as part of monastic or spiritual lineages? And in the western world it was popularly adopted by women as part of fitness-centered community building?
Bringing it back to our Lunar New Year Celebration this Saturday, we will be learning about the origin of the Chinese Zodiac; the story of the great race across the river to pick the twelve animals to represent the passing of time.
This year is marked by the Dragon, who with all their mystical and powerful abilities, finished fifth, because he stopped to help those in need.
Please join us to learn Lunar New Year and Chinese New Year traditions, to learn more about your Zodiac signs, and share in tasty food and fun. Kids and +1s welcome!
Share this post