I am fortified, sitting with my back flush to the wall, facing the front doors of Mother Yoga’s Maynard Alley entrance. I’m holding four red-gold slips of spirit money, and a single mandarin orange with a cluster of waxy leaves attached. A masked guide–Daai Tau Fat–directs two pairs of costumed lions through the narrow alcove and into the studio; helping hands move bundles of smoldering incense out of the way. Outside, a thundering drum mirrors the excitement of sweaty yogis jockeying to photograph the dance that’s just begun. Only the dancers’ expert footwork is visible under the fur-lined suiting.
It’s February 17, and I’m in the middle of a shared Lunar New Year celebration with Mother Yoga and the Seattle Kung Fu Club.
I look down at my spirit money and consider each of my grandparents, whose lineages are largely unknowable to me. Still barefoot, I make my way to the fire pit stationed outside. The pavement is damp and chilly. Seattle Kung Fu’s troupe wheels the drum back across the street, and I feel for a break in the air so I can burn these cosmic bank notes.
***
Not long ago, Mother Yoga owner Nancy Nomellini asked our sardine-packed class to consider childlike wildness in the Year of the Fire Horse. I thought about what I was like as a young girl. Spunky. Playful. She, and the freest version of me, reject the notion that self care is optional or frivolous. Self care is, in fact, community care. By holding space for movement practices rooted in tradition, community studios like Mother Yoga and Seattle Kung Fu Club make space for students to connect deeply to themselves by honoring those who have come before us.
Since Mother Yoga’s opening in Fall 2021, Nomellini has called on her neighbors at Seattle Kung Fu Club twice annually to perform the auspicious lion dance. “What I really admire about them and am inspired by is living tradition,” Nomellini said “In yogic terms, parampara: [meaning this unbroken lineage] passed down from guru to disciple….Nothing we do here is a fad. Nothing we do here has not been said and taught by our teachers and our teacher’s teachers.” Although some practices at Mother Yoga reflect changes in the times we live in, “the capital T-truth…always stays the same,” Nomellini said. “Through a living practice, the student experiences it within themselves. ”
If you didn’t know: Yoga is a lot more than mat poses and designer leggings. True yoga is in the way you greet a stranger. It’s in the way you speak to yourself. Yoga wisdom was intentionally passed down because the great teachers knew this: “We’re not free until we’re all free,” As Nomellini puts it: “For the teachings to come alive, you have to live.”
There are an infinite number of ways to live in a human body. Nomellini’s classes point to yoga’s Hindu origins with teachings from texts like the Bhagavad Gita, set to the backdrop of modern music, like Nirvana’s In Bloom, which featured in our class playlist. The spirit money component was a nod to Nancy’s Taiwanese roots: ritual offerings of abundance to provide sustenance for ancestors in their afterlife. This practice reinforces sameness, right down to our physical bodies, needs and desires: “The karma of our people is tied to us; it’s in our DNA,” Nomellini said.
For those grieving thousands of nameless people who have been killed worldwide in recent years, Nomellini believes this act offers space for quiet reverence. “We’ll never chant their names in the streets because they’re too many.”
When I asked what feels most urgent in the new year, Nomellini gave the example of students who continually choose community: “They’re living in a country they don’t even feel welcome in and they’re still coming to yoga,” Nomellini said. “When things are most out of balance, it is imperative to believe, to have hope, to still continue on with practices of peace. It’s not a time to give up….You come from generations of people who did unimaginable things. They dug their heels in.”
***
Across the street at 658 South King, Shifu Robin Leong points out photo memorabilia in the upstairs classrooms of Seattle Kung Fu Club (SKFC). The photos look a lot like they did when the club was established in 1963. This is one of the longest running public kung fu schools in the United States.
SKFC’s red storefront is plastered with old kung fu magazine covers that feature father and son.
Leong’s father is the highly-regarded founder, Grandmaster John S.S. Leong.
Robin Leong credits the club’s ongoing success to continuity; his father John is still teaching at 88 years old, and is informed by a traceable line of acclaimed instructors. He had a vision for combating ignorance with Hung Gar Kung Fu in Seattle. “He came here from China with nothing… back then teaching foreigners was almost taboo,” Robin Leong said. “My father saw it as being able to bring a community together.”
SKFC was among the first to initiate community Lunar New Year festivities in the Chinatown International District. John’s legendary street demonstrations included a risky feat: bending long metal rods with his throat: “It exemplifies the most vulnerable area of your body..you have to build internal chi to offset that.” Of the hundreds of students who began training with him in the 70s and 80s, many still practice there today.
I wonder if the central Truth here is the importance of cultivating opposite energies to maintain balance. Yin-yang symbols feature on a classroom norms poster and among the uniform patches for sale. Both “hard” kung fu and “soft” tai chi are taught at Seattle Kung Fu Club. Energetic sparring, Lion, and Dragon dance practice take place every Friday at 7:30 p.m.
Dancers practice and perform year-round, but Lunar New Year is when they are busiest with community events. Robin Leong recently returned to Seattle after 25 years in Asia, and has been surprised by continued enthusiasm for traditional arts, especially from younger practitioners. “You create a new persona…during a tournament or performance…You know how to turn it on and off,” Robin Leong explained. “You’re not ever starting fights, but if it were to come to you, you’re ready to go.”
No matter your life stage or occupation, he said confidence is a transferable skill. “We’re all performers. Be the best one you can be.”
***
Someone recently told me they were bad at self-care, but the way they said it suggested to me that they were actually pretty good at community care. It reminded me that Abraham Maslow’s infamous Hierarchy of Needs has led us to believe that self-actualization is the pinnacle of being ok. What’s not as commonly known is that Maslow lived on the Siksika (Blackfoot) Reserve for six weeks in the summer of 1938. He witnessed how an Indigenous perspective of human needs places self-actualization in an ecosystem that also encompasses community actualization and cultural perpetuity, thinking seven generations into the future.
Living in a city of settlers, transplants and immigrants, the oddness of his misrepresentation is clear.
Teju Ravilochan, founder of the nonprofit Gather For, wrote a blog post entitled “The Blackfoot Wisdom that Inspired Maslow’s Hierarchy,” in which he interviewed and drew upon the work of Ryan Heavy Head of the Blackfoot Nation.
Perhaps this is why community studios are catalysts for self development: you gain a sense of grounding in a lifelong journey of re-wilding yourself. That which changes within ourselves ends up changing everyone around us.
