Hello sol community
The Great Sol Re-Org is underway!
And these are the Sol Chronicles
I’ll be coming to you weekly for the next 10 weeks for an episode from the past, present and future of Sol. It may seem disjointed or scattered, indirect and circuitous, but you can trust it will all connect perfectly. Stay turned and keep coming back.
Chapter 1
Sol is so much more than yoga! It always has been and we continue to ooze off the mat and into daily life.
It’s Dorcas here. Founder of Sol. In the spirit of connecting, the way one might after a long hiatus, I’d like to tell you a story and share some news with you. Its about you and me and WE and what’s been going on at Sol - dreams coming true, triumph of good over evil and love and tragedy. It’s almost as good as a Marvel movie. Well, maybe not, but defiantly as long… get your popcorn or a cup of coffee and settle in for a while…
Next year will be 20 years since Sol Yoga offered its first class on the top floor at 256 west Patrick street. Opening week included people like Jan Faulkner on the schedule, Kristina Molinari and Kristen Townsend as ‘volunteers’ and people like Richard Mutaugh, Claire Winik, Robert Strasser, Ann Truelove, Linda Pruce, Melissa Yost, Miyako and Ally Elspas in the classes. Since then we’ve been serving lots and lots of yoga with a side of community to Frederick folks and beyond.
Lots has transpired in 20 years for all of us and the whole wide world. Change is the only thing certain. As such, every couple of years we usher in a new chapter of the history of our Sol Community. In the 2023-25 chapter we are expanding our operations to include all aspects of life and we’ll be helping a lot more people in need. Our yoga studio offering a side of community is REORIENTING to be a a vibrant community first, offering many sides, including the same award winning amazing yoga we’ve always offered.
A little historical review for you newbies…
In 2005, I was a 27 year old baby - full of enthusiasm, late night energy and naivety. Sol yoga was born as an enterprise of passion, not a well thought out business plan or some long envisioned dream. It was a grass roots, hands and feet on the mat kind of endeavor. My first teacher, Katherine Lollar was closing ‘Inchworm Yoga.’ Sol Yoga was just a continuation of what she started and a solution to my fear that I wouldn’t have a place to keep doing what I loved (yoga) with the people I had come to love. But, it was always a WE kinda thing. Because who wants to do yoga alone, really? Maybe in silence, side by side, but at least side by side. There was peace in that connection; ease in my body, mind and sol that came from gathering to do this thing we called yoga. I didn’t articulate till some years later that we were all doing the yoga as much for the physical practice as for the human connections that were forged. So many of them still as strong now as they were in 2005. I have so many best friends and sol brothers and sisters through yoga.
The top floor of 256 West Patrick street was miraculously ours for $250/month thanks to the generosity of landlord and local real estate mougal Andy Mackintosh. He even completely renovated it and tore down walls for us. I took a leap of faith and we opened on January 12,2005 to a class with 12 people!
We didn’t open the studio for money. At the time in 2005, my boyfriend (Adam) and I were DINK’s (dual income no kids). I had a pretty successful career in real estate sales and development and he traveled the world fixing computer networks in foreign countries. The yoga was about refuge, recovery, serenity and peace, for all of us. I wanted the studio to pay for itself but I didn’t have aspirations to ‘sell’ yoga or make any money at it. Just enough to cover the $250 rent, electric bill and pay teachers. We didn’t even have internet then.
We grew organically based on the need. And, In 2006 we started Good Cause Yoga as a donation based division of Sol Yoga so we could also offer yoga free of charge while simultaneouldy raising money for good causes. It was an inspired idea shared with many in the yoga community including Beccah Bartlett and Geni Donnelley who spun off and built a yoga inspired non profit that does tremendous work in our community as well. Since 2006, we have offered 18 years of free yoga all over Frederick and Washington Counties. Donations were funneled to a range of charities - Over $75,000 worth! We have always operated the Good Cause division like a non profit. Eventually, we applied for an official EIN number during all those down days of the pandemic and became a 501c3 a few years ago.
We have frequently fantasized about going non profit all the way and becoming a completly donation based studio (like ‘Yoga to the People’), but we have opted for a hybrid model - money is a medium for really good things and it’s it’s about distributing resources and goodwill. So we have kept both, the profit and non profit model. As the story develops, you’ll see why this is important.
But before I get back to the story, I shall pause here for a moment and discuss this use of ‘I’ versus ‘we’ that I keep using interchangeably. People have always come up to me to ask if I ‘own’ or started Sol. The exchange always makes me very uncomfortable. Because no one person ever really does anything, but certainly not this studio/community. I may be the one that said yes, I’ll take final responsibility, but not one part of this has been done alone. I also have this belief that ‘people support what they help to create.’ That the more we collaborate, the stronger we are. So it always feels disengenuous to accept the praise for something that is not mine alone. We built this. It’s about all of you and even more, the dedication to and passion for yoga.
This was beautifully demonstrated by the fact that seven years of that 20 year tenure of ours, I lived 8,000 miles away in a far flung country called New Caledonia. The studio flourished in this chapter under the exquisite care of people like Erin Sprague, Jaime Russell, Shelley Pentony, Wendy Phillips, Shanna Gallegos and so many more. My presence was not required.
Back to 2006, another pivotal launch for the Sol Community was our first yoga teacher training. With some naive over-confidence, but support from exquisite seasoned teachers like Carla McAdams from Mountain Spirit Yoga, and international wonders like Dr. Rosy Mann from Kripalu Institute, we started this little program that turns out, absolutely changes lives. Since 2006 we have trained over 250 teachers and inspired so many people to discover themselves in a profoundly deep way. From age 17-70’s, this program invites deep inquiry and intimate connections internally and externally. It’s so much more than yoga postures and over 1/2 of people that take ‘teacher training’ do it for the personal growth.
This September, we’ll run our signature yearly program and luckily, there is still time to register. The facilitation changes from year to year as we have so many transformational leaders. The lead this year will be longtime Sol Community member Christine Dimonte. Yoga saved her life. You’ve got to hear her story…. Come meet Christine on Tuesday evenings at 530pm yoga.
As part of our Great Sol Re-org that is underway, Christine Dimonte has also been appointed our interim Education Division Lead. Myself, Shelley Pentony and other advisors are supporting her in upleveling our care of teachers, programming and communication.
We have invited Christine to support this phase of our development as she is also a professional educator with a masters in education and a longtime teacher and administrator in the Montgomery county public school system AND she has an extensive resume as a yoga teacher and teacher trainer PLUS over 15 years of devotion to the sol community. She is an excellent facilitator of connection and community building. We are thrilled to have her onboard in this capacity to help us develop our education division.
One of the first things the education division will do, on June 18th is host a teacher audition and onboarding for any new teachers to sol! Calling all teachers! Register for this for free by signing up for the event on our class schedule.
Zooming out again, the Education Division is just one of six divisions that you’ll learn about in these Sol Chronicles…
So stay tuned… for next weeks edition of the Sol Chronicles about the Great Re-Org.
And as a preview, you should know, that it’s all good healthy evolution we are doing. Our community, as a whole is a macrocosm for the microcosm of the natural process of personal growth that comes from practicing yoga. We stay supple so we can expand and contract and make new shapes with grace.
In next edition, we look back at our first expansion into studio Earth in 2008. We had some notable natural births and tragic deaths in that year. I’ll also share with you our new mission statement and the heart of this operation which is twofold, practice and service.
In the meantime, Shelley, myself and Annabelle are your points of contact for all your needs.