THE AGRIBITION EXPERIENCE
Goat yoga can be on the aromatic side
Yoga classes don’t usually have an audience. Granted, they don’t usually have goats either.
For a new feature at the 47th annual Canadian Western Agribition, Lou-Ellen Murray and Ceara Caton travelled from Maple Creek to Regina with six four-legged friends in tow.
“I think that it is like an entrylevel drug for yoga,” said Murray, a certified yoga teacher.
Unlike the usual yoga class, where attendance “might depend on how you felt about your Lululemons, and maybe what studio we went to,” goat yoga is “an amazing opportunity to show people that yoga is for everybody.”
Murray and business partner Caton began offering goat yoga classes at Maple Creek’s Grotto Gardens in May. (They also offer regular yoga classes at Sun Dog Yoga.)
Their Agribition appearance on Monday and Tuesday was a little different from their usual goat yoga classes.
“We usually do this in a pastoral setting that’s very, very quiet, and for us yoga is very much about the mind, the breath and the body,” said Murray.
The din of hundreds of visitors passing by to marvel at and take photos of the goats was a bit distracting, which is why Caton lured the goats with treats to interact with the participants.
Aside from a couple of adults (myself included), the 18-person yoga class was made up of children — most from a Neudorf Grade 6 class in red North Valley School shirts.
Starting off, two of the “goat facilitators” were cozied up on Murray’s yoga mat.
Catering to her audience, Murray led an introductory children’s yoga class, with fun moves like “ballerina” and “rock star.”
At the end of it all, everyone got a palm full of feed pellets, which the goats eagerly snatched from outstretched hands.
It was at that point that the goats started letting their bowels go. Between each class, the instructors took a broom to the faux grass and some of the pink, blue and grey yoga mats.
“He almost pooped on me!” a boy exclaimed.
That’s the danger — but also the point — of doing yoga with goats.
“It happens. It’s just nature,” said Murray. “And we’ve lost our agricultural roots so let’s get back to that.”
The six goats in class — Yoda, Yogi, Lucky, Donkey, Brownie and Winchester — are not the only goats that live at Grotto Gardens.
Murray “auditioned” them in the spring, going “from goat pen to goat pen, practising yoga to see what the reaction would be.”
“Goats like Winchester might be a little large ordinarily,” she added.
“He auditioned himself. You can see how gentle he is and how much he just absolutely loves everyone,” she continued.
Murray and Caton designed their class to be friendly to the animals and the participants.
“You research on YouTube and it’s sometimes scary — there’s goats in pyjamas, there’s goats leaping from back to back … (We wanted) to be respectful of the animal. That’s why you don’t see diapers,” said Murray.
“We approach it from an (animal) therapy (point of view),” added Murray. “We’ve found that people get so much joy from the goat choosing to come to see you and sometimes they’re like cats, they’ll come and curl up on a place that you have an ache or a pain.”
Classes begin anew at Grotto Gardens in Maple Creek in May. It’s $20 to attend. Register at grottogardens.ca.