Not your everyday yoga
St. John’s yoga teachers are offering themed classes to further engage the community
A nice view of the water, a kitten or a bottle of beer can make anything more inviting — including a yoga class.
Yoga studios in St. John’s have been experimenting with different themed yoga classes to introduce more people to check out he benefits of their activity.
Themed yoga classes have been growing in popularity recently with everything from beer yoga to yoga with goats popping up at various studios in Canada and the United States.
St. John’s yoga instructor Laura-beth Power has taken truly taken the idea to heart.
In addition to studio classes, Power offers regular yoga classes in Bannerman Park and on the dock of the Quidi Vidi Plantation as well as special events during the George Street Festival, and yoga with kittens in Torbay to support the St. John’s SPCA.
“I love when I get to practice outside,” says Power who loves sharing the unique and beautiful places she finds to practice yoga with others, “I really do believe you can practice yoga anywhere.”
“I’ll just find beautiful nooks in our community and teach a pop-up class there,” says Power who believes that taking yoga out of the studio can be a good way to introduce more mindfulness exercises into every day life settings.
Power believes the themed classes are a good way of keeping yoga interesting and accessible to the community.
The yoga with kittens class, in particular, has been a wonderful tool for her to not only raise funds for the SPCA, but also engage people of all ages who do not necessarily have any prior experience with yoga.
“I’ve always wanted to do a class on the Metrobus,” Power admits, “It would be a cool community initiative.”
On Aug. 6, Moksha Yoga St. John’s hosted its second beer yoga event a Quidi Vidi Brewing Company. The studio hosts other themed classes and events such as yoga with music, glow-in-the-dark yoga, yoga in the park and yoga on Signal Hill.
“It gives people a reason to come when they might now have otherwise,” says Nicole Evans of Moksha Yoga St. John’s.
Evans and instructor Brooke Johnson decided to run their first beer yoga class back in June as an event with the Brewnettes, a female beer-drinking group in St. John’s.
At beer yoga, participants get either a half-pint or bottle of beer with the price of admission and the drinking is incorporated into the yoga poses.
The first rendition of the event was so popular that they hope to host a beer yoga class monthly.
“I think it’s a really great way for people to connect and socialize,” says Evans about how beer yoga takes a serious activity and makes it less daunting when asked about benefit of themed yoga classes, “It’s even more fun than it sounds… there was so much good energy and everyone was just laughing and having fun.”