Yoga in Lake Eola Park
celebrates its five-year anniversary.
Paul Lindeman feels refreshed and ready for the week after his weekly yoga session overlooking Lake Eola.
Most Sundays, the Kissimmee resident wakes up and drives about a half hour north to Orlando for a mile run before he joins about 100 other yogis at 11 a.m. for an hourlong class of stretching, posing and meditation.
“Physically at my age, it helps keep me limber, which is really important,” said Lindeman, 61. “As I get older, I find I stiffen up more.”
Amanda Reh, 38, said her weekly Yoga in Lake Eola course is catered to her wideranging customers, from children to Baby Boomers and of varying skill levels.
Sunday the lawn at Lake Eola Park at Eola Drive and Robinson Street had about 100 participants — which is about average, she said.
Yoga in Lake Eola Park celebrated its 5-year anniversary Sunday.
“I never envisioned it to be this big,” said Reh, who also teaches in spaces in Maitland, Langford Park and the City Arts Factory.
She started the group after a smaller one she previously attended in the park shut down several years back. In her first Yoga in Lake Eola Park course, she drew about 20 participants. But as word spread, crowds ballooned to its present size.
Now as dog walkers and others pass through the park, some can’t help but watch with curiosity the synchronized movement of her class as they transition from pose to pose.
Lindeman, who works at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, said he enjoys the camaraderie the group has brought into his life.
“We’re all a community,” he said. “I don’t feel as if I’m in this group over here, or that group over there, we’re all just one [group].”
Over the years he’s developed a bond with Jennifer Tran-Frias, a hairdresser from Clermont, and the two sometimes run to-
gether before yoga.
Before class began, TranFrias, 34, plopped her yoga mat down in her usual spot in the front row next to Lindeman.
As the class has grown over time, Tran-Frias said she’s grown to enjoy the energy she feels in the air as she and her classmates work through the exercises.
“It’s pretty neat to sometimes take a pause and look around you and there are so many people who are all doing the same movement and everybody is here together,” she said. “It’s incredible.” Throughout the hour of exercise, the class works up a sweat beneath the oak canopy along Eola Drive. Up front and using a megaphone, Reh instructs the class to shift from various traditional poses such as downward dog or child’s pose as eight moreexperienced yogis demonstrate the transition up front.
Reh said she knows it works because she does it, too.
“It makes it easier to go through the day,” she said. “Sometimes things can be more of a challenge without it. I do find that when I’m not practicing, everything becomes stagnant.”