Many of you may have heard about things like cat yoga and goat yoga. To clarify I am talking about doing yoga with animals around not the animals themselves doing the yoga. There are places you can go and pay to do yoga with cats, but I have cats and I am often trying to do yoga or stretches around a cat(s). I have stretched my hand out only to have it land on a furry body or I have had my head butted while I was lying in shavasana. Over the 2024 summer I had a friend that kept sending me information on pig yoga, but I never wanted to go because it was outside in the summer and therefore, too hot. But I thought the month of October would be cooler and we could do yoga with goats. So we went.
Now, I figured they would be walking around and maybe getting in the way or nibbling on something, it completely slipped my mind that they might be pooping and urinating on things. I hadn’t thought of that at all. But that is one of the first things the helpers told us when they saw us with our yoga mats. They kindly offered us to use their yoga mats because goats “are barnyard animals and will poop and pee anywhere and even as they walk.”
As a note when one goes to do yoga with animals it is really about the experience of the animals and not so much the yoga. But while I was there I was still trying to do some asana. The helpers walk around and place food on everyone’s mats so that the goats move around and interact with everyone. And there may have been one helper per three people and they were very good at taking care of any goat incident right away. They would sweep up the pellets and get a new mat if needed.
It was an interesting experience. The goats were goats not kids, one was even VERY pregnant.
At the end we were all given the opportunity to pose with a goat. The goat herders actually placed the goat on our backs. For some reason that goat was fine just standing there. The helpers took over 40 pictures and videos. It was kinda funny. Perhaps he was tired because I was the last person he had to stand on.
You may see that one was getting very close to my face . . . .
Do you have any desire to do yoga with goats?
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