How about working out with your pet? The idea may sound like a joke, but for several months it’s been taking shape in the form of “doga”, “dog yoga”,”cat yoga”, and “puppy yoga” classes.
These names essentially describe yoga sessions surrounded by animals, a variation on the discipline that has multiple virtues, and serves a reminder that this ancestral practice is constantly modernising to attract ever more followers – even if that means embracing highly unusual variations.
Yoga with animals
The practice isn’t new, but it’s gradually gaining ground all around the world, and is slowly but surely opening its doors to new kinds of pets.
Whether with a goat, a dog, a cat or a rabbit, yoga can now be practiced with our favorite four-legged companions. It’s a playful and unusual variation, and this physical activity with your pet offers total relaxation, with boosted anti-stress virtues, while improving complicity and trust with your faithful companion.
For sessions with goats, it’s a little different, since the aim is essentially to alleviate stress and anxiety, improve mood, and leave feeling totally at peace.
In short, it’s a combination of yoga and animal-based therapy, without forgetting the beneficial work on breathing, flexibility and tone that comes with practising yoga.
Yoga with beer
Drinking alcohol while exercising might seem like another far-fetched, even dangerous, idea, but it’s becoming increasingly popular around the world – from the United States, where “drunk yoga” was born, to Germany and Denmark, where beer is big.
The idea is to bust out yoga poses and reap multiple benefits for flexibility, muscle strengthening and wellbeing, while drinking a pint of beer or a glass of wine, depending on the session you sign up for.
It’s a type of yoga that allows you to relax and feel more at ease with the movements, but also to share in a social experience combining fun and relaxation.
The idea is to take a sip between each exercise or during a break, and not while you’re actually doing the movements. And there’s one other thing to keep in mind: the idea is to drink a pint of beer or a glass of wine – two at the most – and not to down drinks as quickly as you change poses. It’s all about moderation.
Naked yoga
Naked yoga is a centuries-old practice, although it has been revived and modernised in recent decades, making a fresh comeback under the impetus of a number of influencers.
The concept is as it sounds: do yoga but ditch the clothes. Is it a fad, or even a fantasy? Not according to the discipline’s many followers, who see it as a way of enjoying yoga while reclaiming their bodies – in other words, boosting their self-confidence and esteem.
In fact, this kind of yoga is very popular: the hashtag #nakedyoga already has almost two million views on TikTok, and one of the discipline’s modern-day advocates, Nude Yoga Girl, counts no fewer than 1.4 million followers on Instagram.
On a side note, FMT Lifestyle wanted to illustrate this with an image but thought better of it. Oh well.