I choose to end this week on a very, very lighthearted note. Last week I took a goat yoga class for the first time. Honestly, I believe it was the first yoga class I have ever taken although since I know about the care and feeding of goats I also know that it requires some strange poses at times.
And not from just the goats.
I Went to Goat Yoga
Let me start by noting that I had been reading about goat yoga classes for years and years and years and really wanted to go to one because I missed my goats and well, baby goats are just the cutest little things EVER.
If you have never been around baby goats I suggest you fix that and fast. They are the cure for all that ails you. Also, they will poop on you.
But you will laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh. Even while being pooped upon. Because they are basically Tigger. But tinier.
And they are goats.
Are You There for Yoga or Goats?
But back to goat yoga. I hied myself off – OK, the husband hied me there as I cannot drive. I entered the cage, erm classroom with the other attendees and we awaited the instructor and the goats. OK, mostly the goats.
The yoga was well taught – at least as far as I could tell. It’s not like I know much about yoga classes but I was exceptionally sore the next day so I know that I moved parts of my body that hadn’t moved and/or stretched in a while.
The goats though, were not acclimated to people and this was very, very sad for a bunch of women and a few men who came to goat yoga more for the goats than the yoga. And trust me – that was most of us.
How Do I Know from Goat Kids?
The goats present were older, not kids. They weren’t all adult goats – there were some that were what I would call teenagers; still nursing but out of that bouncy stage. It’s probably only because I raised goats that I can note the difference I suppose but I could not have been the only one there that wanted bouncy kids.
The ones in attendance were more interested in eating grass than interacting with exercisers. No one was pooped on so I suppose that was an upside. And as you can see in the photos they all clustered together. I suspect that the people here did very, very little to get their goats uses to people prior to these classes.
I personally would volunteer to help people friendly up the baby goats for future classes. Seriously. How much fun would that be? Not to mention therapeutic.
Good Experience or Goat Experience?
But goat yoga is experiential exercise. It is supposed to be something you remember from a vacation or as a special occasion event. One certainly – at least as not as far as I am aware – does goat yoga on the regular. Therefore I would think that you would want to make it a memorable experience so that people would be all happy talky and thereby send their friends, etc., etc.
I would go back for more goat yoga fun in a heartbeat had there been actual goat interaction. Or goat kids. But while I had fun with the people around me, that was therefore a yoga class, not a goat yoga class.
I wanted to be pounced upon by a baby goat and I was not.
Perception is everything with marketing and yoga class while adult goats much grass around you is not, in my humble opinion, goat yoga.
Perhaps I am wrong, but it is not what I wanted in goat yoga and not what I have seen from other classes that friends have attended. So I leave you with my whine for the weekend. Goats are still cute no matter their size – like my Pricilla.
But I was not pounced upon by a baby goat.
Would I do a goat yoga class again? Yes, but I would investigate a little further before I signed up and paid for it. I would want to know exactly what kind of caprine interaction would be occurring. Know what you are goating people.
Know what you are goating.
