Me time: Goat Yoga

Have you ever heard of goat yoga? It’s a thing, honest! And not as weird as it sounds – ok actually maybe it is. But it’s great fun and has all sorts of benefits for mental health (and apparently the goats enjoy it too!).

This blog is about life with my mini moo and focuses mainly on parenting including reviews of days out and activities to do with children. But parents also need some ‘me time’ so this is the first in an occasional series of things that you can do as a parent to reconnect with yourself, your partner or friends, and enjoy something for yourself. Given how little time I do have to myself however I can see this being a very occasional series!

So back to the goats… I love animals and animal encounters (the closer the better!) though I really don’t like yoga. But when I saw goat yoga advertised at a local city farm I signed up straight away!

The Goga Yoga Studio runs small classes in London and Norfolk and I took part at Deen City Farm – not realising we would be in the goats’ regular enclosure being watched by some bemused families visiting the farm!

It was a beautiful sunny day, already getting hot even at 9.30am. We took our shoes off and enjoyed the feel of our feet in the long grass as we claimed a yoga mat and petted the goats who seemed more interested in their breakfast than in us. Goats are generally inquisitive and seem to like people  though so they seemed happy enough to have us in their paddock and wandered around as we started the yoga, in a few cases almost looking like they were going to take part! On the whole they stayed to one end of the paddock while we did some very gentle yoga – I was relieved that the fact that I’m hopeless at yoga didn’t seem to matter or even be noticed!

After a few fun poses where we tried to get the goats in the background we did a ‘table’ pose on our hands and knees, and our yoga teacher encouraged the goats to climb up on us. This was completely optional and we were all asked if we wanted to do this part – a resounding yes – and if we had any back problems and so on. Only the smaller goats were allowed to stand on us – though the biggest one did accidentally stand on my hand so I needed an ice pack afterwards and had a small bruise for a few days! It was totally worth it though!

Having a goat stand on you is an unusual feeling, they weren’t actually that heavy but some would stand still and others were more about climbing up and jumping down and back up again! Goats like to climb apparently and they seemed as amused by this as we did!

Goat yoga claims to combine the benefits of animal therapy – which helps reduce stress and improve mental health – with some calming yoga stretches. We had to be careful not to touch our faces before washing hands for hygiene reasons and you have to be aware that the animals can be unpredictable but I felt very confident in our yoga teacher and loved every minute of the experience – which is not something I’ve ever said about yoga before! If you get the chance to do it, either with a fellow mum friend as I did, or even on your own for a bit of head space, I highly recommend it.