2017 Flashback: Yoga With Goats

On September 24, 2017, I joined a Goat Yoga class. Soon after I attended, I wrote an essay about it. It never found its way to publication, so I’m sharing it here with you now.

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I am seated on a gray mat in a small barn, waiting for class to start. The sliding doors at both ends of the building are open, letting in a soft morning breeze laden with the sweet aroma of mown grass and the warm odor of farm animals. The clean cement floor is strewn with hay, and in the center of the room four goats wander among tawny heaps of the delicious stuff, grabbing mouthfuls. One of the goats, a black and white baby Pygmy named Minnie Pearl, gives a small bleat. Two of the larger goats – Lola, a caramel-and-white French Alpine and a black-and-white named Bucket, whose pedigree I didn’t catch – make eye contact with each other, lunge and tap their little horns, then go back to eating. Daisy, the brown Fainting Goat, drifts carefully past a line of wooden beams.

There are twenty-five of us wedged in here — mostly women, several children, and a couple of men — so closely that later, when the yoga instructor tells us to spread our arms, we will have to adjust our positions to avoid hitting the person next to us.

 But we won’t mind. Our patience seems to have expanded in proportion to our delight at being here, to be finally, really doing yoga with goats.

I’d gotten up early and driven two hours to come here, to Franny’s, a working hemp fiber farm, eco-camp, and event location just north of Asheville, North Carolina. Franny partners with a neighboring farmer and a couple of yoga instructors to produce monthly “Yoga With Goats” classes that regularly sell out.

I’d arrived just as the last of the morning mist was clearing and followed signage into a wide empty field. Shorn grass crunched under my tires as I made a half-turn and backed up onto a slight incline. Within minutes several more cars joined me in the makeshift parking lot.

We offered greetings to each other and chatted as we walked up the lane to the barn, water bottles in hand and yoga mats under our arms.

“First time?” one woman asked, and I nodded.

“You, too?”

“Yes!” she said and then added as if responding to a question I hadn’t asked, “I mean, who wouldn’t want to do yoga with goats?”

I smiled. “I know, right?”

Just as we neared the barn, a pickup truck pulled up behind us. It was as if a limo full of celebrities had just arrived, as we called out to one another, “The goats are here! The goats are here!”

When I’d told friends about my upcoming adventure, many of the responses — What? Why? You’re kidding! and That’s an actual thing? — came with raised eyebrows.

 I offered a tepid, “I just love goats,” as an explanation, but it was so much more than that. For a while, videos of baby goats in flowered pajamas seemed to dominate social media, my daughter and I trading them almost daily. The goats scampered and twirled and bounced as if they were on springs. They skittered from side to side and kicked up their little feet. I watched over and over again, my heart leaping with them.

Children understand delight for its own sake. I used to understand that. But in these fraught times of divide and rancor, of daily tragedies unfolding on our screens in real time, my joy had been weighed down by feelings of helplessness and defeat.

 Those videos stirred up in me a longing for some childlike fun, some holy silliness. Never mind the studies that show spending time with animals can lower blood pressure and heart rate and can increase our sense of well-being.

The honest truth was, I just wanted to play with some goats. When I learned there was a nearby goat yoga class, I signed up weeks in advance.

Now, goats and humans settle in as the instructor invites us to become still and quiet. Just then a woman appears, holding a gray baby potbelly pig. “This is Ghost,” she says. “He’ll be joining you today.” She places him on the floor and he darts off, his tiny cloven feet clicking across the cement to a far corner where he sniffs the bare toes of a delighted participant.

Drawing our attention back, the instructor leads us in bringing our hands up in folded reverence and calls us to set our intention for today’s practice. “Just let go of any worries and enjoy the time.”

Then we say with her, “I choose joy,” and something about speaking those words out loud reminds me that it is always my option to do just that, with or without goats as backup. In this moment, a frivolous experiment, a silly notion takes on the powerful possibility of needed readjustment on a deeper level.

We don’t begin with the traditional voiced “Om.” Instead, our instructor asks us to join her in that other universal song, “Baa…” which I endeavor, but utterly fail, to do with a straight face.

Cruising around the barn is a staff person scattering handfuls of popcorn puffs to lure goats away from the piles of hay and out among us, so that when I reach one hand up in Triangle Pose, my other hand reaches down to caress Lola’s silken fur as she brushes past. And so it goes, all of us in motion as we slide our bodies from pose to pose while the goats glide along grazing. They seem to love Warrior Two in particular, traipsing through the long tunnel we form as we line up with our straddled legs.

At last we move to lie on our backs in Shavasana pose. Ordinarily I would sink into this moment, eyes closed, tuning out ambient noise and relaxing my mind, but today I keep my eyes open in case a goat passes by — or over — me, and instead of tuning out, I tune in. To the rustle of small hooves in the hay, to their happy munching, to Ghost’s soft grunting from the other side of the barn, and to the shared breath of twenty-five people who inhale bliss and exhale delight.

Returning to a seated position, we end as we began, with a deep breath and a grinning “Baa…” Our applause says it all — Yoga With Goats is where it’s at. After I roll up my mat, I retrieve my cell phone to take some photos.

I leave Franny’s and drive back into my grownup life with all its demands, and back into the world with all its brokenness. In spite of this, I smile all the way home, noticing green trees and blue skies and wide golden fields, noticing the shimmer of sunlight on the distant hills.

Inside my heart a small door has opened and a child peeks out. I hold out my hand to her. “Welcome back,” I say.