Goat Yoga

Lori Sweeney

“You want me to do what?!”

This is a familiar refrain for my husband. I admit I continually try to coax him out of his self-imposed ordinary-ness. Winter zip-lining in 7-degree weather. Couples yoga. Getting lucky at Lucky Lake.

But he was not budging on this one. He barely acquiesced to couples’ yoga when I called it “stretching class,” and he was not about to add goats to the formula. So I got my best woo-woo girlfriend and drove to Monmouth for one of the most unique experiences on my list yet: goat yoga.

Turns out goat yoga is pivotal for a lot of folks, including the phenomenon’s founder, Lainey Morse. She was deep in the double D’s—depression and divorce—when her yoga instructor suggested she combine her beloved goats with the refreshment of yoga. Outside. Exercise. Communing with animals. If it works with horses and dogs, why not goats? 

Despite predictions that goat yoga would go the way of pet rocks, or better yet, beer yoga and naked yoga (!), it keeps trending up. While Morse laments the fad factor, she touts that a “variety of folks are finding out just how special these animals are.” From experienced yogis to the sick and downtrodden, exercising with goats turns out to be a calming experience, not a circus act.

I myself was slightly amused the entire time. From the plain explanation of what to do if the goat pooped on your mat to maneuvering around a goat in downward dog to the sheer absurdity of the concept, I couldn’t help cracking a smile—until one of them stepped on my foot with those blasted unyielding hooves. Shrieking out didn’t seem appropriate, so I sucked it up for the sake of my fellow yogis, the crisp autumn air and, well, the goats. I didn’t want to put them off and end up with no goat on my mat.

The naysayers about goat yoga, after all, are the ones who don’t do it. I enjoyed sweetly communing with the critters, calling them by name over a glass of wine afterward. It made me happy. In these stressful times, that’s something.

For Morse, it really was something. She quickly was all in. That meant buying a van emblazoned with the Goat Yoga emblem, filling it daily with 8 goats and hay (no seats needed) and delivering them to local partners all along the Willamette Valley. She figured she’d “go big or go home.” She got a vendor to make goat yoga pants. She recruited vet students from OSU to corral the goats. It became a full-time gig. Her cherished daily meditations with the goats, which she had termed “goat happy hour,” became a vocation, a path to a new life, a book, even a reality show (gulp, or should I say bleat?).

Makes you think differently about that ordinary daily walk with your dog doesn’t it? 

Editor’s Note: Lori Sweeney lives part-time in South High Prairie and really does do yoga regularly, but not with goats (or any other animal for that matter!). To do some goat yoga, check out https://goatyoga.net/.

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