Looking for a way to unwind from a stressful week? Have you considered implementing friendly farm animals into that plan? At No Regrets Flower Farm & Animal Sanctuary, you can expect relaxing yoga sessions accompanied by a herd of goats.
Lainey Morse — the owner of No Regrets and founder of Original Goat Yoga and Goat Happy Hour — describes Goat Yoga as being all about “disconnecting from day to day stress, illness or depression and focusing on happy vibes!”
At No Regrets, a session of goat yoga will last 30 minutes before transitioning into Goat Happy Hour. Despite the name, the happy hour does not include drinks. This time is for people to tour the farm, take pictures with the goats, ask questions and connect with nature.
When taking an Original Goat Yoga class, yoga experience is not required. In fact, in these classes, yoga is entirely optional.
“Before every class I always say, ‘You can sit on your mat and just snuggle a goat the whole time, we do not judge you. Or you can do yoga.’ So it’s very optional,” Morse says.
On top of being cute to look at, the goats offer a wide range of personalities themselves.
“Each of our goats has their own personality. We have Annie who is our logo, and she is the only goat who has been born at this farm,” Morse says. “She was tiny and white when she was born… (and) she’s kind of like my boss. She might have been tiny when she was born but she just grew wide and not tall. She’s a short little wide girl.”
Morse started sharing her goats with the world in 2015 after getting “really sick.”
“I had my very first two goats, and I would go out into the barn every day and lay down on the barn floor and the goats would just lay down next to me and nuzzle me. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I never knew that goats were like this!’” Morse says. “So I started inviting other people over who were having a hard time and everybody looked happy, so we started calling it Goat Happy Hour.”
Along with Goat Happy Hour, at this time Morse also hosted Kids With Kids — a children’s birthday party service featuring baby goats. At one of these parties, a yoga instructor asked Morse about hosting a yoga class in the goats’ field.
“I was like, ‘Yeah, but the goats are gonna be all over the people.’ And she was like, ‘Awesome!’ So we just booked a time to do promos and started marketing it, and it just absolutely blew up,” Morse says. “So it was kind of an accident, but it was also meant to be.”
According to Morse, just one night after the event was posted to Ffacebook over 400 people were interested in attending.
“It was really like being on a roller coaster going 100 miles per hour. You can’t get off but you don’t want to either,” Morse says.
Since she started the trend in 2016, goat yoga as a concept really took off. With classes offered worldwide as of today, it seems Morse’s idea resonated with more people than she initially thought.
“It was a very easily copied idea. We started in August of 2016 and by October there were already copycats all over the place,” Morse says. “Because there's a lot of people in the world we can make happy, I’m OKokay with it.”
CLASSES ARE OFFERED AT NO REGRETS WEDNESDAY, FRIDAY, SATURDAY AND SUNDAY AT VARYING TIMES. MORE INFORMATION CAN BE FOUND AT https://headquarters.goatyoga.net/