Silent Disco Yoga at a Winery

Before you roll your eyes at the title of this post and exclaim something about how this is the most millennial thing ever, I agree with you. It's very yuppie and it really misses what yoga is about. That being said, it was a great experience.

Yesterday, a friend and I went from work to Bluxome Winery, where Julie, from Outdoor Yoga SF (link here) was holding a silent disco yoga class. I had never been do a silent disco anything - all I knew about this was that there were headphones involved - so I didn't really know what to expect. Turns out, it's exactly what you would expect. You were given a pair of headphones as you walked in, and then you were free to put your yoga mat wherever there was room. I think there were probably around 40 people there, although I was at the front of the room (not by choice, I was late, and that was the only place in the room for two people), but the room wasn't crowded. I say room, but it was a very large open space, probably where there are normally tables and people drinking wine, exclaiming about the finish of a certain pinot noir.

The yoga itself was alright - it was a Vinyasa-style yoga, but I didn't quite enjoy it as much as I do other types of Vinyasa yoga (it focused a little too much on sun salutations, and not enough on other poses). That being said, I did enjoy having headphones. Having Biebs play at the end was kind of weird, but most of the time, we were listening to calm piano music. It also, weirdly enough, gave me a chance to really focus on myself, since the headphones also seemed to be noise-cancelling. Suddenly, I was no longer worrying about whether I was breathing too loudly. Instead, I was actually focusing on the poses, and seeing if I really could push myself deeper into a move. This, however, might also have to do with the fact that at work, I listen to music while trying to concentrate, so my brain thought that music time = concentrate on whatever you were doing time.

At the end of the 1 hr class, we did get one glass of wine each. I picked the Sauvignon Blanc, and it was actually really good. They were also giving out protein bars, so we grabbed those as well.  My friend and I ended up chatting on our mats, well after the lesson had ended, and so it was a nice end to the yoga class - most times, you're rushing out of the studio because there's another class coming in.

Overall, I enjoyed this experience. Would I do it again? Maybe. It was a little pricey, but for a yoga class and a glass of wine, it might be worth doing once in a while. 

[Interesting Idea] Plant trees to offset your carbon footprint!

While scrolling through Facebook this morning, I saw a post that Alex Honnold (climber extraordinaire) had posted about a company that he found interesting.


The company (or in it's own words, social enterprise) is called Mossy-Earth (https://mossy.earth/), and, in their own words, this is what they do:

Mossy Earth is a social enterprise whose main aim is, by planting trees, to deliver real environmental change and make a positive impact on the state of the planet's wildernesses and forests.

We plant trees on two fronts. Carbon Offsetting to fight climate change and Rewilding to enrich ecologically and socio economically impoverished areas to create wildernesses that flourish and job opportunities for rural communities.

I found this interesting - climate change is a topic that has been more and more discussed recently, and this company attempts to do something about that (to my knowledge) hasn't been done before. We ask people to recycle, carpool, consume less meat, but never have we asked people to donate money in this way. Which is interesting, given that we do this in other non-profit sectors - we don't always ask people to change their lifestyles, we ask people to donate money so that those who are well versed in those subjects can help bring about change that will make it easier to change whatever it is that non-profit is trying to change.


This is definitely something I'll be looking at the next time I take a flight (https://mossy.earth/collections/carbon-offsetting/products/offset-your-flights), and I wish them great success!