'It's electric and alive in here': Butterfly conservatory offers ideal yoga space
Yoga teacher wants to help people escape their busy lives and connect with nature
Over the past decade Michelle Alexander has taught yoga in all sorts of places including parks, high schools and even jails, but never in a butterfly conservatory — until now.
On Sunday Alexander led her first-ever butterfly yoga class at the Cambridge Butterfly Conservatory. While it might be cold and grey outside, inside the building participants bent and stretched in the warm air as colourful insects winged their way by.
"This place is charged with growth and life," she said. "There's water constantly moving and sounds. It's electric and alive in here."
Sunday's session may have been a first for Alexander, but the conservatory has seen a handful of other yoga bookings in recent years.
Still, it feels like a "pretty new thing," according to Andalyne Tofflemire, conservatory manager and naturalist.
"I'd say only within the last two to three years have we started to get yoga bookings," she said. "I wanna say, less than half a dozen."
The garden space is always maintained at a balmy 25 C or 27 C, Tofflemire said, making it an ideal environment for all the plants, birds, bugs and tropical butterflies the conservatory brings in from Costa Rica and the Philippines.
Alexander said the conservatory offers a great space to do yoga with nature at your fingertips.
She hopes to offer people a chance to escape their busy lives and connect with the space and nature around them.
"Even coming in this morning, being the first one wandering in [with] the sound and the stillness, we're here as all of the critters are waking up," she said.
Going forward, Alexander plans to offer a Sunday morning yoga class at the end of every month.
