Get your goat: Animal yoga a hit at Manitoba farm

When a Facebook friend sent a video of a U.S. goat yoga session to Tara McKean, he meant it as a joke.

But then McKean — who owns the 10 Acre Woods animal rescue and petting farm in Anola, Man. — shared the clip on her Facebook page and people got seriously excited.

"It went crazy," McKean. "People were like, 'You should do that!'"

So she did.

McKean's version isn't strictly goat yoga: there are ducks and chickens, too. She calls it "goat/farm yoga."

"The first one was kind of like, OK, what are [the animals] going to do?'" she said. Yogis line their mats up in a row in the middle of the yard, and animals are free to wander in, around and even on top of them.

"They were right in there from day one. Even before the babies, the kid goats arrived, the moms were right in there around," McKean said. "The ducks, they've never come off the pond to interact with people as much as they have until the yoga started. They like yoga."

Pam Jansen, one of six yoga instructors who teach classes at McKean's farm, says she thinks everybody should try farm yoga.

But don't come expecting a very active class, she warned.

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"It's not like a regular yoga class that you do in a studio," she said. "There's goats, pigs, things crawling on your backs or your mats, or pooping in front of your mat."

To Jansen, that's a plus.

"I like this pace, because I don't think it all has to be about perfection and what a perfect yoga class should look like," she said. "I'm dirty, my mat is filthy, but I love it. I think it's great."

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