Drunk Yoga: The New Thing In Yoga Is Drinking And Vinyasa

The newest trend in the fitness world is drunk yoga, and we must say, it sounds awfully appealing. After a forty-five-minute wine tasting, yogis do a forty-five-minute vinyasa flow routine.

According to Meoww.com, drunken yoga was founded by New Yorker, Eli Walker, and the entry-level classes are spent in fits of laughter over wine and yoga. The session starts off with a “warm-up”, also called the happy hours lasting 45 minutes, and then followed by a tipsy, 45-minute, beginner-level vinyasa sequence.

In a cozy little place at the Grey Lady oyster bar and restaurant on the Lower East Side, people gather to rid themselves off all of their worriers by drinking some fine wine and doing some fine yoga. Drunk yoga takes place at different bars around the city each week and it’s completely safe. “Everyone needs to have a glass with them during practice,” Walker begins every class with.

Which is how most of us feel when watching the mainstream media anyway.

While some may say that this is not a sound idea, Walker contradicts saying it’s all entry-level stretches and it’s more about practicing flexibility and not performing drunk headstands. Drunk Yoga here is not to be mistaken as just any other yoga sequence. It is not about a spiritual awakening or losing weight but more of the experience you draw out of doing yoga in a haze. Moreover, you’re just slightly buzzed and not hammered.

Walker talked to PopSugar about the time she came up with the idea and she claims, when it happened, she herself was drunk. She joked saying she had all this wine lying around at home and didn’t know what to do with it. She contemplated whether handing them out to her students in order to persuade them to come on a retreat. But one night, she was drinking at the Grey Lady, and she spoke to one of the owners who said, “I can only touch my toes when I’m drunk.” When she heard this, nothing could stop her from beginning what is now popularly and appropriately called Drunk Yoga.

Walker meets and greets people at the doorstep, invites them in, sets them onto their mats, and pours them a glass of wine before getting started with the class.  “I want it to feel like a social gathering to establish a sense of community and allow them to feel safe in letting their guards down,” she added to PopSugar. “Having a glass of wine together while barefoot on a yoga mat in the back of a bar makes people feel happy as if at a party or a celebration. It’s subversive and titillating.”