Weird and wacky yoga in Wichita includes goats, puppies, Harry Potter

C-Arrow Stables owner Barry Cole was laid up in bed, recovering from surgery required after a horse stomped on his foot.

Bored stiff, Cole was surfing the Web one day when he happened across the wackiest video he’d ever seen.

The people in it were practicing yoga – a workout Cole had never had much use for. But this yoga class was different. This yoga class had goats.

Cole was struck with an idea. He had goats. And he knew he had at least one friend who knew something about yoga.

Why couldn’t C-Arrow Stables offer goat yoga, too?

Now it does, and it’s more popular than Cole could have ever predicted. He’s offering his third sold-out session on Saturday, and more are planned.

“It really is catching on, and to be honest with you, if we wanted to do it an evening a week, we could do it,” he said.

Lately, yoga classes in Wichita are getting kind of strange. And it’s not just Cole and his goats that are responsible.

Several instructors around town have been cooking up a calendar of events that mix yoga with goats, penguins, puppies, baseball outfields, horses, surfboards – even Harry Potter.

The idea, said Limitless Yoga owner Kelsea Wright, is to lure people into trying yoga by mixing it with something else, like a cuddly puppy or their favorite literary wizard. It sounds strange, she admits, but it works.

Wright, who bills her business as a “traveling yoga studio,” said she has sold out nearly every off-the-wall yoga event she’s arranged over the past several months, and there have been many.

Her favorite, she said, might have been the Harry Potter yoga event she put on in April at Distillery 244 in Old Town. The idea was a suggestion from a friend, who loved the books. The class sold out just a few days after she posted it on Facebook, Wright said, and 90 percent of the people who attended were yoga novices.

“Harry Potter yoga was absolutely amazing,” she said. “It was one of the most fun classes I have ever done.”

The class divided students up into Harry Potter’s various houses. Everyone got a wand, and Harry Potter trivia questions were thrown out during class. Afterward, Harry Potter themed cocktails were served and a best-dressed student was named.

Wright, a former kindergarten teacher, decided to open her own yoga business two years ago, after it helped cure her of severe back pain. She became a devotee of the practice, then earned her certification to teach.

Her goal is to let everyone in on the secret of how wonderful yoga is, she said.

“The whole reason my studio is called ‘Limitless’ is just because I believe that’s what yoga is,” she said. “I’m trying to reach as many people in as many different ways as I can.”

And she’s not above using puppies, penguins and margaritas to do so. (Wright’s classes frequently end with cocktail hours.)

On May 21, Wright is putting on a class called Yoga, Wine and Puppies at Chisholm Creek Pet Resort. (Sorry, it’s already long sold out.) The class will feature an hour-long flow yoga class that features adorable, fuzzy puppies on the loose.

She’s also done classes at Tanganyika Wildlife Park that were joined by penguins or observed by giraffes. She does regular classes in the garden at the Wichita Art Museum and has taught on the outfield at Lawrence-Dumont Stadium and at Grace Hill Winery. She’s also taught horse yoga and has conducted classes where her students are balancing on paddleboards, in lakes and in swimming pools. A Stars Wars yoga class is in the planning stages.

“I try to pair them with things that even if you’re not necessarily a yoga person, you’d still be very interested in trying it,” she said. “A lot of people end up being like, ‘Hey, I came for the cocktails, but the yoga was pretty good, too.’ ”

Cole’s goat yoga classes also end with cocktails.

A friend, instructor Wendy Hobart, leads the classes in his covered barn, and the goats – all of which Hobart raised himself – are allowed to roam free. They serve no meditative purpose in the class, really. But people sure seem to like them, he said.

“They say it’s just so relaxing,” Cole said. “If you’ve never been around animals, animals are very relaxing, and so people that have had a stressful day and maybe even a stressful week, they can come and that’s how they relieve it, I reckon.”

Cole, who is about to complete an event center at his stables, sees many more yoga possibilities in the future.

He doesn’t claim to understand the allure of goat yoga, but he’s never had a patron leave without a smile, he said.

“You get so many people saying so many positive things when it’s over with,” he said. “I’ve never had anyone bellyache yet, and I’ve had goats pee on their mats and poop on their mats. But that’s just part of it.”

This story was originally published May 11, 2017 at 3:13 PM with the headline "Weird and wacky yoga in Wichita includes goats, puppies, Harry Potter."