The Ripley’s Aquarium of Canada offers packages for their yoga classes held on Tuesday mornings, along with many other unconventional locations.
Of yoga's most basic poses, child's pose is the simplest. It's a restful position that sees the practitioner stretch their back and limbs in a forward lean, the head looking downward if not touching the ground in front of the knees. Close eyes, relax: yoga. Yet as I lay in child's pose in the darkened Rainbow Reef area of Ripley's Aquarium of Canada, all I could think about were clownfish and all the other fish with fancy prefixes swimming in the floor-to-ceiling tank before us.
That, to an extent, is the point of Ripley's offering Tuesday morning yoga sessions in its space, part of a recent growth in alternative venues and themed classes that take the practice out of the studio or trade meditative soundtracks for Top 40 sounds. So you can, for instance, downward dog to Drake at the Drake Hotel and the Steamwhistle Brewery recently hosted classes for charity that came with complimentary beer tastings afterward.
Yoga retreats have long been unique experiences available to dedicated yogis seeking something different. But when a mix of skill levels come together for a morning at the aquarium, an instructor must find a balance between not only beginner and advanced students, but also between yoga and fish.
"There are definitely challenges to teaching outside a studio," Parool Joshi, who led my class that Tuesday morning, says. She taught at a pace that even I could follow – it was my first time doing yoga. But focus too much on your warrior pose or that angelfish gliding by and either way you are missing the point. Your surroundings can help you reach zen, but please keep your gaze groundward in child's pose.
"No matter where you are, you're still going to have distractions," says Theresa Whitely, an instructor at Octopus Garden, a College Street studio that holds free sessions in Dufferin Grove Park on Sunday mornings in July and August. There, you can hear the birds chirping – but also the strains of traffic from nearby Dufferin Mall. "It's about being present and in the moment."
Oh where can I yoga?
Ripley's Aquarium of Canada
$120 for six-class packages at 7:30 a.m. on Tuesdays. (Sold out for 2016.) ripleyaquariums.com/canada/groups-events/yoga
Drake Yoga T.O. at the Drake Hotel
Practice to the music of your boy from the 6. $8 to $10. May 29 and June 5, 12 p.m.. thedrakehotel.ca
Yoga in Dufferin Grove
Meet in the southwest corner of the park. Free. 10:30 a.m., Sundays in July and August. octopusgardenyoga.com
Yoga at the Berlin
You can follow yoga with breakfast at the celebrated chef Jonathan Gushue's restaurant in downtown Kitchener. Starting at $15. 6:30 a.m., Tuesdays and Thursdays in June and July. theberlinkw.ca
Yoga and Paddle Flow
Learn how to practice yoga on a paddleboard in the Beaches. Starting at $35. Various times and locations. supgirlz.com