The Abridged version:
- Popular weekly outdoor yoga classes take place across the region, from Davis to Folsom.
- Most classes are free and open to all who want to participate, with no past yoga experience needed.
- Last year, Yoga Moves Us served more than 15,000 attendees at its classes, and is looking to grow that number thanks to partnerships with the Midtown Association and Downtown Sacramento Partnership.
This story was reported by a member of the Abridged by PBS KVIE Community Reporters program. The Community Reporters program empowers local residents to report stories with guidance and support from the Abridged editorial staff.
It’s 95 degrees on a Thursday evening. The sun is harsh but the shade of Midtown Sacramento’s Fremont Park is cool and the grass in the northwest corner is soft. A group of 70 individuals stand on mats, arms open and palms facing outward, in preparation for the next yoga asana pose. As soon as the mic’d up instructor opens her mouth, a dozen motorcycles rumble past, drowning out the serenity for a brief moment.
It’s not the first time, nor will it be the last. It’s the beauty of a community yoga event in the park. Lori O’Donley, volunteer Yoga Moves Us instructor, is used to teaching among the sounds of the city.
“I love when there’s kids [on] the playground, and you can hear their laughter,” O’Donley said. “I love the cars, the music and the distraction, and the breeze kicks in, like it does every time.”
Micky Lal of Happy Heart Yoga in Davis has had his own run-ins with unavoidable distractions, including small children, rambunctious dogs and a loud tree chopper. He doesn’t let it affect his weekly 10-person class at Arroyo Park.
“I think everyone [in the class] has accepted that, hey, we’re in the park, and this is the fun experience of being in the park, too,” Lal said. “I enjoy when the dogs or the babies come to class, so I don’t mind at all.”
Cars, e-bikes, and mall music make up part the soundtrack of the Folsom Palladio’s Soul Yoga summer series, hosted by Serenity Spa on Saturday mornings. But so does the trickle of the Piazza’s water fountain and singing sound bowls. Christine Fairchild, Vice President of Serenity Spa, says students can get more out of their practice through what could be considered distractions.
“You can feel the wind that you’re trying to have somebody visualize when you’re inside. You can hear the rustling of the leaves,” Fairchild said. “You have a drizzling of the water. You can feel the glistening of the sun against your skin. It has all of the elements already there.”
Outdoor yoga is relaxed, amongst the trees, open to the public and — for organizations like Happy Heart Yoga, Soul Yoga and Yoga Moves Us — free of charge.
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Kathryn Wint has been attending outdoor fitness classes since she started working from home.
She’s tried walking groups, hiking excursions and stand-up paddleboarding.
But the activity that has stuck the most is outdoor yoga.
“It doesn’t seem like it’s restricted to anybody,” Wint says. “It’s more welcoming. I don’t feel like I stand out.”
Wint says she’s always on the lookout for free events that give her the chance to try something new.
“Being a single mom and a teacher, I don’t have the funds all the time to do stuff,” Wint said. “I always like to utilize whatever the community has. And I’ve noticed, especially within the last couple of years, more places are seeming to bring things to the community just for them to test out.”
For Wint, Yoga Moves Us is one of those organizations. Completely donation-based and volunteer-run since 2015, Yoga Moves Us now hosts 12 classes a week in parks across the Sacramento area. Last year, it served over 15,000 people. Michelle Webb, President of Yoga Moves Us, is looking forward to an even bigger number by the end of 2026, thanks to partnerships with the Midtown Association and Downtown Sacramento Partnership. These partnerships led to events like the gentle yoga and sound bath under the Fremont Park Bloom outdoor art installation.
“With the trajectory that we’re moving in, if we can continue getting community partnerships, then we can continue expanding,” Webb said.
Expansion in Webb’s case is adding more indoor classes year-round. Last year, YMU partnered with Arden Fair Mall to host yoga students once a week, October through April, but the hope is to add more opportunities in more spaces. However, expansion doesn’t mean recruiting more instructor volunteers. Webb has 500 instructors at the ready, with 68 of them currently in rotation.
“For the first time ever, we shut down our sign ups for new volunteers because we’re at capacity,” Webb said. “I have more volunteers than I have classes to give them.”
Webb credits her predecessor and current board member and treasurer, Kirsten Johnson, for the structure and philosophies that make YMU what it is today.
“We didn’t have a diversity in who our volunteers represented, as diverse as our community was,” Johnson said.
One task was to bring the yoga philosophies that Johnson and Webb follow and teach in their own classes to the forefront of the organization’s mission. For Johnson, that meant adding more classes outside of vinyasa flow sessions.
“I tell everybody I’m allergic to vinyasa,” Johnson said. “So my first thing was to scrape every reference to vinyasa and open it up to all styles of yoga and movement.”
Johnson, like so many other instructors, began her yoga journey at a local gym. Today, she specializes in accessible yoga through offering props and chairs for students with limited mobility, teaching at schools, mental health facilities and county jails, and building up her education in trauma-informed yoga training.
“[Teachers] need individualized and specialized training,” Johnson said. “That’s why I was able to teach it. I have a background in accessible training, training for all bodies.”
While dozens of teachers have filled out the class schedules for YMU, they rarely host the same class at the same location twice in a row. O’Donley teaches at least twice a week with the organization, and those classes are much more open than her intimate small-group sessions at a studio.
“It’s very intimate. You’re more specific with the queuing [in a small group], whereas in this big group, it’s pretty easy,” O’Donley said. “People are watching other people. They’re paying attention and watching each other.”
Lal’s classes are open to anyone when the weather is good, but when the class needs to move inside to avoid rain, it’s limited to 10 attendees. No matter where his classes are held, Lal’s approach reflects the priorities of his attendees — make friends, enjoy nature, and build strength and stability.
“[Yoga] is something that you can go home and do and you can probably do for the rest of your life,” Lal said. “If I’m going to teach it, I want people to go home and be able to do it and not feel like they’re going to injure themselves.”
Physical activity is just one branch of the eight limbs of yoga, and the weekend outdoor class at the Palladio gives just a taste of what the practice can do. Andrea Tagamolila, Serenity Spa director and Soul Yoga instructor, says the aim has always been to get the word “yoga” out into the community.
“Every week, I’m not exaggerating, there are new people who have never been to a yoga class,” Tagamolila said. “You always get a handful of kids out there, and it’s their first foray into yoga, which is really, really cool.”
Wint’s favorite outdoor yoga class is on Saturday mornings at McKinley Park, held near the rose garden by Yoga Moves Us. She credits her classmates for giving her the opportunity to experiment.
“We’re in crowds where not everyone has been doing this their entire lives, so they’re not going to look at me crazy when I’m falling over,” Wint said.
Wint reflected that when the pressure is off in class, she’s also able to stop pressuring herself.
“I decided to stop thinking because then I’ll stop trying. You know how many times I almost fell during this last [class]?”
Accessibility, inclusivity, and education are at the front of open-air, no-cost classes. All are welcome, and only a mat and an open mind are required. But sometimes, not even a mat is necessary. Webb has a student, now in her 80s, who attends each week with a chair.
“She sits, smiles, and does nothing. Just listens,” Webb said. “It’s one of the things I say at the beginning of all my classes: ‘If you feel today that you just want to sit on your mat and do nothing but breathe, then that’s where you need to be.’ [The student] talks about how she has an opportunity to be in community, and to be part of a practice, even though she physically does not have the ability to do the practice.”
As fall starts to settle into the Sacramento Valley, outdoor yoga classes are looking towards the rainy season. Lal hosts his outdoor Happy Heart Yoga Friday class throughout the year. Yoga Moves Us will move on to an indoor location soon to be announced. But before that, they’ll host their annual End of Summer Celebration that marks the last day of outdoor events on Oct. 3 at Fremont Park.
“The reset yoga does for the nervous system is why I do it,” O’Donley said. “Do you ever just stop and realize you haven’t taken a deep breath all day?”
Emilie DeFazio-Reilly is a member of the Abridged Community Reporters program.
