Give a college student a goat and they are confused. Give a college student a goat and a yoga mat and they are happy for a lifetime. Or at least happy for 45 minutes.
Every semester, LSU students are behooved to participate in Goat Yoga at the university’s recreation center. Goat Yoga is, well, yoga with goats. Students enter a fenced-in area and do yoga while goats wander, hop and do other goat activities around or on them.
“It’s popular because it’s rare and it’s different,” Brad Wilson, the UREC’s associate director, said. “There’s the same benefit of doing yoga with the added stimulus of being around an animal. There’s just something cathartic about it.”
LSU’s UREC has offered the program since 2019, and it’s one of the most popular classes it has. Every time a Goat Yoga session is available, students butt heads to be the first to sign up. Goat Yoga’s popularity has recently led to the UREC expanding the class from one session a semester to four.
“Last year, registration was full within the first few hours of the signup going live,” Brad Wilson said. “We had over 150 people on a waiting list. It was very obvious to us that we needed to increase our opportunity to do this.”
The class is usually held in the UREC’s outdoor activity field. This November, due to weather, a Goat Yoga class moved to the UREC’s indoor soccer courts for the first time. The flexibility of being able to hold the class indoors allowed the UREC to hold more sessions without worrying about weather being a scapegoat for canceling classes.
Handlers from the Cajun Country Backyard Mobile Petting Zoo, a local petting zoo that rents animals for parties and events, supplies the goats and pens while the UREC supplies the mats and instructors. Each class has six or seven goat participants and 50 non-goat participants.
“That’s just the go-to goat-to-person ratio,” Wilson said.
The yoga sessions last 30 minutes, where participants do conventional yoga poses and stretches. There is a 15-minute period at the end that allows participants to take pictures and pet the goats.
“Obviously there is an expense for us with the petting zoo and with our instructors and everything, but we don’t pass that on to the students,” Wilson said. “We just want to create an experience for students that we know is truly unique.”
The class usually features a mother goat and her baby goats. The babies are not sheepish – they are goatish – and often jump on people’s backs while they do different yoga poses. Aside from baby goats being the cutest goats, the UREC chooses babies because they are less aggressive and easier to wrangle.
“They’re a little more docile than the older, grumpier goats,” Wilson said. “They’re more apt to being picked up and open to standing on someone’s back or shoulders without getting agitated. If you get male, adult goats in the same area, they get more territorial and they want to start doing goat stuff.”
Maddy Robichaux, a mass communications junior at LSU, and her roommate Taylor Jarrell, a kinesiology sophomore at LSU, both said they loved their Goat Yoga experience.
Robichaux saw an ad for the program on the UREC’s website and immediately told her roommate that they needed to sign up.
“It helped relieve so much stress and the goats were so cute,” Jarrell said.
“I think everyone should do it at least once,” Robichaux added. “I would do it again if I got the chance.”
Staff members will sometimes have to get students new yoga mats because of the goats relieving themselves on them. However, Wilson says there has never been an issue with the animals not being potty-trained and the staff does not make a big deal about it. As Wilson points out, crap happens.
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“Well, they are animals and animals do what animals do,” Wilson said. “Our staff has brooms and dust pans to take care things when nature calls. The students are pretty accepting. They understand these are animals and our staff does a great job taking care of any issues.”
Goat Yoga’s popularity is not confined to the UREC’s fields and soccer courts. Margaret DeLaney, a mass communications major at LSU, took a Goat Yoga class in her hometown of Houston.
“It was pretty much a regular yoga class, but since it was outside in Houston in the summer, it became more like Hot Goat Yoga,” DeLaney said.
DeLaney said at one point, a goat jumped onto the person next to her while they were doing the downward dog pose and knocked them off balance. This created a new position called the downward goat.
“It was really funny and really cute,” DeLaney said. “It’s supposed to be relaxing, but really, they can knock you off balance really easily. They’re so distracting with how cute they are.”
DeLaney said she thinks the popularity of Goat Yoga comes from how cute the goats are. She said she couldn’t help but be happy when spending time with the baby goats.
“It’s hard to think about all the problems in your life when you have a cute little goat on your back,” DeLaney said. “Baby animals just make people really happy and release a lot of endorphins. I would definitely recommend it for people who need cheering up.”
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