Love the serenity you feel practicing yoga? Take it up a notch and take it outdoors. Yoga classes are offered in beautiful natural settings all over South Carolina from Lowcountry beaches to Upstate farms.
Whether you're balancing on a stand-up paddleboard in a quiet creek or getting into your downward-facing dog with a couple of kid goats, your yoga experience will be intensified communing with the universe around you.
Here are eight outdoor yoga class options not to be missed:
1. SUP Yoga on the Folly River
In this beginner-friendly class offered by Charleston SUP Safaris, you'll practice basic yoga poses while balancing on a stand-up paddleboard floating in the Folly River. An anchoring system keeps participants from drifting with the tide.
2. Glow Yoga
Holding glow sticks, your yoga moves will become colorful works of art in the dark in Serenity Tree Yoga's Glow Yoga class offered around the new moon each month, weather permitting, on Folly Beach.
3. Creekside Yoga
Horlbeck Creek and the surrounding saltwater marsh will serve as your inspiration as you flow into a series of yoga poses. Part of the Unplugged Yoga series offered by the Charleston County Park & Recreation Commission, Creekside Yoga is held Tuesdays and Thursdays at Palmetto Islands County Park in Mount Pleasant.
4. Goat Yoga
They're not very good at holding poses, but the young goats at Split Creek Farm in Anderson make fun classmates in the Goat Yoga sessions offered each spring. Check Split Creek Farm's Facebook page or call the farm for class dates.
5. Yoga at Cherry Grove Beach
This scenic slice of North Myrtle Beach shoreline is the setting for early morning yoga classes offered Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from May through Labor Day by instructor Denise Clifford.
6. King of Pops Outdoor Flow Yoga
Hosted by Soul Yoga every Thursday from early summer through late October, this free, extraordinarily popular class is held on the studio's lawn adjacent to the famed GHS Swamp Rabbit Trail in Greenville.
7. Yoga on Broad Creek
Add to the challenge of getting into your warrior poses by doing it on a stand-up paddleboard floating in Hilton Head Island's Broad Creek. Jiva Yoga offers yoga classes on the water, as well on Coligny Beach, from Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day.
8. Sunset SUP Yoga on Lake Murray
Experience one of Lake Murry's spectacular sunsets as you focus on simply being in the moment holding your yoga pose on a stand-up paddleboard. Gentle Sunset SUP Yoga is one of several on-water classes offered by Pinch-a-Yoga.
