This Yoga Instructor Wants You to Get Zen AF in Her Class
Sometimes relaxing music and finding your zen just don't work for you.
For some people, yoga practice is the perfect way to unwind, refocus and get some serious core strength.
For others, the idea of doing yoga in a nearly silent room with a bunch of strangers sounds awful.
Lindsay Istace is one of those people. The Calgary, Canada-based yoga instructor felt stifled and uncomfortable in overly serious yoga classes, so she decided to create her own.
That's when Rage Yoga was born. The practice isn't too different from a regular yoga class except that it's held in the basement of a pub rather than a sunlit studio and features a lot more cursing and yelling than your typical class.
Istace started Rage Yoga after a bad breakup and found that cursing and yelling during her practice helped her deal with anger and addiction issues.
"When you create a space for yourself to be angry and to shout and swear and scream, suddenly it's hard to take yourself so seriously. So it goes from anger to laughter pretty quickly. And we have a lot of that going on here," she told CBC News.
The flow of the class is a slowed down version of Vinyasa yoga with expletives and gestures like the middle finger thrown in to really release stress.
The typical new age, ambient music found in yoga studios is replaced with heavy metal and participants also get a discount on beer
Classes are limited to 12 participants and Istace has gotten positive feedback about the experience.
She says that many yoga instructors don't consider her method to be "real yoga."
For more info about Rage Yoga, check out the official Facebook page.