Passport to Prana: How to Get Your Yoga On (On the Cheap)

Yeah, so I haven't written a new post in a while...this year's 30 day challenge has been unusually difficult, and my life has become particularly busy, so going to extra yoga classes in order to keep up my poor little blog has fallen to the bottom of the priority list.  Sorry, y'all.

But there's a cool deal going on that I had to share ASAP: it's called Passport to Prana, and basically you pay just $30 (plus fees & shipping) for 6 classes (one each) at 6 of 33 studios throughout the Bay Area. The goal is to encourage us to try a range of classes and styles - so basically, a mini version of this blog, but they've done all the work.

And while we're on the subject of Bay Area yoga classes on the cheap, I thought I'd make a quick list of all the group online coupon deals for which I've signed up.  You'd be surprised at how frequently yoga studio deals are offered.  For example, right now I've got 1) 30 days of unlimited classes at Satori Yoga Studio, purchased for $30 (66% off) via TownHog in February, and 2) A Hiking Yoga class for some future Saturday morning when I feel like getting up bright and early (okay, this one may never be used), purchased for $10 (50% off) via Groupon in March.  

Both of these coupons don't expire for 6 - 12 months so they're just patiently waiting for me to finally stop with the Bikram-every-day madness (April 4th!).

Of course this means you'll get a fair amount of email, but you can just eyeball the subject line and delete the deals in which you're not interested.

Here's what I know of so far: 

TownHog

Groupon

Flavorpill (more a daily/weekly cultural digest, but they'll do occasional "the hookup" promotions, including most recently a free week of yoga at YogaWorks)

Group Swoop

Living Social

Many of these have deals/programs in other cities as well - Group Swoop in particular. 

I mean, let's face - yoga is damn expensive.  I'm not the only one who has bounced from introductory offer to introductory offer in the Bay Area, but even then you're looking at dropping a lot of cash on each class. This fellow yoga blogger has an interesting take: that much like golf or oysters, yoga is "a certain lifestyle being marketed/sold to a very specific subset of the consuming public."  It's expensive because a whole slew of young middle/upper class white women are perfectly willing to pay that much.  Or...what about this blogger's take?  That in the capitalist west, where money and power (and showing off how much of each you have) are more valuable than anything else, the only way to get your students to pay attention to a yoga class is to get them to pay a lot of money.

In any case, there are a lot of ways to get your yoga on for cheap.  Go to the free classes at Lululemon and Sports Basement, take advantage of introductory offers, sign up for discount mailing lists (and don't forget to sign up for Passport to Prana!)...and when you find a yoga studio that is the perfect fit, where the teachers know you by name, where the atmosphere is just right, and you think "yeah, I could see myself coming here all the time," you know what? It probably IS worth the money.  I know it's worth it for me!

Photo from Broke-Ass Stuart's post on free yoga in the East Bay.  I want to be her.