The Integral Yoga Institute in New York has started offering free weekly classes last year when some students lost their jobs and couldn’t afford to pay $17 per course. Now, a dozen or two jobseekers drop in for free sun salutations and other stretches every week.
With national unemployment just below 10 percent, $20 yoga classes don’t qualify as necessities for many out-of-work people who’ve pruned luxuries from their budgets. So in a gesture that’s part send-good-vibes-to-the-universe and part community outreach, a handful of yoga studios have decided to cut the unemployed a break.
“We didn’t want them to have to choose, ‘Should I eat today or go take this class?’ We wanted to give them the ability to do both,” said Zack Lynn, a computer techie by day who teaches a free yoga class for people out of work in Columbus.
