Yoga Enterprise
Baaaaa! Nashville goat yoga business sees growth, seeks out smiles | Life
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Photo provided by Shenanigoats
Photo provided by Shenanigoats
Photo provided by Shenanigoats
Photo provided by Shenanigoats
Photo provided by Shenanigoats
Photo provided by Shenanigoats
Photo provided by Shenanigoats
Photo provided by Shenanigoats
Weekends at Bowling Green are always fun, but there are only so many times you can go for Spencer’s Coffee or Cook Out before you get bored. WKU students are familiar with going to Nashville for weekend getaways. Next time you go, put goat yoga on your to-do list.
Shenanigoats is the business to meet all of your goat needs. Shenanigoats, owned by Max Knudsen and Jamie Codispoti, started out as a landscaping company. Goats eat 70% of their body weight in the grass each day, Knudsen said. After buying a sheep and goat farm in 2016, they decided to bring the goats to work.
After a while, Knudsen said people were asking about goat yoga as the trend popped up across the country. They decided to give it a try and started offering goat yoga sessions from the summer of 2017.
“First these meetings would take place in people’s backyards,” Knudsen said. “After the weather got in the way a few times, we decided to find a studio.”
Shenanigoats Yoga Studio is located in an old auto body shop at 1046 Westchester Drive in Madison, Tennessee. Although it’s a little north of Nashville, it still receives city traffic. Knudsen said goat yoga doesn’t need a big city to be popular, but the Nashville community has been very supportive of the business and made it successful.
An average class size is 25-40 people, Knudsen said. The clientele usually consists of women, especially at stag and hen parties. Business picks up on Thanksgiving and Christmas because people seem to want goat cuddling over the holidays.
“All it takes to book a class is five people,” said Knudsen. “We automatically have classes on the weekends, but if people are interested, all they have to do is call and book a time that works for them.”
All goats are younger than one year because young goats are more active and more open to interacting with people. Knudsen said they would never have a goat doing yoga if it didn’t want to be there. Most of them enjoy cuddling with people, and if a person decides to just sit on the mat and play with the goat instead of doing yoga, that’s fine.
“We’re trying to have one goat for every three people,” said Knudsen. “That way there are enough goats to go around.”
Goats are animals, that is, if they have to go, they have to go. Knudsen said if a goat has an accident with you, you get a free t-shirt. However, most people don’t mind. In fact, it is seen as a badge of honor in some ways.
Bettina Bowers is a regular at Shenanigoats. She said she lost the number of visits but was guessing it was 25-30 visits.
“You can come for the yoga and the goats are a bonus or you can come for the goats and the yoga is a bonus,” Bowers said. “It really just depends on the person.”
Although she does yoga a few times a week, Bowers said that you don’t have to know yoga to go to shenanigoats. The poses aren’t too difficult, and the instructors tend to lean towards poses that encourage the goats to jump on you.
Bowers said the experience can make everyone smile. A few months after it opened, she brought her friend, whose husband had recently passed away. Playing with the goats was the first time Bowers had actually seen them laugh since then.
“People tend to let go and just enjoy being there with them,” Bowers said.
Knudsen said they recently saw how much business had grown when they bought a map of the United States that customers could use to record and mark their travel destinations. Quickly they said they needed a bigger map and it had to be of the world, not just the US
“It’s exciting to see people from all over the world,” said Knudsen. “I got emails from people in Japan asking if they had to bring their own mats or if they could rent one. I told them the rents are $ 3. “
Last year, Shenanigoats started taking goat painting classes. People can paint goat-themed pictures while goats run around and play with them. Although not as popular as yoga, it is starting to grow.
Knudsen said goats had become her life. They believe that they are great animals that can really put a smile on a person’s face.
Although a sudden decision was initially made, buying a goat farm seems to be exactly what Knudsen and Nashville needed.
Shenanigoats can be contacted online at his website and followed on Facebook and Instagram @shenanigoatsyoga.
The reporter Eleanor Tolbert can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on social media at @ellietolbert.