Eli Walker - Drunk Yoga: 50 Wine Yoga Poses to Lift Your Spirit(s)

Praise for Drunk Yoga

( Real quotes said by real people about real Drunk Yoga classes taught by the real Eli Walker.)

So not what I expected in the best way possible.

Its like the best drinking game ever.

I was finally able to bring my boyfriend to yoga. He loved it. Cheers!

The most fun Ive ever had in a yoga class.

I have never laughed so hard in a yoga class in my entire life.

Eli is an inspirationshes changed the way I think about yoga.

Ive never seen so many strangers come together in one room and then compliment one another so much.

Thank you, Eli, for enriching our lives.

Elis Drunk Yoga class reminds me why I love yoga.

It was my first yoga class now I get it.

Im not flexible, but in Drunk Yoga I forgot. Thanks for making something scary to me so much fun.

I dont even drink and I totally love Drunk Yoga.

For a nondrinker, this is totally intoxicating in all the best ways.

We had an absolutely terrific Sunday Funday! Girls day, beautiful weather, met fun people, and enjoyed ourselves all around! Also, I dont do yoga, so I found it totally awesome doing basic moves, and the wine made it fun, too. Our class was on a yacht, so we were totally having a good time!

At first, I thought it was so dumb so not what yoga is. Took a chance, wentI see now that its for real.

Eli is a real yoga teacher. She knows exactly what shes doing. Everyone should try this class.

I brought a man to Drunk Yoga who had never taken any kind of yoga class before. Before it was over, he said, We need to do this again!

Best bachelorette party ever .

Now that Im thirty, I feel like I cant just drink on the weekends. I need to work out, too, so Drunk Yoga is perfect for me.

I dont know if Drunk Yoga makes me more flexible, but once class started, I sort of forgot to care.

Eli Walker is a visionary.

Copyright 2019 by Eli Walker

Illustrations 2019 by Justin Pettit with handwritten notations by Eli Walker

Photographs by Ryan Montgomery on

Photographs by Meagan Stevenson on

Photographs by Eric Vasquez @NvShutter on

Photographs by Corinne Teklitz on

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Mona Lin
Cover photographs by Meagan Stevenson
Cover illustrations by Justin Pettit

Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-4082-2
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-4083-9

Printed in China

To Mom, Dad, and Michael. Thanks for always allowing me to force you to listen to my stories.

And to New York City and Bali, and the humans angels living in them who helped me get here.

T ABLE OF C ONTENTS

I NTRODUCTION

I had no intention of making such a splash with Drunk Yoga. I thought of the idea one night while I was out at a bar called Grey Lady in Lower Manhattan, where I used to work right after college.

I was catching up with a friend, who was the coowner of the bar. I told him that Im a yoga teacher now. He said, I need yoga, I cant touch my toes. Then, he immediately proceeded to touch his toes. Oh, he said, surprised. I guess I can touch my toes when Im drunk. (Cue light bulb moment.) With excitement, I blurted, Well then, lets just do Drunk Yoga! Ill teach a class in the bars back room for beginners. Itll be fun. He loved the idea and responded, Sure! What should we call it? Tipsy Yoga? Definitively, as if the gods above had just granted me permission from the Drunk Yoga heavens, I said, No. I want to call it Drunk Yoga.

The first few classes were empty. I planned to scrap the idea, as I was in the midst of preparing to teach a (sober) yoga retreat in Bali. But, in one last-ditch effort to pull in a crowd, I reached out to my friend who wrote for Gothamist , dragged her to a class, and begged her to write about it.

Soon after her article was published, news outlet after news outlet across the globe wrote about the story. Eli Walkers Drunk Yoga class is the latest trend in NYC , they said New York Citys Eli Walker offers liquid courage to beginner yogis to welcome them to the practice. Fans of the class were ecstatic, and reservations began pouring in as Drunk Yoga went viral overnight.

I quickly realized that through the Drunk Yoga phenomenon, I had touched on something much greater than our cultures love for mixing alcohol with everything. I realized there is a societal thirst for a breaking away from what has become an exclusive yoga elite, reserved for the wealthy and the flexible. And although the polarizing name of my new endeavor hit a nerve with some yoga purists, I feel pleased to be igniting a conversation that dares to deconstruct the essence of what it truly means to do yoga.

You see, Ive spent many years mildly obsessed with developing ways to integrate performance with yoga to offer unconventional ways of teaching people the art of joy through self-empowerment. Drunk Yoga, so far, has been the most effective twist. It has the power to spread yoga to the uninitiated through accessible means: wine and socializing.

Furthermore, there comes a point in a yoga teachers career when the teaching moves beyond the instruction of the poses and into the realm of what it means to be a radiant human being. Yoga to me is much like performance. Its about learning to develop a relationship to ones own body in time and space, for the ultimate purpose of cultivating personal happiness. And, when we have techniques to uplift ourselves, we can work better in community to uplift one another. Drunk Yoga is about just that: finding levity in the communal.

Wine is, inarguably, a tool to bring people together. Add a little wine to any situation, and it turns into a celebration. And in Drunk Yoga, were celebrating the soul and nurturing it through the ritual of a happy hour. The ritualization of a happy hour through the structure of a yoga class is like the theater of communal celebration. The result is a magical breakdown of barriers through socializing to expose our inherent playfulness.

So, in summary: ( clears throat ) I use the word Drunk suggestively and sarcastically. Its not descriptive, as my trademark lawyer will have you note. Drunk Yoga combines expressive yoga sans pressure to be perfect, painted with the theater of happy hour (socializing) and risk-taking (Drunk Yoga is shamelessly subversive, have you heard?) in such a beautiful blend (like Grenache, you know?) that opens the space for collaborative joy! (Its fun as f#ck, and happiness is health.)