The BrewDog TV show, which is not all that bad actually, has an episode in which yogis at a donut shop are sipping beer in Adho Mukha Svanasana (that’s downward-facing dog for you ignorant punks!). Now we can call it “downward facing BrewDog.” It caught the eye of blogger Niche of TastingNiche and reminded me that I have been wanting to write about my love of two things not typically considered to be compatible at all. Yoga and beer.

I found a yoga book in my parents’ garage when I was about ten years old, and since then, asana has become part of my life. On a trip to India in the late 1990s, I stayed at an ashram and met an Iyengar practitioner who later taught me Ashtanga. I have been practicing Ashtanga yoga ever since, on and off. As I got more and more into craft beer, a mug of IPA or stout became my recovery drink after yoga.

Ten, fifteen years later, there are breweries offering yoga classes.

A pairing of beer and yoga used to seem incongruous, but it has become a growing trend, especially in beery cities that also happen to have a solid yoga community. Yoga classes followed by beer tastings at local breweries are becoming increasingly common. In fact, two of the 15 breweries that made this Travel & Leisure “coolest breweries” in America feature yoga followed by beer tastings. One of them is in Los Angeles, and the other in Denver.

Are there yoga and beer pairings by you? If so, we’d love to hear about it!