airport yoga

Reno-Tahoe Int’l does Burning Man

Reno-Taho International Airport is helping ‘burners’ with their Burning Man experience.

The Burning Man festival is underway and Reno-Tahoe International Airport is part of the experience for the more than 18,000 “burners” who fly in and out of the area for the event.

Last week, the airport helped move things along on some of the busy arrival days by offering free group yoga, Burning Man artwork displays and therapy dogs dressed up for the occasion.

On Monday, when the burners start to go home, the airport will also offer entertainment and assistance, including big plastic bags for wrapping suitcases encrusted with dust from the Playa,  bins for disposing of all the garbage burners need to remove from the festival site and a drop-off spot for the bicycles many bring to get around the festival grounds. Those bikes get fixed up and donated to local groups.

 

All photos courtesy Reno-Tahoe International Airport.

Have you been to Burning Man? Share photos of your airport experience getting to and from the festival.

Cathay Pacific adds in-flight yoga.

Airport yoga rooms are great amenities, but Cathay Pacific suggests you try doing yoga on the plane.

The airline has partnered with Pure Yoga to offer an inflight “Travel Well with Yoga” program that offers a series of six yoga videos with meditation exercises and tips.

The videos are in English, Cantonese, Mandarin and Japanese and are running on Cathay Pacific and Cathay Dragon routes in the  Lifestyle section of the inflight entertainment program.

Instructors offer yoga and meditation routines that can be done before, during or after a flight (if you’re not to self-conscious to try it) and are designed to improve circulation, enhance joint mobility  – and relax the mind.

Some moves work on the plane – even in economy, says the airline – others you can do when you unfold from your seat and get to your hotel.

Here’s a sample.

Denver Int’l Airport getting a pop-up yoga studio

Although bars and restaurants will beckon, travelers at an increasing number of airports have  plenty of places to stretch and work out.

Baltimore-Washington International Airport has an airport gym, Phoenix Sky Harbor International and many other airports offer marked walking paths, and San Francisco International Airport, Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, Chicago’s O’Hare and Midway Airports and others have free-to-use spaces set aside, with loaner mats, for yoga.

Now Denver International Airport gets its chance.

Courtesy Yoga on the Fly

For 90-days, starting November 6, Denver International Airport will have a pop-up guided yoga studio on Concourse A where travelers can pay to use private mini-studios for yoga sessions lasting from 15 to 60 minutes.

With each rental, Yoga on the Fly will provide instructional videos, yoga mats and wireless headsets. Sessions will costs $15 for 15 minutes, $20 for 20 minutes, $30 for 30 minutes, $45 for 45 minutes and $60 for 60 minutes. Each studio with have a ‘beauty bar’ with cleansing towels, face mist, hand sanitizer and lotion where customers can freshen up after their session and there will be a retail section at reception offering travel accessories.

If this first Yoga on the Fly pop-up is successful over this holiday season, company founders hope to make it a permanent amenity at Denver International Airport and other airports.

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Now: Yoga at Vancouver Int’l Airport

YVR YOGA

Vancouver International has joined the list of airports offering travelers a yoga space.

A yoga program – “YYoga@YVR” – will be offered on Fridays between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. from July 15 to August 26 and will be open to any passenger departing to a Canadian destination in Domestic Terminal C-Pier, across from Gate 46.

The program is being offered as part of YVR’s Take-Off Fridays, the airport’s summer event series of music, entertainment and family-friendly activities in the terminal.

The yoga pilot program is offered through a partnership between YVR and YYoga, a Canadian yoga and wellness company.

Passengers can use the yoga space to practice their own yoga flow, for meditation or for simple stretching.

A YYoga instructor will be on hand to welcome passengers, answer questions and suggest poses and stretches that are particularly beneficial during travel. Mats are provided.

“Yoga can offer tremendous benefits to travelers,” says Berk Kansu, Marketing Manager for YYoga. “It can help passengers feel relaxed and centered and help them move to their next destination in a refreshed, calm way.”

Yoga: now at Chicago’s Midway Int’l Airport

Midway Yoga Room

September is National Yoga Month, which makes it great timing for the Chicago Department of Aviation to open the promised yoga room at Midway International Airport.

Located on Concourse C, Midway’s new yoga room has a sustainable bamboo wood floor, floor to ceiling mirrors on one wall, exercise mats and an area to store personal articles and garments. There are frosted windows on one side of the room to let in natural light and to provide a bit of privacy. There’s also a wall-mounted video monitor showing yoga exercise techniques and nature scenes, all with an audio plays soothing sounds.

Next door to Midway’s yoga room there’s a new room set aside for mothers who’d like some privacy while nursing a baby.

Midway mothers room

But, since it is National Yoga Month, let’s get back to yoga.

Here’s a list of other airports that offer yoga rooms for travelers:


Chicago O’Hare International Airport
-opened in December 2013. You’ll find it on the Mezzanine Level of Terminal 3 Rotunda, near the airport’s urban garden.

San Francisco International Airport has two yoga rooms.
SFO YOGA ROOM

SFO’s Yoga Room in Terminal 2 (which was the world’s first yoga room in an airport) is closed until November 4, 2014 to accommodate a construction project. The airport’s second yoga room, located in Terminal 3, Boarding Area E, remains open.

AT Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, there’s a yoga studio located near Gate D40 in the hallway connecting Terminals B and D.

There’s also a space set aside for yoga at Burlington International Airport in Vermont.

Burlington yoga

At all of these airport yoga studios, soothing ambiance – and mats – are provided.

Meanwhile, at Helsinki Airport in Finland, Finavia’s TravelLab initiative has been testing out a variety of yoga offerings, including a Yoga Gate, yoga lessons and the sale of yoga-related items, including mats and clothes.

The summertime project also surveyed passengers about the whether or not they’d be interested in paying for taking a yoga lesson at the airport. Would you?

Helsinki_Airport_Yoga_Kainuu_TravelLab

(All photos courtesy of the respective airports)