Illinois · Since 2019
Where this started, on a lawn, with eleven people. Chicago is our first and largest city. What began as a Saturday morning circle at Montrose Point in 2019 now runs fourteen gatherings a month across the North Side, Pilsen, Humboldt Park and the West Loop, and it stays free wherever we can make the numbers work.
The lakefront belongs to everybody at six in the morning. That is the whole idea, really. We just put mats on it and told people what time to turn up.
2019
Launched
4,200
Members
14
Gatherings a month
On the calendar
Four of the 14 gatherings that run here every month, with the venue, the price and the person teaching on each one.
YogaSaturday, September 12
An all-levels vinyasa practice on the grass at Montrose Point, timed so the last three poses land as the sun clears the water.
BreathworkThursday, September 24
A guided ninety-minute breathwork session indoors, ending with twenty minutes of stillness and a cup of tea with the people next to you.
YogaThursday, October 8
Five long, fully supported shapes held for eight minutes each, designed for the end of a working day rather than the start of one.
FestivalsSaturday, October 17
Our largest Chicago gathering of the year: four movement stages, a breathwork tent, twenty local vendors and a closing circle at four.
Community stories
Two members on what actually happened after the first time they turned up.
I came once because a coworker had a spare ticket. I have not missed a Thursday since, and I now know more people on my own street than I did in nine years of living on it.
Yolanda started at a single breathwork session at Casa Verde and has now been to more than a hundred and forty of them. She helped set up the childcare rota that lets a dozen parents attend the Pilsen sessions, and she is the reason our Chicago schedule is published in Spanish as well as English.
Yolanda Ferrer
Member since 2021, Pilsen
I signed up for the movement. I stayed because on the worst week of my life, four people from a Saturday morning yoga class showed up at my door with food.
Devon joined during the winter of 2020 looking for a reason to leave the house. He now co-hosts the Bronzeville walk-and-talk on the first Sunday of every month, a gathering that started with three people and regularly draws forty.
Devon Whitaker
Member since 2020, Bronzeville
Partnerships
Space, permits, food and clinicians, given at cost or for nothing at all. These are the Chicago organizations behind that.
Public space
Gives us the lawn at Northerly Island for the Lakefront Wellness Festival and waives the permit fee every year.
Venue
Hosts our Pilsen breathwork sessions at cost, which is what keeps that programme on a sliding scale down to zero.
Health
Provides two clinicians at every festival and refers patients into our free Saturday sessions.
Food
Feeds our volunteer teams and runs the food tent at every Chicago festival at no charge.
Testimonials
I had tried three studios and left all of them feeling like the least fit person in the room. Nobody has ever made me feel that way on the lawn at Montrose.
We send patients here when what they actually need is other people, not another prescription. It works more often than anything else we can offer.
Chicago
Every Chicago event is listed with its price up front, and the paid ones slide down to zero if you ask. Nobody is turned away and nobody has to explain why.