Fri 7/1

“We decided to take this collaborative concept across America this summer after a great response to a New York City trip last fall,” said Melissa Klimo-Major, founder of Balance & Brews.

“We want to enhance a yoga community where everyone feels welcome, and we look forward to celebrating the relationships that are built through these yoga and beer events,” added Mikki Trowbridge.

What Melissa and Mikki are talking about is the Beer Yogi Road Trip they are kicking off this summer.  Having had much fun and lots of success with their Balance & Brew yoga festivities, their Beer Yogi Trip is joining two brands, Balance & Brews and Mikki Trowbridge Yoga + Beer, to inspire a greater sense of community and collaboration.

These ladies will co-teach all classes, and are working with a handful of other yoga and beer teachers/businesses along their journey, with hopes of creating more bridges for communities to work and play together. The goal is to bring all these yoga and beer communities together, and  bring awareness to the existing yoga and beer programs. Also, to introduce the concept to areas that don’t yet have yoga and beer events.

The first event is Wed 6/29 at Kindred Artisan Ales in Columbus, Ohio. The tour wraps up in Salem, Oregon at Gilgamesh Brewing. Clevelanders can participate when the Beer Yoga Trip stops at local favorite Market Garden Brewery’s new production facility on July 1st.

“We are excited to be in the starting leg of the tour and to send the Beer Yogis off on their journey with a little hometown love! To be included in this elite group of breweries nationwide is an honor,” said Nathan Carr of Market Garden Brewery. “I’m a huge fan of yoga and beer. Both are essential to living a healthy, happy, and balanced life!” adds owner Sam McNulty.

“I started Balance & Brews in 2014 just from pure love of both yoga and beer, and a desire to do something unique,” says Melissa. “At the time, there were very few yoga and beer programs across the country. I found Mikki on Instagram in early 2015, and we quickly realized our drive in doing what we do was so similar and this little pocket of the yoga industry was starting to grow quick,” she continues. “We knew we could reach further by teaming up, and we did a few Instagram challenges together — that’s how the Beer Yogi community was born. We escalated it to the national summer tour after seeing the passion and connections from our IG community, and a micro tour we did in NYC in fall of 2015.”

“Balance & Brews takes yoga out of the studio and into the brewery with uniquely accessible yoga and beer-tasting events. We create spaces within the breweries for balancing, all-levels yoga flows, followed by post practice community and craft beer education.”

 “You don’t realize how big the country really is until you start to plan a road trip!” Melissa says. “We knew we wanted to start and stop in our own hometowns, so we just created the circle from there. We are doing this full grassroots, no sponsors, no backers, so finding cities we had connections in definitely influenced our path. Once we mapped out a logical route, we made a list of breweries and started reaching out!”

The Beer Yogi Road Trip is about uniting, hence their designated tour hashtag, #unitedbyyogaandbeer. “We are all stronger when we work together, and we evolve quicker when we connect,” concludes Melissa.

Cleveland, OH 44113