Colleen McHenry was leading a yoga class when a chicken named Turkey walked behind her and under a window curtain. McHenry soon learned the reason behind Turkey’s strange behavior: The chicken had laid an egg in her brightly colored diaper while roughly 50 yogis held their poses.
This is an example of what you might find at chicken yoga, a class at a Tampa hotel that allows people to perform downward dog and child’s pose among rescued chickens in diapers.
Colleen McHenry was leading a yoga class when a chicken named Turkey walked behind her and under a window curtain. McHenry soon learned the reason behind Turkey’s strange behavior: The chicken had laid an egg in her brightly colored diaper while roughly 50 yogis held their poses.
This is an example of what you might find at chicken yoga, a class at a Tampa hotel that allows people to perform downward dog and child’s pose among rescued chickens in diapers.
Yoga with animals — goats, dogs and cats — has become popular in recent years. But chicken yoga is another version, offered in a neighborhood where dozens of wild chickens roam the streets, courtyards and sidewalks.
“Sometimes it’s just so much silly fun that, yeah, people completely forget that they’re doing yoga — me, too,” said McHenry, owner of Yoga Loft Tampa.
The chickens spend most of the class walking around, clucking at one another and sitting on the floor and yoga mats. Sometimes they lounge on the stomachs of people in corpse pose. They knock down water bottles and bags and peck at necklaces, rings and hair clips — possibly because they think the jewelry is food.
The history of the chickens dates to the mid-1880s, when labor unrest and a large fire caused many cigar manufacturers to move from Key West, Florida, to a neighborhood in Tampa that became known as Ybor City, according to the Museum of Florida History. Workers moved with their chickens, which they used as a food source and for cockfighting, according to the Ybor Chickens Society. The group now protects the neighborhood’s wild chickens, some said to be descendants of the chickens that originally moved to Ybor City.
But when chickens get injured or sick, a volunteer group called the Ybor Misfits Microsanctuary takes them in.
Dylan Breese, the group’s founder, first rescued a black chicken named Coffee Bean who hurt her leg near his condo in 2016. He said he has since cared for more than 1,000 chickens, now housed in pens he built in a rented yard owned by a cigar company.
In 2021, the rescue began driving between five and 10 chickens to Tampa’s Hotel Haya once a month for yoga in exchange for participants donating to the Ybor Misfits Microsanctuary.
Before classes, Breese bathes each chicken with Dawn dish soap. He tries to give each chicken a diaper that matches their feathers. He straps festive diapers on for holidays — skulls for Halloween and holly, bells and snowflakes for Christmas.
“I thought they would be stars,” Breese, 45, said of the chickens. “And then they proved me right.”
Their natural chicken activities sometimes create a stir. Once, a chicken shocked the class when it flew across the room, McHenry said.
“Okay, that chicken flew,” McHenry, 56, recalled telling the class. “And we’re going to keep going.”
The class needed about five minutes to regroup, she said.
McHenry occasionally raises her voice — not just because she wants participants to hear her over the music playing from the ballroom’s speakers — but she also has to contend with the sound of chickens clucking and flapping their wings.
When a chicken stands under McHenry’s arm during a balance pose or she sees one behind her while performing downward dog, she can’t help but laugh.
“Yoga can be so ridiculously serious,” McHenry said. “And then, all of a sudden, here we are doing it with chickens who are wearing overalls.”
Leading the class can be surreal for McHenry, who began teaching business and psychology college courses after earning a doctor of business administration degree in 2010. She said she found her passion for teaching yoga after her husband, Charles, died of a heart attack in 2018.
Breese said he takes only those chickens to the class that are comfortable around people. Some of the most popular chickens include Marshmallow, a big white chicken who was abandoned; Dottie, a blind chicken whose feathers are orange and brown with white spots; and Raven, who is black with white earlobes and was abandoned at a Tampa bar on a Friday night.
Sometimes the chickens purr and doze off when people hold them — a sign they enjoy the attention, Breese said.
Still, some participants said they were hesitant about attending chicken yoga. Paris Porter, for example, loves nature — but typically from a distance.
“Wild animals should be in their wild habitat,” said Porter, 34, who grew up in Cook County, Illinois. “And humans should be where humans should be.”
But she enjoys Yoga Loft Tampa’s classes, so when McHenry told her about chicken yoga in 2023, she figured she would try a class. It was more fun than she imagined, Porter said. She lost her balance a few times after spotting chickens from the corner of her eyes and took breaks to take photos.
Porter, an accountant, said she has attended about four chicken yoga classes and is now open to trying goat or puppy yoga.
Amanda Bolli attended a class last year with her now 6-year-old daughter, Nora — before the classes prohibited children because some chased chickens around the room (Nora was not one of them, Bolli said). Bolli, who works in marketing, said she performed most of the exercises but got distracted a few times when a chicken sat on her mat.
“I was probably paying more attention to the chickens than sitting there and doing the entire yoga class all the way through,” said Bolli, 37. “But I was okay with that.”
Some yoga instructors point out that the class might not be a good fit for people who are seeking a meditative experience.
“I would find it really stressful to hold a plank or a downward dog with an animal running underneath me or on my back,” said Tejal Patel, who runs an online studio called Tejal Yoga. “At that point, I would wonder like: Why are we still calling it yoga? Like what is that inner experience that someone’s able to have when their attention is pulled?”
McHenry, who mainly teaches more traditional yoga classes, said the class with chickens is meant for people who want a lighthearted experience. The class has grown so popular that there is a waiting list each month, she said.
Even if yogis in other areas start their own chicken yoga classes, she said, the experience in Ybor City will remain singular.
“This is part of our city, and we’re protecting [chickens],” McHenry said. “That’s the message here.”
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