By Devin Thompson ’25
Psychology major
I decided to bring goat yoga to campus to help Pacific students relax before finals. As a student myself, I know that the spring semester can be extra stressful because everything is wrapping up at the end of academic year.
I am a sophomore psychology major and a resident assistant for Pacific’s North Quads residential community. One of my responsibilities as an RA is to engage student-residents by hosting socials. After the success of the “Save Your Drama for a Therapy Llama” destress event last fall, I thought about organizing an outdoor yoga, but then I found out about goat yoga, and it all came together.
The event took a lot of research, organizing and collaboration, but we made it happen. We set up on the lawn of the Wendell Phillips Center on April 28. About 50 students from the North Quad community participated during the two-hour event. I also saw a lot of other people stopping by just to take photos.
We offered two one-hour sessions. The first 30 minutes was yoga with an instructor. The goats were simply present and just casually interacted with people during the session. It was meant to be fun and provide a sense of comfort. There were also some yoga poses where the animals were trained to actually get on people’s backs. I think it was a lot of fun and made yoga less intimidating to those who were doing it for the first time.
During the last 30 minutes of the session, students could interact with the goats more casually like taking photos or feeding the animals.
Even though it was a lot of work putting it together, I’m glad I was able to bring goat yoga to our campus. It had never been done at Pacific, and it was fun for me to introduce something new. Overall, it was a fantastic and unique event and I think it helped many students destress before finals.