Beatrix Montanile was living in Los Angeles when she first started attending, and later teaching, yoga in the park classes. It was the early 2000s and these pay-what-you-can yoga classes at Runyon Canyon Park would one day become a huge phenomenon, changing the way people viewed teaching yoga in North America. But at the time, it was a new and novel concept.

When she moved back to Toronto in 2005, it was into an apartment near Riverdale Park. It was then that an idea suddenly came to her: if people practiced yoga in the park in Los Angeles, why couldn’t they practice it in the park in Toronto during the summer months? And so, Park Yoga Toronto, with its pay-what-you-can model, was born.

“The whole point of park yoga is to make it accessible to the community. Anyone can join without feeling intimidated by being in a studio,” says Trixie (as she is affectionally called by her students), adding that even children and pets are welcome.

For several years, she continued to teach yoga every Saturday (and then Sundays, too) in Riverdale Park during the summer months and in a nearby church during the winter months. In 2011, she opened her own yoga studio, The Flying Yogi, a Suspension Yoga^TM studio and teacher training centre in Toronto. Instead of that becoming the end of Park Yoga, it became the beginning of something greater.

“I decided that Park Yoga could be about being accessible to the community while also supporting the community. I had heard about Nellie’s, and their work really moved me. I myself have experienced domestic violence and abuse and it is a horrific thing to be in a place that is supposed to be your safe place — the place you call home — and have it become a nightmare,” says Trixie.

Summer 2022 is Park Yoga Toronto’s 18^th season and the 12^th in which a portion of the proceeds are donated to Nellie’s. Each season runs from June through Thanksgiving and it has grown far beyond Trixie teaching classes at Riverdale Park. There are classes every day throughout the summer taught by a number of different yoga instructors in various parks around the city, including one in North York and one in Thornhill.

“It has become this whole beautiful community. Instructors keep approaching me and asking to teach so I tell them to find a park,” says Trixie.

In May, Trixie permanently shuttered The Flying Yogi. This fall, she will be opening The Flying Yogi Mérida, a Suspension Yoga^TM teacher training centre and Suspension Yoga^TM holiday retreat in Mexico. But it still won’t be the end of Park Yoga Toronto.

“Yoga in the park is the part of yoga that I really love. Park Yoga brings together the community. We get to be together, practice together and do something good for the community, together. I won’t give it up. I will just keep coming back to Toronto every summer.”

Thank you, Trixie, and every yoga instructor who helps make Park Yoga Toronto a success! Your generosity and passion mean so much to the women and their children who come to Nellie’s.