Whether it’s the sway of the ocean or the bright sun flushing over your face, Shell Beach’s outdoor yoga group brings a sense of reflectiveness that is hard to find in many other places across the central coast.
The group’s beginnings started with Shannon Bailey, the former yoga instructor, who took her original love for yoga as a young child and turned it into reality with her community group online, grossing over 1,000 individual members.
Bailey recently moved to Vietnam, leaving a vacancy for this group’s head instructor, which was taken up by Mark McCormack, a regular in Bailey’s course who teaches yoga himself at Cal Poly and many other studios around the San Luis Obispo area.
McCormack explained how his course, similar to Shannon’s, will promote community as the core structure, with people of all ages being able to come and participate.
“I think for people it’s kind of chill, and I think they’re really enjoying the outdoors and the community as much as they’re enjoying the yoga,” McCormack said.
Along with the course itself, McCormack gave a nod to Bailey and her style of teaching and how she really connects with people on a deeper level that he hadn’t encountered in his previous 30 years in the yoga community.
Bailey continued this acknowledgment, sharing similar positives about McCormack and how excited she is that he was the one able to take over her course. She shared a piece of advice from across the globe on how yoga is a tool that unites.
“I like to think that if there’s anything that brings you into union with the present moment, that,” Bailey said. ” It fills your soul, that could be your yoga.”