Where To Be Merry: Yoga @ Passport to Prana

The Merriment: The original multi-studio yoga pass that allows you to test out scores of yoga studios in the preferred city of your choice.

Good for: Anyone interested in sampling different yoga studios, classes and practices.

When-to-Go: It’s up to you. You pick the days, times and classes.

With-Whom-to-Go: The passport is only for the user, but of course you can always bring someone along – s/he would just have to pay for the class.

The $ Factor: Great bargain; $30 gets you a one-year passport. In Los Angeles, there are 36 participating studios, meaning that’s less than $1 a class. A bargain indeed, considering it’s typical for yoga classes to start at $10 per class, and to go up in price.

The 4-1-1: If you’re looking to get the most “bang for your buck,” since many of the participating yoga studios already offer the 1st class as complimentary, save that passport and use it on your 2nd visit. 

I’ll Be Back…: To stop by the other studios I’ve yet to visit!

I recently began practicing yoga. And while I’ll save my soapbox speech about all of yoga's mental, physical and psychological benefits for another blog post, I will say that as an amateur, I found the entire yoga universe to be quite daunting and overwhelming. With classes starting at anywhere from $20 a session and with hundreds of yoga styles to try, I had no idea where to start.


Fortunately, Nicole Wool over at The Dossier PR must’ve heard my mental cries of distress, because she quickly put me up on game about the Passport to Prana gift card.

In a nutshell, the way it works is that on the Passport to Prana website, you select a city (there are 11 U.S. cities including LA, NYC, Miami, San Francisco, San Diego and more, and also 7 Canadian cities) and then you find a list of participating yoga studios that offer one complimentary class. You pick the time, the day and the level, and then you just go to the studio a few minutes prior to the class to register, and then you attend the class. The passport is valid for one year from when you activate it, so you have ample time to try out the different studios at your own pace.

In the past month that I’ve been using the passport, I’ve gone to quite a few studios and so far had nothing but positive things to say about the entire experience. I love that I can choose any studio I want, any time of the day. I've been able to do therapeutic yoga in the evenings, and basic yoga that made me sweat like crazy on Sunday mornings. As to be expected, each studio has its own unique vibe. Some are only one room; others have multiple rooms. Some had only four attendees in class; others had twenty. Some are connected to cafés; others sell merchandise, like Mission Street Yoga in Pasadena (pictured above, left). The studios all truly vary in character, class, teacher and technique. Most are spread throughout the city, from as far west as Santa Monica, like Santa Monica Yoga (pictured below right), to the San Fernando Valley, Orange County and as east as Redlands.

Now I will say that upon mentioning this handy dandy little passport card, a few of the studios had no idea what I was talking about. I kindly explained what it was to them, and they had to look it up in big thick manuals or on their computers. But at the end of the day, I had no problems using it, and one studio manager even let me head into class before she knew what the passport was, saying that we’d figure it all out afterwards (which we did).

So I say if you’re looking for a great way to try out a few new yoga studios that perhaps you may have never discovered and at a really, really super good steal, then I highly recommend getting a Passport To Prana.

Perhaps I’ll see you at one of the studios soon. Namaste!

For more information: www.passporttoprana.com, @PassportToPrana