If you’ve ever found it too difficult to decide whether to sit on your couch and devour a decadent bar of vegan chocolate or taking a yoga class, you no longer have to choose between the two. Combining the happy place you find when eating chocolate and the soul-cleansing happy place in yoga of course only makes for an even happier combination. Life is all about that balance, right? Meet “Chocolate Yoga” — a class for chocolate and yoga lovers coming to the UK.
Vegan-friendly chocolate company Love Cocoa has partnered up with UK-based yogi Guzel Mursalimova to create a 90-minute chocolate-filled meditation and restorative yoga practice. The global yoga community is like any good chocolate aficionado, seriously considering this prospect with quite some merit.
“There are many parallels [between chocolate and yoga] — from experiencing a naturally elevated mood after indulging in a piece of delicious chocolate, to the feeling of lightness and radiance after a restorative yoga practice,” Mursalimova said in an interview. “For me, mindful movement, power of breath, and organic vegan chocolate are a perfect match.”
Amping up yoga with any number of accompaniments is nothing new: the Internet has seen it’s fair share of goat yoga, pro-puppy-adoption yoga, beer yoga, even naked yoga. But could chocolate yoga classes be the missing link that yogis have been unknowingly searching for until this point? Probably.
The 90-minute “Chocolate Yoga” classes are split into two halves. Yoga participants practice mindful awareness techniques from ancient Buddhist teaching, aimed to send them away from chaotic headspaces and back to being fully present while living in the moment. After this, Mursalimova shows the budding yogis how to appreciate chocolate in a different, more mindful way – this is said to train the tastebuds and consciousness to access another realm of flavours and sensations, also known as an even deeper affection for chocolate.
“It is a common meditation technique — to focus your attention on one point, object or feeling,” adds Mursalimova. “For example, you could focus your attention on brushing your teeth or sipping some water. I chose chocolate because I love it, but often I remember eating only the first piece, and maybe the last, but not everything in between. Chocolate meditation allows us to experience the broad spectrum of taste sensations and enjoy every piece.”
