Some travelers hang out at the airport bars before their flights and use alcohol to help calm their nerves, but if you’re flying through certain airports, you could get your yoga on instead.
Yoga can give weary travelers a chance to get their blood flowing, open up their joints, and combat the stress from sitting in a cramped airplane all day. Airports around the country are realizing travellers who are less stressed are more likely to fly in the future.
Chicago Midway International is the most recent airport to open up a yoga room.
“People have choices today where they’re going to fly. They may choose an airport based on food offerings, they may choose an airport because of an amenity, like a yoga room,” said Rosemarie Andolino, commissioner of the Chicago Department of Aviation, who got the idea for the yoga room after spotting one at San Francisco International Airport.
The two yoga rooms in Chicago airports cost about $75,000, and are part of a series of efforts to spruce up Midway and O’Hare International Airport, Andolino said. In the past two years, O’Hare has added a few spas and its own yoga room, which has proved popular, she said. Another spa is being planned for Midway.
The yoga room at San Francisco is a 150-square-foot yoga studio, and when it opened, it was the first of its kind. Located in Terminal 2, the yoga room allows travelers a place where they can reflect, relax, and rejuvinate.
“When we began to remodel Terminal 2, one of our goals was not just to bring the glamour back to air travel, but to also make the entire experience less stressful and more enjoyable,” said San Francisco Airport Director John L. Martin. “With the opening of the Yoga Room, SFO has taken another giant leap forward in providing our travelers the opportunity and space to relax and decompress on their own terms.”
To assist travelers, the Airport placed on all directional signs that indicate the location of the Yoga Room using a unique pictogram of a stylized image of a person in the Lotus position.
Following in SFO’s footsteps, Burlington International Airport in Vermont opened up their yoga room in January 2013. The yoga room was sponsored by Evolution Yoga in Burlington. Area businesses in Burlington came together with Evolution yoga and donated funds for the airport yoga room to be built.
Do you know about an airport with a yoga room? Let me know in the comments, and I’ll update the article!