Outdoor Yoga in Bend, Oregon: A Local's Guide to Classes

Summer is finally here! Which means it’s time for outdoor yoga classes. This is the first summer that I have seen tons of outdoor yoga classes in Bend… seriously, you can practice yoga outside every day of the week. How do you even choose which ones to attend?

Where can you do outdoor yoga in Bend, Oregon?
Yoga in the Wild at Mt. Bachelor
Yoga in the Park Morning
Yoga on the lawn in the Old Mill District
Yoga at Elk Lake
Brewery yoga
One-off yoga events worth planning around
Forest bathing and yoga hikes
The Bend Yoga Festival
Practicing outside on your own
What to bring for outdoor yoga in the high desert
When is outdoor yoga season in Bend?
Yoga in the snow
FAQ

free yoga class Bend Oregon at Deschutes Brewery

I wrote the first version of this post in 2018, and reading it back was a little bit like finding an old phone. Half the classes on it don’t exist anymore. Two of the venues changed hands. One of the events I was most excited about hasn’t happened in years.

Now that I’m back in Bend, here is a full rewrite.

Outdoor yoga in Bend, Oregon is still one of the best parts of living here — and I say that as someone who has now spent well over a decade practicing, teaching, and hauling a mat around this town. There is something about a high desert morning (or evening for that matter) that a heated studio can’t touch. The air is dry and thin. The light comes in sideways through the pines. You can hear the river.

Below is what’s actually running in the 2026 season, plus the places I go when I want to practice alone. I keep the seasonal section updated each spring, so if you’re reading this in February, scroll to the evergreen parts and bookmark the rest.

Where can you do outdoor yoga in Bend, Oregon?

Outdoor yoga in Bend runs roughly June through September and falls into four categories: mountain-top classes at Mt. Bachelor, donation-based flows in city parks and at breweries, weekday morning classes on studio lawns in the Old Mill District, and lakeside classes up the Cascade Lakes Highway. There are also guided yoga hikes and forest bathing walks for people who’d rather move through the landscape than sit still in it.

Prices range from free to about $25, and several classes run on a sliding scale or donation basis. Nearly everything is all-levels. You bring your own mat.

Here’s the detail on each.

Yoga in the Wild at Mt. Bachelor

The one to do if you only do one. Yoga in the Wild is a free, one-hour, all-levels yoga class held mid-mountain at Mt. Bachelor on select evenings from July through September. You need a scenic chairlift ticket or pass to get up there, and you need to sign a resort waiver, but the class itself costs nothing.

You ride the lift up to Pine Marten Lodge, follow the signs, and practice in a natural amphitheater at 7,775 feet with the Cascades laid out in front of you at twilight. I have practiced in a lot of beautiful places. This one is so unique and genuinely hard to beat.

A few things I’d tell a friend before she went:

Load the lift early. There’s a max of 16 people on the pad, and it fills. If you arrive right at start time you’ll be practicing off the pad on the dirt — which is fine, and plenty of people do it, but bring a thicker mat if that’s your plan.

It is colder up there. The base lodge sits at 6,300 feet and Pine Marten is another 1,400 feet above that. The mountain runs ten to fifteen degrees cooler than town. Bring a sweatshirt you can pull on for savasana, because you will want it the second you stop moving.

Check before you drive out. The class is weather-dependent and gets cancelled in bad conditions. The summer mountain report is the fastest way to confirm, or you can check in at the Mountain Gateway Ticket Office when you arrive.

The series is taught by Mobility Duo, and the sequencing is built for outdoor athletes — a blend of vinyasa and hatha aimed at the hips, shoulders, and low back that mountain biking, hiking, and splitboarding beat up. If you’ve been riding all summer, your body will thank you.

Remaining 2026 dates: August 27, September 3, September 17 Cost: Free with a valid scenic lift ticket or pass Tip: Buy the scenic lift ticket online in advance for the lowest price. If you’re going to more than a couple of sessions, the scenic lift season pass pays for itself fast. A current Mt. Bachelor season pass, Ikon pass, or all-mountain bike park pass also gets you up. Bonus: The lift ticket is good for a round trip, but you’re allowed to hike down instead. Do that at least once.

Yoga in the Park

Yoga in the Park is a donation-based outdoor flow held Wednesday evenings from 6 to 7 p.m. at the northwest corner of Pioneer Park, with a Friday morning session at Columbia Park on select weeks from 9 to 10 a.m. Suggested donation is $5 to $10, all levels are welcome, and you sign up online ahead of time.

It’s set to music, it’s a good time, and it’s the cheapest way to practice outside in this town.

Pioneer Park is right on the river just north of downtown, which means you can walk to coffee afterward and make a morning of it. Bring your own mat — the grass is soft but it’s still grass.

Old Mill yoga class with Free Spirit Yoga

Morning yoga on the lawn in the Old Mill District

Free Spirit Yoga + Ninja + Play runs an all-levels outdoor yoga flow five mornings a week from 9:15 to 10:15 a.m. — Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays — on the grass along the Deschutes River in the Old Mill District. The 2026 season runs May 25 through September 12. Drop-in is around $22.

This is the option for people who want outdoor yoga to be a habit rather than an event. Five mornings a week is enough that you stop deciding and just go, which is honestly the whole trick. The sequencing is all-levels and built around strength, endurance, and flexibility rather than anything fancy, and you’re standing on the Deschutes River Trail the moment you roll up your mat.

The studio is at 320 SW Powerhouse Drive, Suite 150, but the class itself is out on the lawn — if it’s your first time, give yourself a few extra minutes to find the group.

Right now (through September 30, 2026): Free Spirit is running an Old Mill District 25th anniversary special — the code FREESPIRIT25OFFSALE takes $25 off adult yoga 10-packs. If you were going to buy a pack anyway, buy it in September.

They also run occasional sunset yoga and reflection events in the Old Mill, which are worth watching their calendar for.

Yoga at Elk Lake

R’oming Yoga runs a 60-minute all-levels vinyasa class at Elk Lake Resort on Saturday mornings from 10 to 11 a.m. during the summer, out on the Cascade Lakes Highway about 45 minutes from town. Tickets are $25, and — this is the part people miss — that price includes the $20 Elk Lake Resort parking fee for the duration of class.

If you only have room for one drive-out-of-town practice this summer, I’d argue for this one over anything in city limits. Elk Lake sits at about 4,900 feet with South Sister and Bachelor right there across the water. It’s the kind of place where you finish class and just sit for a while because leaving seems like a bad idea.

A few practical notes:

The parking fee is worth understanding. Your ticket covers parking during the class. If you want to stay afterward and swim, paddle, or eat at the resort — and you should — expect to pay the $20 separately. Budget for it and make a day of it rather than rushing back down the mountain.

Have your ticket ready at the parking entrance. They check on the way in.

Bring your own surface. A mat, a towel, or a blanket all work. Bring water.

Missie Wikler, who runs R’oming, is a former field biologist and a Forest Therapy guide certified through the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy, with 500-plus hours of yoga training. That background shows up in how she teaches outside. It’s not a studio class relocated to a pretty spot.

Remaining 2026 dates: August 29, September 5 Cost: $25, parking included during class

Brewery yoga

The Namaspa Foundation runs a community yoga class at Bevel Craft Brewing on Sunday mornings from 11 a.m. to noon during the summer. It’s a $10–$25 sliding scale donation, and the donation includes a drink. Bring your own mat — they have a few loaners onsite, but not many.

This is the one I’d send someone to who’s nervous about all of it. Sliding scale means you pay what you can without a conversation about it. It’s an hour. There’s a beverage at the end. Nobody is going to look at you.

And the money goes somewhere real: the Namaspa Foundation uses it to bring yoga and mindfulness to people who don’t otherwise have access to it — local youth, seniors, unhoused folks, and people who are incarcerated. Practicing yoga at a brewery on a Sunday morning is a fairly small thing. Funding someone’s practice inside a jail is not.

2026 season: Sundays through August 30 Cost: $10–$25 sliding scale, includes a beverage Where: Bevel Craft Brewing, 911 SE Armour St., Ste. B, in the Larkspur neighborhood on Bend’s east side

On the other breweries: people ask about this a lot, so to save you the searching — I couldn’t find a confirmed 2026 outdoor yoga series at Crux, GoodLife, Worthy, Van Henion, Silver Moon, or Bend Brewing. Crux and GoodLife both have big grassy lawns and would be obvious venues for it, so it’s worth watching, but nothing is scheduled that I can point you to. (One note if you’re working from an older list: Boss Rambler has closed.)

And if someone tells you about yoga on the Deschutes Brewery lawn, that’s off Shevlin-Hixon Road behind the brewery at 901 SW Simpson Ave, not at the downtown pub. People get this wrong constantly.

One-off yoga events worth planning around

Beyond the weekly classes, Bend runs a steady trickle of ticketed one-off outdoor yoga events — farm sessions, sunset practices, sound baths, full moon flows. These don’t repeat on a schedule you can memorize, so the move is to check the Source Weekly’s Yoga + Meditation event listings every few weeks in summer.

The one I’d point at right now:

Sunset Yoga and Sound Bath at Tumalo Lavender — Friday, September 18, 6:30 to 8 p.m., $45. A guided yoga practice out in the fields, followed by a sound bath, finished with lavender lemonade from the farm. Tumalo Lavender is at 19825 Connarn Road, about twenty minutes northwest of town.

I love everything about this one: it’s ninety minutes, it’s outside, and the second half asks nothing of you. You practice, and then you lie down in a field while someone else does the work. For a lot of women I know, that second part is the harder skill.

Peak lavender bloom is late June into July, so a September session is past the purple-fields postcard moment. Go anyway — the light out there in September is better than the flowers.

Forest bathing and yoga hikes

If sitting on a mat outside isn’t quite what you’re after, Bend has guided options that move you through the landscape instead. R’oming Yoga leads forest bathing walks and yoga hikes that combine hiking, guided sensory practice, and yoga in a single outing, and there are several other practitioners running shinrin-yoku sessions at Shevlin Park. R’oming’s public dates are limited and they do a lot of private and custom bookings.

Forest bathing often gets dismissed and I want to push back on that a little. The research on time in forested environments and nervous system regulation is real — measurable drops in cortisol, blood pressure, and sympathetic activity. It isn’t magic. It’s your body responding to an environment it evolved in. If you’ve been running hot for months, two slow hours under the pines will do more for you than another hard class.

The Bend Yoga Festival

The Bend Yoga Festival is a four-day, community-centered festival held each June in downtown Bend, with outdoor sessions in Drake Park along the Deschutes. The 2026 festival ran June 11–14 with headliners including Amy Ippoliti, Tiffany Cruikshank, Gina Caputo, and Kia Miller.

It’s one of the few festivals I recommend without caveats. The programming is curated rather than padded, the 2-day and 3-day passes are offered on pay-what-you-can pricing, and the whole thing is deliberately built for beginners as much as for people who’ve been practicing for twenty years. Ambuja Yoga has been proud to sponsor it.

If you’re planning a trip to Bend around yoga, plan it around June.

Practicing outside on your own

You do not need a class. Some of my best practices here have been on a towel, alone, before anyone else was awake.

Smith Rock State Park — the most dramatic place in Central Oregon to unroll a mat, and about 40 minutes north of Bend near Terrebonne. There’s no regular public yoga class out there that I can currently point to, but nothing stops you from finding a flat spot above the Crooked River and practicing with the spires in front of you. Sunset is the reason to go. A day-use permit is required — as of January 2026 the annual pass is $60 for Oregon residents and $75 for out-of-state, available at the Welcome Center or online, and the park is open dawn to dusk. A Day Pass is just $10 per vehicle. Dogs on leash. Go on a weekday if you can; the parking lot is a scene on summer weekends.

Drake Park — huge old ponderosas, the river, downtown two minutes away. Early morning before the dog walkers.

Riverbend Park — big open lawn, easy parking, good for a slow flow while you watch the floaters go by.

Shevlin Park — my pick when I want quiet. Cooler than town under the canopy, and the creek covers road noise.

Pilot Butte — hike up, practice at the top, watch the Cascades line up. Sunrise is the move.

The Cascade Lakes — Sparks, Elk, Hosmer. Worth the drive up the Byway. Bring bug spray in early summer or you will regret it enormously.

Sawyer Park — One of Bend’s best kept secrets. Tuck in for a practice along the riverbank or head up to the large grassy, green field.

A word on etiquette, because Bend gets a lot of visitors: stay on trail, keep off restored riverbank areas, pack out everything, and don’t set up a mat and a speaker in the middle of a busy park lawn on a Saturday. We share these spaces.

What to bring for outdoor yoga in the high desert

Pack a mat, layers, water, sun protection, and something soft to sit on. Bend sits at 3,600 feet and the mountain venues go much higher, which changes a few things about how you should prepare.

A thicker mat or a blanket underneath. Grass, gravel, and volcanic dirt are not studio floors.
Layers you can add fast. Temperatures drop hard the moment the sun goes behind a ridge.
More water than you think. The humidity here is low and the altitude dehydrates you quietly.
Sunscreen and a hat. 250-plus days of sunshine a year is wonderful and also unforgiving.
Bug spray for anything near water in June and early July.
A backup plan for smoke. Wildfire season is a real part of late summer in Central Oregon. Check air quality before an outdoor class in August and September, and don’t push through a bad air day because you already drove out. Your lungs are not being dramatic.

When is outdoor yoga season in Bend?

Outdoor yoga season in Bend runs from roughly early June through late September. A few classes start in May and a few stretch into early October, but the reliable window is summer.

That’s short. It’s part of what makes it feel good — you can’t take it for granted, so you actually go.

But summer isn’t the only option, which brings me to the strangest and best thing on this list.

Yoga in the snow

Wanderlust Tours has run a winter yoga tour that snowshoes into an old-growth forest at night, arrives at a warming hut, and holds a vinyasa practice inside it. Hot tea and hot toddies afterward, then stargazing on the way out. It’s roughly a 1.5 to 2 mile snowshoe with minimal elevation gain, snowshoes are included, and you bring your own mat in a backpack or mat strap. Around $150, recommended for ages 12 and up, with a six-person minimum to run.

I’m listing this with a caveat: the tour page isn’t currently showing an upcoming date. It’s run in past winters as part of their Art in Nature series, and I’d expect it back, but check with Wanderlust directly before you plan around it.

If it does come back, book it. There is nothing else like practicing in a warming hut in the middle of a snowy forest.

One naming note, because it causes real confusion: Wanderlust calls this tour “Yoga in the Wild,” which is also the name of Mt. Bachelor’s summer mountain-top series. They are completely different things run by different organizations in different seasons. If you’re searching, add “snowshoe” or “Mt. Bachelor” to tell them apart.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is there free outdoor yoga in Bend, Oregon? Yes. Yoga in the Wild at Mt. Bachelor is free to attend, though you need a scenic lift ticket or pass to reach the class. Several other classes run on donation or sliding-scale pricing — Yoga in the Park is $5 to $10, and the Namaspa Foundation’s community class at Bevel Craft Brewing is a $10 to $25 sliding scale that includes a drink. If cost is the barrier, the sliding-scale options are designed so you pay what you can without having to explain yourself.

Do I need to be experienced to take an outdoor yoga class in Bend? No. Nearly every outdoor class in Bend is billed as all-levels, and outdoor classes tend to draw a mixed crowd — visitors, first-timers, people who haven’t practiced since college. You will not be the only beginner on the lawn.

Do I need to bring my own mat? Yes, for almost all of them. Bring your own mat, and consider a thicker one or a blanket to put underneath if you’re practicing on grass or dirt. A few venues have a small number of loaner mats, but don’t count on it.

What should I wear to outdoor yoga in Bend? Layers. Bend mornings and evenings are cool even in July, and the mountain venues run ten to fifteen degrees colder than town. Bring a sweatshirt for the end of class, when you stop generating heat and immediately notice the temperature.

How do I get to Yoga in the Wild at Mt. Bachelor? Ride the scenic chairlift from the base area to Pine Marten Lodge, then follow the directional signs to the class location. Load the lift early — capacity on the yoga pad is limited to 16 people, and you’ll want time to walk over and set up before class starts.

Is outdoor yoga in Bend cancelled for weather? Sometimes. Mountain classes at Mt. Bachelor are weather-dependent and cancelled in poor conditions — check the summer mountain report before driving out. Park and lawn classes are more likely to run rain or shine, but wildfire smoke in late summer can cancel anything. Always check before you go.

Can I bring my kids or my dog to outdoor yoga in Bend? It depends entirely on the class. Some community classes welcome well-behaved kids and dogs; festival sessions and mountain-top classes generally don’t. Check the individual listing rather than assuming.

Can you do yoga at Smith Rock? There’s no regular public yoga class at Smith Rock State Park that I can currently point to, but you can absolutely practice on your own there. You’ll need a day-use permit, the park is open dawn to dusk, and sunset above the Crooked River is the reason to make the 40-minute drive from Bend.

Can you do outdoor yoga in Bend in the winter? Not in the usual sense — the regular outdoor class season ends in September. The exception is Wanderlust Tours’ snowshoe-and-yoga tour, which snowshoes into a warming hut in the Cascades for an indoor-in-the-woods practice. Check their site for current dates, as it doesn’t run every winter.

Can you do yoga at Elk Lake or the Cascade Lakes? Yes. R’oming Yoga runs Saturday morning classes at Elk Lake Resort during the summer season, and the $25 ticket covers the resort’s parking fee for the length of the class. You can also simply drive up the Cascade Lakes Highway and practice on your own at Elk, Sparks, or Hosmer — just check that the Byway is open, since it closes seasonally with snow.

When is the Bend Yoga Festival? The Bend Yoga Festival is held each June in downtown Bend, with outdoor sessions at Drake Park. The 2026 festival ran June 11–14. Passes go on sale months in advance and pricing steps up as the date approaches, so plan early.

If you want more than an hour

Here’s the thing about outdoor yoga in Bend: it’s an hour. A beautiful hour, and I’ll take it every week I can — but you come down off that mountain and drive home and open your laptop.

What I’ve watched, over 40-plus retreats and 700-plus women, is what happens when you get more than an hour. When you get four days outside with no schedule to keep and nobody needing anything from you. Something loosens that a single class can’t reach.

We run retreats here in Oregon every summer, in the same landscape this whole post is about — hikes, real meals, deep sleep, and a lot of laughing.

You don’t need to arrive rested to come. That’s rather the point.

Explore our Oregon retreats →