7 inspiring mega-yoga events around the world

Yoga festivals like Wanderlust are getting bigger and hotter each year.

But in addition to the multi-day, music-yoga extravaganzas, day-long yoga events that draw thousands at a time are debuting around the world.

This year alone, mega-yoga classes were held in Toronto and New York City to Paris and Madrid. (Some are even happening this weekend in Dallas and Barcelona.)

We gathered the most incredible shots from these mega-yoga events (in no particular order) for a taste of the yoga inspiration that comes with doing your sun salutations en masse. Check them out now!

Did you attend another giant yoga class this year? Tell us, in the Comments below!

Photo: The Lole White Yoga Tour at the Grand Palais in Paris

New York CitySolstice in Times Square: Athleta Mind Over Madness Yoga

Every year on the Summer Solstice, the now famed annual day of yoga in Times Square challenges practitioners to find stillness amid flashing lights, Jumbotron ads, honking horns, and thousands of amused tourists. This summer, the yoga royalty Rodney Yee and Colleen Saidman Yee taught the evening class. Approximately 16,000 people took class throughout the day.

ParisLole White Yoga Tour

On September 1, Colleen Saidman Yee (who’s obviously a popular mega-yoga event instructor) taught this 4,000-person class in the Grand Palais on the Champs-Elysees. The event marked the last event in an international mega-class tour the brand made this year, staging huge classes in Salt Lake City, Montreal, and…

TorontoLole White Yoga Tour

About 2,000 Canadians got together in downtown Toronto for this leg of the apparel brand’s mega-yoga tour on June 22, taught by Grace Dubery.

BarcelonaFreeYoga Barcelona

Last year 1,200 people attended Lauren Imparato’s largest ever yoga class. “In fact, at this moment when the photo was taken, I actually opened my eyes and saw the group for the first time. All I could feel and think was pure excitement and pure gratitude,” says the founder of I.AM.YOU in New York City. Imparato’s teaching it again this weekend, with 3,000 people expected.

DallasOne Love Dallas

This Texas city’s coming together of the yoga community is all about charity. In 2012, it raised over $60,000 for Seane Corn’s Off the Mat, Into the World. It hit the Annette Strauss Artist Square AT&T Performing Arts Center today (Saturday, Sept. 28) with a handful of local instructors, and is on track to raise the same amount. The event is also being replicated all over the world.

Photo: Anja Schlein Photography

MadridFree Yoga Madrid

Lauren Imparato also taught 1,900 people in this other Spanish city last summer. “For this one we had our Resident Mixologist spinning live on stage with me, which was, in a word, epic,” she says. The New York yogi went on to bring her mega classes to Panama and Ibiza, too.

White PlainsGet on Your Mat for Mental Health

In June, Westchester transformed its shopping hub into a gigantic yoga class, led by star teacher Sadie Nardini. The world’s oldest yoga teacher, Tao Porchon-Lynch, led a morning meditation at the event, which was hosted by the Mental Health Association of Westchester County.

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