The Yoga Barn

The Yoga Barn is a large yoga and wellness centre in the Peliatan area of Ubud, on Jalan Sukma Kesuma. It opened in 2007 with two studios, a small vegan café and four yoga classes a day, and has since grown into a campus that runs an average of more than 25 classes a day, with a local team of more than 175 people. It was co-founded by Meghan Pappenheim, originally from New York and a director of the BaliSpirit Group, and I Made Gunarta, an architect who designed its Balinese-style buildings and its riverside studio, the River Dome.

The core of the programme is the daily timetable of yoga, meditation and sound sessions across a range of styles and levels, along with private classes and Ecstatic Dance, a free-form dance session. The studios vary in character. Studio Wayan is open-air with a wide panoramic view, Studio Ketut is fully enclosed and looks out over a lotus pond, Studio Nyoman is a large open-air space used for dance and music events, and the Banyan Tree Studio, the newest, sits beneath a banyan tree. The River Dome is used for aerial yoga and river meditations.

For those who want to go deeper, The Yoga Barn runs 50, 100 and 200-hour yoga teacher trainings, immersions, special workshops and its own retreats. Wellness treatments include Reiki, holistic healing and biodynamic osteopathy, and there is a Watsu pool of 7 by 17 metres, kept at a minimum of 35.5C, which is used for floatation and water therapy sessions. The co-founders also created the BaliSpirit Festival, a yoga, dance and music event.

The Garden Kafe serves food and drinks between classes, and there is accommodation on the campus, including The Nest, a retreat space with rooms upstairs. Class times and prices are published on The Yoga Barn's website and app, and the schedule changes regularly, so check it before you go. For enquiries, the centre lists two phone numbers and a WhatsApp number for messages on its contact page.

The Yoga Barn suits solo travellers, couples and groups of friends, from complete beginners to experienced practitioners. It also has a community side: Gunarta started a reforestation project in 2010 to restore habitat at the Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary and co-founded Yayasan Kryasta Guna, a non-profit environmental, arts and cultural organisation working with young people in Ubud.