Goodness of yoga + positive paws = Pawga!

Dog Yoga – now that’s something new!

Pawga is a pet yoga experience. At Pawga, we practice yoga with puppies from the shelter. In the olden days, many poses in yoga were derived from animal behaviours and poses. Today, we add a twist to yoga by making it more accessible for your furry friends and bringing them into yoga practice. Practicing yoga with pets or even spending time with animals help humans relax and release endorphins in their head. In short, it’s a stress buster mixed with unconditional love from pets.

The story behind glory

Pawga was started by three friends, Swathi, Subhashree and Sinduja who came together and dared to dream. India needed to rethink how it looked at adoptions and rescue puppies. The wheels of change started in 2020 at Pawga’s first event at the Blue Cross of India in Chennai. Based on the massive response to the first event, Pawga pioneered the way for puppy yoga in India.

Every dog is the same irrespective of the breed; they are capable of showering you with immense love and affection. It’s just that when you adopt from a shelter, you not only help provide the dog a forever home, but you also help lessen the burden of the shelter.

Bringing a ‘paw’sitive change

Dogs and cats do not practice yoga at these sessions. They are free to roam around as per their liking and are always chasing cosy lap time and cuddle-ups with their new found human friends. Usually, it is pups and kittens who are running around when humans are doing yoga. But we do have older dogs for second chance adoption from time to time. With research we understood that human interaction is a lot more important for puppies.

Pawga aims to bridge the gap between human and animal welfare. While spending time with animals helps humans leave their stress behind, the animals, in return, can avoid early-stage depression by spending quality time with humans.

Wagging tails and happy smiles – its worth all the challenges

The puppies are only a few months old as this is the ideal time to get them adopted. Pawga acts as an experiential adoption drive, letting people interact and play with puppies before taking them home. We don’t force adoptions because we understand it’s a lot of work. But if someone is 100% sure about taking care of a pet, we encourage them to take these puppies.

Redefining happiness, one session at a time

As soon as one enters Pawga, about twenty tiny puppies run toward you. Some play with you, while some look for warm laps to nest within. In the next sixty minutes, your life will change in indescribable ways. Pawga is more of an experience that needs to be witnessed to be understood.

All the puppies are up for adoption, and a portion of the ticket proceeds go towards
the welfare of animals at the shelter.

Grateful to a great response

The response has been more than what we expected. Initially we did get alot of refusals and people questioning why puppies should be included in yoga but a majority of the responses have been positive. Once people try Pawga they also tend to see how it is bigger than life in a way.

In the last two years, we have been able to grow a community of 35000+ like-minded animal lovers who have helped us create a change in adoptions, and today Pawga is across multiple cities, helping any shelter that

needs its help. We are across Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Trivandrum, Kochi, and soon to be in many other places.

Pawga has helped raise money for shelters and also helped increase adoptions. Most importantly, over these two years, we have seen a massive shift toward people wanting to adopt more and more indie breeds or spend more time with them.