portmanteaus

People Are Doing Yoga in the Snow and You Won’t Believe What They’re Calling It

What your face might look like, doing snowga.
What your face might look like, doing snowga. Photo: Mallivan/Getty Images

Courtney Rubin reports in the New York Times that organized groups of yoga types are doing their yoga thing outside in fields of snow. You won’t believe the name they thought of for it. It’s snowga.

Snowga often accompanies a warm-up introduction. In Montana, for example, snogis snowshoe to a field to stretch. A lodge in Stowe, Vermont, encourages skiing. They call their practice Stowega. It’s all, reportedly, very fun, except sometimes snowgis sink into the powder. In the words of one snowga instructor from north-central Washington: “Then you get stuck.”

Speaking of stuck, is there any place left for the yoga portmanteau after snowga and broga? Well, yes, but it’s a very desperate situation, similar to doing yoga in a frozen meadow. According to a rhyming dictionary, remaining nicknames include: crowga (bird-watching yoga), doughga (for yoga in a bakery), Bordeauxga (yoga, but in a vineyard), Henry David Thoreauga (yoga, but done with a lot of personal independence), Van Goghga (ear-wounding yoga), and Status Quoga (for keeping it all the same). Prepare your trend reports, please.

People Are Doing Yoga in the Snow