Now that spring has sprung, it's time to gear up your apartment community activities for residents looking for more opportunities to maintain a healthy lifestyle and get active! One idea to bring your community together and promote a healthy lifestyle is to start a yoga club. Yoga is a popular practice for overall health and relaxation in which the focus is breath control, meditation and posture. There are many benefits to yoga, one being that anyone can do it, regardless of their age, gender or physical limitations. Yoga has both physical and mental benefits as well, such as increased strength, balance, flexibility, concentration and focus, all helping your sleep better at night and have more energy during the day. Offering these benefits to renters through a Yoga club is a great way to promote a healthy lifestyle and increase resident engagement and ultimately resident retention. Check out the steps below to see how you can kick start a yoga club in your community today!

• Evaluate and collaborate. Gauge resident interest by distributing a survey or adding the question into your everyday conversations with residents. If their interest is piqued, collaborate with them to determine ideal meeting times and frequency.
• Find a yoga instructor. Reach out to local yoga studios to find a qualified instructor who would be willing to teach at your location. One of the perks to working locally is that you may be able to negotiate discounts for resident memberships in exchange for driving new business through the studio's doors.
• Add in some perks. Think about offering branded yoga mats, towels or water bottles to residents during each class. Providing participants with free goodies- whether on loan for the class or as a gift- highlights your community as helpful and creates an advertising touchpoint in and outside of the class. Think about all the extra exposure when that yoga mat or water bottle is seen at the studio a few times a week down the street.

Once you get your yoga club up and running, consider incorporating a texting program into your strategy as a way to stay in touch with participants, reminding them about upcoming classes, relaxation tips, etc. 

So there you have it- creating a yoga club is just one simple way to invest in your residents and begin building a sense of community. If this idea doesn't sound like a good fit for your specific community, consider starting a running club or hosting other community events that would be more appealing, such as a book club. What out of the box things have you tried or plan to try to increase engagement?