Times Square Yogathon 2017 is June 21

Celebrate the Summer Solstice in Times Square, doing warrior pose and downward dog with a few thousand of your closest friends.

Classes are FREE, but registration is required to ensure space. And you must bring the ticket with you, either printed out or on your phone or tablet, for admssion. That’s different than past years, when participants could just show up and hope for a spot to spread a yoga mat. Simply, the crowd became unmanageable, interfering with theater goers, shoppers and office workers. This year the solstice Yogathon is on a Wednesday, which means lots of pedestrians headed to and from theater matinees.

SEE ALSO Where to eat in Times Square at locally-owned and family-owned restaurants and avoid the national chains eating up the real estate.

Times Square Yogathon is one of the largest Solstice events in the world, celebrating the longest day of the year at events around the world.

Also different this year is that what most of us still call Yogathon supports two local yoga charities, and participants are asked to donate what they would pay for a yoga class. All proceeds will be split evenly between –

Bent on Learning has been teaching yoga to children in New York City public schools during the school day since 2001, giving kids the tools they need to be healthier, happier and better prepared for academic and personal success. They serve 3,500 students every week, (20,000 kids to date), and strive to reach as many students as possible.

Exhale to Inhale has been bringing the healing and grounding tools of yoga to survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault since 2013. Exhale to Inhale’s trauma-trained yoga teachers visit more than a dozen domestic violence shelters and community centers in NYC each week, with the goal of bringing yoga to 1,000 survivors this year.

Even if you don’t participate in Mind Over Madness, you can donate to one or the other or both charities on their websites.

Here’s the class schedule:

7:30am – 8:30am – With Douglass Stewart

Douglass Stewart has been teaching yoga since 2000, receiving his certification through the ISHTA Yoga system founded by Alan Finger. He co- wrote a yoga curriculum for The Reconnection and has traveled around the world to help implement it. He teaches at the ISHTA Center and Yogaworks and at Kripalu in the Hudson Valley, and has volunteered a yoga class at the LGBT Center for more than 15 years. He is the cofounder of this event.

9:30am – 10:30am – With Sarah Finger

Sarah Platt-Finger is the co-founder of ISHTA Yoga and the private yoga teacher of Deepak Chopra. She teaches trainings, workshops, and retreats internationally with her husband, Yoga Master Alan Finger. She is a featured teacher on Yoga U Online as well as Jiyo, a new health and wellness digital platform, and serves on the Board of Directors for Exhale to Inhale, the non-profit organization that teaches yoga to survivors of domestic violence, which this event is helping support.

11:30am – 12:30pm – With Catherine Gignac

Catherine represents Aerie at pop-up events across the country as a power vinyasa yoga instructor and as manager of Aerie Digital Creative. In 2012, she was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, an auto-immune condition, and uses and teaches modifying diet and yoga practice to lead a healthier and happier life despite physical ailments.

1:30pm – 2:30pm – Bikram Yoga with Jen Lobo and Donna Rubin

Native New Yorker Jen Lobo Plamondon partnered with Donna Rubin in 1999 to establish NYC’s first Bikram Yoga studio. 17 years and 4 locations later, they continue to practice and teach with the same love of yoga as in the studios’ inception, including the mental and physical benefits of yoga ) in maintaining a calmer approach to parenting.

3:30pm – 4:30pm – With Aditi Shah and Rachel Cohen

Aditi is the creator and original founder of The Yoga Department, a NYC based corporate wellness company, a mentor at Yoga Vida and a lead volunteer for the East Coast arm of the non-profit organization Yoga Gives Back. She is also a speaker and advocate for meditation and mindfulness, and a contributor to and ambassador for Aloha. Rachel founded the Yoga and wellness based companies The Yoga Department & The Blue Moon Collective.

5:30pm – 6:30pm – With Colleen Saidman Yee and Rodney Yee

Rodney co-founded Piedmont Yoga Studio in Oakland, California, in 1987, and is the creator of dozens of yoga DVDs through Gaiam. He is the author of “Yoga: The Poetry of the Body” and “Moving Toward Balance.” Colleen graduated from Jivamukti’s Yoga Teacher Training program in 1998 and is the owner of Yoga Shanti in Sag Harbor, New York. Together, they created and are featured in Gaiam’s online yoga club. Rodney and Colleen are Co-Executive Directors of Donna Karan’s Urban Zen Integrative Therapy Program. They teach workshops, retreats, and teacher trainings worldwide.

7:30pm – 8:30pm – With Lauren Taus and DJ Tasha Blank

Lauren helps her clients develop self-esteem, clarity, and the courage to walk along paths of personal fulfillment through the mind-body connection. She teaches at some of NYC’s top studios including Soho House, Equinox, and Pure Yoga and also leads global retreats and workshops.

This video of what it looked like in a recent year: