Yoga al Aire Libre: Bringing Spanish-Language Yoga to Ventura County
How a 2025 Yoga Service Grant is helping one teacher build the wellness spaces her community couldn't find anywhere else
Meet Klaudia Paletta, E-RYT and founder of Pink Means Go that hosts the Yoga Al Aire Libre program in Ventura County, CA.
For Klaudia Paletta, this work started with her grandmother and a video call.
In 2020, Klaudia — a first-generation Mexican American and E-RYT — began sharing chair yoga with her abuela over a phone app to help with mobility and stress. It was a small, personal practice.
But it revealed something Klaudia couldn't unsee: across the wellness industry, there was almost nowhere for Spanish-speaking students to practice yoga in their own language.
So in 2021, she built one. Yoga al Aire Libre — "yoga in the open air" — brings free, Spanish-language yoga sessions to Spanish-speaking communities across Ventura County, California. A 2025 Yoga Service Grant is helping Klaudia, through her project Pink Means Go, keep those classes free and keep them growing.
A Practice Built in Community, Not Around It
Klaudia has now led more than 1,000 hours of in-person yoga and partnered with multiple organizations to bring Spanish-language yoga to the Latine community she serves. Yoga al Aire Libre isn't a translated version of a studio class — it's built around what her community actually needs: sessions held outdoors, taught entirely in Spanish, and priced at zero dollars.
"My work focuses on and centers our Latine community, because I have seen firsthand the impact that representation in wellness spaces has." — Klaudia Paletta
Yoga al Aire Libre practitioners gather in Ventura County.
Meeting Her Community Where the Barriers Are
Traditional yoga spaces rarely offer classes in Spanish, and the cost of studio classes puts wellness further out of reach for many of the families Klaudia works with. Her students have told her plainly what's been missing.
"No hay espacios así para nuestra comunidad, Klaudia nos tiene mucha paciencia, y nos apoya." ("There are no spaces like this for our community — Klaudia has so much patience with us, and supports us.")
Language isn't the only barrier Klaudia has had to design around. Many of the community members she serves aren't active on social media, so outreach that works for most grant partners doesn't reach her students at all.
"We have noticed that our community members are not on social [media]," Klaudia explained, "and have been using printed flyers and postcards to share about our classes. We've also partnered with two local high schools to help us reach more parents to have them join our program."
A Yoga al Aire Libre class gathers in a Ventura County park.
The Impact, in Her Students' Own Words
One student wrote in after a recent class:
"Quedé encantada de la clase hoy, de verdad qué placer tan grande de conocerla, muy buena su clase." ("I loved today's class — it was truly such a pleasure to meet you, your class is very good.")
Another shared how the practice has reshaped her life over time:
"Bendecida y agradecida de haber integrado la yoga en mi vida. Y la oportunidad de disfrutar de todos sus beneficios. Como el elevar mi autoestima, amar y consentir mi cuerpo, sanación, aceptar mis dichas y mis derrotas, perdonarme, dormir mucho mejor, ver diversas situaciones con más claridad y positivismo, cuidar mi alimentación, sentirme apoyada y empoderada con mi gran comunidad de yogi's." ("Blessed and grateful to have brought yoga into my life, and for the chance to enjoy all its benefits — raising my self-esteem, loving and caring for my body, healing, accepting both my joys and my defeats, forgiving myself, sleeping so much better, seeing situations with more clarity and positivity, taking better care of how I eat, and feeling supported and empowered by my incredible community of yogis.")
For a community that is rarely reflected in wellness spaces, Yoga al Aire Libre isn't just a free class — it's a space where students see themselves, hear their own language, and are met by a teacher who understands exactly what that absence has felt like.
Closing out a Yoga al Aire Libre session together.
Her Advice to Other Grantees
Asked what she'd tell other yoga teachers hoping to start or grow a service project in their own community, Klaudia kept it simple:
"Stay grounded in your why — why do you want to share yoga with your community — and build those spaces from there. Work with local groups and communities to help you reach out."
Connect with Klaudia
Website: www.PinkMeansGo.com
Instagram: @PinkMeansGo
