WEST LIBERTY — Yoga instructor Gina Lerch pointed out the benefits of the discipline to her students on a recent Saturday morning.

Yoga is a way to promote physical flexibility, mental calmness and balance of both the spirit and the body she told the class of seven on their mats in the pasture at Pinnacle Farms.

Arlo and Ninja didn’t care about any of that. They were only there for the carrots.

Arlo and Ninja are a pair of mini-donkeys and their participation in Lerch’s class has given rise to what she and her friend Natalie Kline call donkey yoga.

Arlo and Ninja don’t perform the downward dog or the plank poses. They wander among the mats, nuzzle students out of their tree poses and accept carrots handed out between yoga instructions.

Kline, whose mother owns Pinnacle Farms, 804 West Liberty Road, usually is more involved in boarding horses and offering riding lessons than watching people assume the plough position in one of her pastures.

But, Kline said, she and Lerch had worked together in an insurance office for years.

“When I saw she got her certification, I figured it would be a fun thing to do,” said Kline about combining mini-donkeys with a yoga class.

Kline said, “I’d always seen how people do yoga with goats. I thought with the peaceful scenery out here, we could try it with the donkeys.”

In goat yoga, goats, usually young kids, interact with yoga students occasionally climbing atop someone in a prone position.

Lerch and Kline both said the advantage of donkey yoga is that Ninja and Arlo aren’t inclined to have any, shall we say, unhygienic actions while interacting with the humans.

So this Saturday, Lerch and her students threw down their mats and beach towels in a fenced enclosure and began to go through yoga positions and breathing exercises. Arlo and Ninja walked among the practitioners, occasionally nuzzling a neck or tasting a shoe or water bottle.

Lerch said, “Once a month during the summer on a Saturday, I’ll have my classes here. Natalie wanted to get some publicity with the farm. For me, honestly, it’s just for fun.”

“I just do basic yoga positions, basic poses. I don’t do anything too intense,” she said.

“I tell people to bring a mat or a towel,” Lerch said. “The donkeys are just hanging around. The yoga lesson lasts from 30 to 45 minutes depending how interactive they (the donkeys) are.”

“They don’t climb on you. They just walk around and wait to be fed carrots. They aren’t shy,” said Lerch. “They are super mellow. They won’t harm you.”

Kline said, “When they see the mats go down, they know treats are in the offing.”

Usually Pinnacle Farms is in the business of offering riding lessons and boarding or renting out horses. Donkey yoga is just a little something extra being offered.

Kline said her mother, Debbie Pantone, bought Arlo first to be a companion for a horse.

Although they are two different species, horses and donkeys can get along very well, and many people choose to keep a donkey as a companion for a horse to prevent the horse from becoming bored or lonely.

Unfortunately, Arlo and his intended companion horse didn’t get along. Pantone said she then bought Ninja to keep Arlo company. These days, when they’re not roaming among yoga students, Arlo, 14, and Ninja, 12, are keeping a pony company in another pasture.

Pantone said, “They’re basically pets. They can pull carts, and they’re companion animals. And they can protect against coyotes.”

Mini-donkeys and donkeys in general are easier to keep than horses.

Kline said donkeys only need their hooves trimmed about three times a year and don’t have to go to an equine dentist as often as a horse.

The yoga students just think Arlo and Ninja are cute.

Brittney Schoonover and her friend Lyndsey Overby, both of West Sunbury, certainly thought so.

Overby also found the landscape around the pasture to be conducive to a successful yoga session.

“It is pretty relaxing to look over the scenery,” she said.

“It’s fitness, but it’s more meditating for me,” said Overby. “It’s the breathing. I leave here so calm.”

She added, “I’m not a horse gal; I’d probably fall off. I’d ride the donkey. We give the donkey carrots, but we try to wait to the end because we want to focus on the yoga.”

But the donkeys were the main focus for Maebi Weaver, 9, of Grove City.

Her mother, Gena Weaver of Grove City who was attending the class with her daughter and niece, Autumn Burkett, 18, of Grove City, said donkeys are her daughter’s favorite animal.

“I saw it (donkey yoga) on Facebook,” Weaver said. “As soon as I saw it, I wanted to surprise Maebi.”

“I love it, and I’m sure we’ll be back,” she added at the end of the class.

The donkeys’ effect was in harmony with the yoga class, Weaver said.

“They just made it a lot less tense, she said. ”You feel like you have to take it seriously; the donkeys make it less serious. It was really connected to nature with the donkeys.”

Austin Hall of Clarion County attended the recent class with his girlfriend, Amber Kunselman.

“Somebody that I used to work with saw it and sent it to me,” he said. Since his girlfriend is a yoga enthusiast, sometimes attending two classes a day, Hall said they just had to check out donkey yoga.

But yoga provides other benefits to Hall besides a chance to interact with a pair of mini-donkeys.

Hall said, “I like the stretches. You can run and work out and all it does is make you tight. You need yoga to stretch,” he said.

Lerch and Kline said the next donkey yoga session is slated for Sept. 24, weather permitting. People can sign up for the class by visiting the Pinnacle Farms Facebook page and posting a message, Kline said.