Amsterdam, the capital of The Netherlands. Known as a diverse city, with a lot of possibilities. The last decade yoga has been booming there with some of the best yoga studios and festivals in the Netherlands popping up!
The city with all of its history has a great feel to it and has been popular among tourists.
Therefore, if you’d like to travel to Amsterdam, be sure to go on a couple of yoga classes or a festival whenever you have the chance. Here’s a list with my top pick. And if you read on, there are also a couple of secret places you should visit when you are there. Hint: those places will make sure that you can get a cold one after your yoga class.
Spiritual Festivals in the Netherlands
As the Netherlands isn’t that big it’s good to look at some festivals outside of Amsterdam. They’re all maximum an hour away from the capital, so they are easy to reach if you’d like to have a day out of the city (or longer).
Healing Garden (Leiden)
To begin with, there is the Healing Garden festival. It’s situated in Leiden, which isn’t that far away from Amsterdam. It is a bit off-road, so best to have a car with you while going to this festival.
The festival itself isn’t solely based on yoga and has a lot of things to offer, going from meditations to massages. You can find almost everything concerning the spiritual world.
Another great thing is that they also have an amazing children’s program. Which makes it highly suitable to take the whole family.
Here you can find more information about this amazing festival.
BIODANZA TRIBAL GATHERING (WINTERSWIJK)
This one is for all Biodanza enthusiasts. The festival itself is focused on this method, but it also offers some workshops and drum circles as well.
This festival is located at Winterswijk, a small town near the German border. This makes it a bit further away, but you’ll meet a great community there, so definitely worth the visit.
They also have a special program for teenagers. Which makes it even more accessible for families. Normally festivals have some children’s program, but as adolescents are neither adults nor children, they always feel a bit the gap in events like these. This is why this festival is amazing for just everyone!
During Easter weekend you’ll have the chance to connect with other people from a space of love. This festival will take place in Amsterdam and you will have to do the whole festival. There are no day tickets, as they want to give you the whole experience.
At this festival, children aren’t allowed due to the nudity and sexuality that will take place. Of course, you don’t have to participate in all of the workshops, so if you are not fine with going full monty, you don’t have to. the organizers try to make it a sacred place for everyone.
This festival is an absolute must if you are into Tantra and if you happen to pass Amsterdam during this period. If you don’t want to participate in the whole festival, you can also choose to go Saturday evening when they will have a celebration.
YOGA STUDIOS AMSTERDAM
I’ve been to Amsterdam many times before and every time I got there, I wanted to do a couple of yoga classes. Of course, for me, it was quite easy as I’m speaking Dutch and there was no translation required. However, the Dutch are very proficient in the English language and there will be no problem taking a class or two.
This yoga studio has been the best yoga studio in Amsterdam to me, as they are offering small classes in some great studios. I always went to the studio on Ijburg, where I attended Yin yoga, Vinyasa yoga, and Jivamukti yoga.
At that time the studio itself was still new and it looked very professional and neat, same as their yoga instructors. For me, they had a couple of the best yoga classes that I have taken so far. Especially the class from Marco Rodie I enjoyed very much. I had never heard about Jivamukti Yoga and I decided to give it a go-to check it out.
The studios aren’t located in the city center, so you should take public transportation to get there. It’s worth it though and I highly recommend going to this studio.
You can even easily book a class through the MindBody app.
Translated into English this studio is called the New Yoga School. And the founder Johan Noorloos is probably the most popular Yoga Teacher at the moment in the Netherlands.
This studio houses the most popular yoga teachers of the Netherlands at the moment, so if you are looking for a famous rock star, this is the place to be ;). Because of its popularity, this also means that it’s a bit busier and a bit more expensive than other studios though. which is the only downside of it.
But anyway, it’s a great looking place and they also have great workshops to offer if you’d like to attend one of those as well.
It’s been a while that I’ve been to this studio and it’s great to have a look at their website again. Last time they still had a smaller team and only a handful of yoga teachers, while now they have a couple of dozen of them. Which makes it great to have a bit of variation.
What else I loved about this studio is that they also offer free meditations. And they still do this! Great! So, if you are around and you already spent too much money on your trip, you can always decide to go for a free meditation as well!
And another great thing is that they offer mantra singing and Kirtan every once in a while! So be sure that you make it to one of those too if you’d like to sing!
This studio is really in the heart of Amsterdam, so there’s a good shot that you’ll be able to walk over there from your hotel room.
ALTERNATIVE PLACES TO VISIT IN AMSTERDAM
And now, as I promised you, here are a couple of locations that not a lot of people know about, but that is for sure worth the visit! They are always a bit further away from the city as they are more for the local people. But if you’ve got the time, it’s for sure worth passing there and meet some local people from Amsterdam.
DE CEUVEL (AMSTERDAM-NORTH)
De Ceuvel is a creative place where you’ll find some great projects taking place at the moment. They’ve got a couple of houseboats which they transformed into business space for some creative start-ups.
But that’s not why I’m mentioning it here. They have a bar! Yes, there are many bars in Amsterdam, but this one stands-out as they are doing everything in there power to go green all the way. This means that they try to offer you local products that they also try to produce themselves.
And they have more inventive ways of how they want to make this world a better place. Read here all about it!
PLLEK (AMSTERDAM NORTH)
Another great place to visit is this one. I do have to say that it’s best to come here during the summer as they have an amazing sandy terrace! This place is a restaurant, but it’s also a great chill spot where you can relax after a full day of visiting the city of Amsterdam.
The restaurant itself promotes itself with being 75% vegetarian, which makes it a great place to go with everyone you know as they will have something you like for sure.
They also have a stage, so very often there are some great parties over there for you to enjoy. And another good thing is that Amsterdam has a great night schedule for public transport. This way you can get back to your hotel during the weekend!
conclusion
If you haven’t booked for your trip to Amsterdam yet, it might be a good time to do it now! I always recommend going to Amsterdam in May-June or September, as these months are not as busy as the summer months, but still with a chance of good weather.
And of course, there are more great places in Amsterdam to visit. There are so many things to do there that it’ impossible to talk about them all. If you’ve got a great tip for us, please let us know in the comment section down below!
Namastay Wonderful!
