Yoga will return to Vancouver's Dude Chilling Park this summer, thanks to an agreement with the park board to waive permit fees.

The twice-daily, by-donation yoga sessions in the East Vancouver park, which is officially known as Guelph Park, were suspended in May after organizers with Dude Chilling Yoga Collective said they were unable to pay for the required permits.

The new agreement will see classes return sometime in the near future, as soon as the group's instructors have obtained liability insurance, according to the group's founder, Solomon Montijo.

"[I'm] pretty stoked, pretty happy. I had kind of an antagonistic view of them for a while," Montijo said of park board officials.

"But I was really happy that they were supporting the program."

A recreational permit costs $14.47 per hour for non-profit groups, and Montijo estimates it would have cost the collective at least $3,000 to pay for permitting for one season.

Popularity grew

Montijo began holding small classes in the public space in 2014. They grew from just a handful of people in the beginning to more than 20 in a single session, with about a dozen instructors cycling through.

The park board's director of recreation, Donnie Rosa, said the board wanted to make sure the program could continue, but this time with the proper paperwork and insurance.

"Essentially, we know how much the community loves yoga in that park," Rosa said. "Our eventual goal was that they're following our permitting process as everybody else does, but sometimes you need to work with groups to get there."

According to Montijo, the yoga classes may eventually become part of the official parks board program, and Rosa said that is one of several options on the table.

"It's an ongoing conversation. They're happy because we're going to have yoga in the park, the community's happy, and we're happy," Rosa said.