It really seems like this happens to me more than once a year, but today, checking my bank statement in time for the weekend, I was blindsided by my gym’s “annual maintenance” fee. It was terrible, and brought up a lot of questions, like why something as important exercise is so unaffordable, why people (and businesses) are so cruel and deceptive, and why my lower back never feels quite right (blogging every day is the answer to that last one). All questions that can be resolved by heavily discounted yoga classes.

Which are actually surprisingly numerous, given how crazily expensive just about everything else seems to be. Because people really do believe in this stuff (and sometimes have the best interests of strangers at heart?), Brooklyn has quite a few yoga studios that either offer marked-down beginners courses or operate on a gentle “suggested donation” policy. Meaning, then, that even if you’re broke you can still do something good for yourself, and that not every institution is run by monsters, necessarily. Just Planet Fitness.