Tybee Island yoga class links shorebird poses to coastal conservation

At Mermaid Point, with Black Skimmers resting beyond the dunes, Willets overhead and Sanderlings working the water’s edge, Laurie Kinkel-Dale led a yoga class that felt less like a beach workout and more like field education in motion. The Tybee Yoga & Healing Arts owner and lead instructor paired the practice with Allie Hayser, a shorebird biologist with Manomet Conservation Sciences, turning Tybee Island’s shoreline into a live lesson in why the birds there matter.

Kinkel-Dale built the sequence around bird behavior instead of generic poses. The grounded alertness of the Wilson’s Plover shaped one section, the bold energy of the American Oystercatcher another, while the wave-chasing rhythm of the Sanderling and the curious nature of the Hudsonian Whimbrel gave the transitions their cues. Hayser filled in the ecology behind those choices, weaving in stories from Manomet’s work in the Georgia Bight so the class moved between movement practice, local natural history and conservation outreach.

That approach fits neatly into the Georgia Coastal Bird Ambassador program, the volunteer effort Manomet manages with partners to educate beachgoers on Tybee Island and St. Simons Island. The program is designed to reduce disturbance to nesting and migrating birds such as Piping Plovers and Black Skimmers, and Kinkel-Dale has been part of it since its first year. For Tybee Yoga & Healing Arts, which says it was founded in 2013, the class also reinforced a style of teaching that ties outdoor practice to place. Kinkel-Dale has lived and taught on Tybee Island since 2001.

The stakes behind that kind of programming are not small. Manomet says the Georgia coast hosts more than 300,000 shorebirds each year, and more than half of North American shorebird species have declined by over 50 percent since 1980. The Georgia Bight Shorebird Conservation Initiative, launched in May 2018, was built to address those pressures across coastal South Carolina, Georgia and northeastern Florida through public involvement, volunteer stewardship, surveys and local partnerships.

Tybee’s recent shorebird push has gone well beyond one sunset class. The 2nd Annual Tybee Spring Shorebird Festival ran February 19-21, 2026, hosted by Manomet Conservation Sciences and the Tybee Island Marine Science Center with support from the City of Tybee Island’s Nonprofit Grant Program. Manomet also points to the International Shorebird Survey, started in 1974, as a foundation for this work; more than 100,000 field surveys have fed its long view of shorebird numbers and trends. On Tybee, the yoga mat is becoming part of that same conservation system, not just a place to stretch.