Who Are Erin & Matt Sampson?

For over fifteen years, our lives were defined by a beautiful, rhythmic split: autumns in the jungles of Costa Rica and winters and summers in the Colorado Rockies.

What started as a modest yoga journey in a Colorado home yoga studio in 2008 eventually grew into Five Parks Yoga – a global community of over 350,000 students. We raised our kids between the rugged peaks of the Rockies, the Pool Decks of the Colorado Front Range, and the sun-soaked Pacific shores of Costa Rica, but if you were to look behind the lens of those serene sunset flows, those perfectly crumbly waves and the competition pools you’d see a story built on grit, perseverance, trial, and a whole lot of “showing up” when things didn’t go as planned.

In the early days, we weren’t sure if anyone would even come along for the ride with us. We still remember the sting of our very first yoga retreat, where exactly zero people signed up. We remember the steep learning curve and logistics of moving a family of five to Tamarindo, and the chaotic beauty of filming yoga classes while howler monkeys shouted from the trees and iguanas dropped “surprises” on the deck. Matt traded theater stages for jungle “studios,” lugging sliders, cameras and monitors through the sand to capture the magic, while Erin learned to find her peace through rain, wind, and the messy reality of life on camera.

Five Parks Life is the next evolution of that honesty. It’s what happens after the kids head off to college and the “half-and-half” life starts to look like a finished chapter. We realized we didn’t just want to repeat the same patterns-we wanted to write a whole new volume.

We are traveling the United States indefinitely, not to “sell” a lifestyle, but to truly live one. We are out here to film, to work, to explore and play, and to finally meet the community that has been practicing with us for over a decade. And we know you all want to meet the real star of the show, Rindo, our mini golden doodle.

This journey is about searching for the most incredible natural “backyards” in the country to film the high-quality classes you’ve come to expect on YouTube, and hosting meetups along the way to give real-life high-fives & hugs to the students who have become our global family. (YOU!)

This adventure is also a deeply personal reclamation. Like many of you, the years following 2020 led us through some dark caverns – navigating health scares, weight struggles, and the heavy lifting of overcoming the habits and addictions that can take hold when life feels heavy.

This is our moment to step back into the light. It is a celebration of a healthy body, a resilient mind, and a revised vision for what it means to be “home.” And we’d like to share all of that with you.

On this site, we’re pulling the curtain all the way back. Having worked side-by-side since we were twenty years old—and having not received a paycheck from “the man” in over thirty years—we want to show you how the magic is made. HINT: There’s very little magic involved. You’ll find the technical “how-to” of our mobile production studio, the honest reality of living and working in a few hundred square feet (especially when the weather is bad), and the stories of the people & places who inspire us along the way.

We believe that life is meant to be lived intentionally and to the deepest level possible. We hope these stories inspire you to find the beauty right where you are and give you the courage to start your own Volume Two, no matter what bend in the road you’re currently navigating.

We’re so glad you’re on this road with us.

— Erin & Matt

p.s. If you want to hear the story of our courtship at summer camp, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter! We’ll let you know when that video comes out 🙂