Local studio gives lift with aerial yoga

With the arrival of a new year, a common resolution is to eat healthier and once again begin regular workouts. This year The Source-Yoga 'n More is offering a few fun new ways to exercise, in the form of aerial yoga.

Aerial yoga involves using "silks" or nylon bands to suspend a person off the ground in a deep, relaxing stretch. Participants can "invert" themselves by flipping upside down while suspended, or simply practice their stretches while keeping a foot firmly planted on the ground.

"It's a little more of a structured type of yoga, but it takes a lot of weight off the joints and it's very accessible," said Lauren Jones, owner of The Source-Yoga 'n More and a yoga instructor. "It's a great restorative tool, especially for people rehabbing or those who are injured. For a lot of people, when they hear 'aerial,' they think they are going to be 12 feet in the air, and with the [suspension] yoga you're really not. It's just another tool that we use to help you get more deeply into your poses. It's very nice for any type of meditation you want to use because you're kind of wrapped up in the fabric and swaying light above the floor instead of being on the floor. It's a form of relaxation."

The Source-Yoga 'n More offers two classes: Aerial Fitness Circuit Training and Conditioning and Earth to Air Beginner Suspension Yoga. Aerial fitness is for those looking for a more advanced aerial yoga, while the suspension yoga is possible for all patrons.

"The aerial yoga [Earth to Air Suspension] is very different then the Cirque du Soleil stuff [aerial suspension.] They're two completely different styles of using aerial equipment," Jones said. "The aerial [suspension], you're never very far off the floor, you can always touch with a hand and a foot. You're always somewhere between ankle to mid-thigh in the sling. It's more to enable you to find a balance if you're having trouble balancing. ... It's really for anyone from kids to an older population, any fitness level. You don't have to have ever done anything before to take that. The [aerial fitness] arts is a whole other ballgame."

Jones has been passionate about aerial yoga for years, ever since opening her studio in 2011. She began the exercise more than eight years ago while living in New York City as a way to motivate her son to exercise.

"At the time I was trying to get my son to do physical activity. He just wasn't very enthused about it and he told me if he had to do it, I had to do it, so I put him in gymnastics. ... There was a girl teaching the trapeze and the silks, and I thought, 'Well, that would be more interesting to me than gymnastics,' so I thought I would try that.

"I used to dance a long time ago, so it was nice to kind of start combining more of the dance elements that I had learned into something that was really hard to do, yet really fun and challenging. So that's how I got started into it," Jones said.

Taking on a project as large as installing aerial yoga equipment was not a task Jones jumped into. She decided to use Indiegogo.com, a global crowdfunding site, to gauge her clients' interest in the class.

"We were originally asking for $7,000 and we ended up breaking $11,000, so that enabled us to buy a lot more equipment and gear in addition to creating the structure," Jones said. "We were really surprised."

The Source-Yoga 'n More is the closest place to find this type of yoga without heading to St. Louis or Memphis, Tennessee, Jones said, and it offers a more advanced stretch for participants than they sometimes cannot get from regular yoga.

Jones said the aerial fitness class is a more extensive workout, but that those classes are going to start slow, with some conditioning exercises, for safety purposes.

For the aerial classes, Jones prefers no more than 10 clients per session, which are offered multiple times a week. For times and registration, visit thesource-yoganmore.com.

Jones and her instructors teach a variety of classes, from beginning yoga to ballet, to barre workouts to their other new class, Stand Up Paddleboard yoga.

Stand Up Paddleboard is offered at the Southeast Missouri State University aquatic center beginning Jan. 20.

"We all fall in the water at some point, and that makes it fun. That's an incredibly intense yoga style as well," Jones said.

smaue@semissourian.com

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