On antigravity and aerial yoga
Juliet Kinsman explains these floaty styles
Fantastically accessible, both antigravity and aerial yoga classes are a fun entry for anyone at a beginner's level, or nervous they’re not supple enough for a sun salutation in public.
With this out-of-the-box approach, thanks to being held by a suspended, stretchy fabric, mobility is enhanced, and body types that don’t typically lend themselves to graceful poses soon find they can play trapeze artist with elegance.
When I see modern takes on yoga promoted with logos of bulldogs or disco soundtracks, I wonder what the forefathers who developed this movement all those millennia ago would think. Yoga, in all its interpretations, seems always to have been a mishmash of techniques, as much a spiritual system as a set of exercise practices. For those who enjoy it, antigravity yoga and aerial yoga are uplifting offshoots, which still feel in line with the traditional movements — it's just that you're floating.
Aerial yoga started when a hammock was introduced as a prop by Carmen Curtis, and then when Broadway choreographer Christopher Harrison created his system, he called it AntiGravity Fitness. This guided, acrobatic suspending stretching blends yoga poses and Pilates-like moves and feels anything but a gimmick. It’s easy to imagine that by allowing your body to be held, muscles and joints reach new levels of stretching thanks to the stretchy silky support.
These approaches impart the benefits of inversion therapies, meaning they help boost circulation, destress the body's main nerves, decompress the spine, and relieve lower back pain. That will put a skip in your step.
I experienced antigravity yoga at Four Seasons Maldives at Landaa Giraavaru, a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, under the expert guidance of Bhutanese practitioner Saru Tamang. Dangling upside down in my orange hammock, observing a fruit bat in the palms in a similar pose, I thought it might just be the most soul-soothing, stretching experience I’ve known.
As I approached through the silky orange hammocks hanging in the foliage-framed, open-air yoga pavilion, the hammocks looked more like semi-furled courgette flowers than exercise equipment. Suspended upside down, cocooned cosily, I glanced up to see a cute fluffy, ginger fruit bat at the top of a palm tree, contentedly enjoying its breakfast. Watching the biggest of the bats, the Indian flying fox, casually hanging upside down, as was I, I wondered why we don't seek this opportunity more often.
The benefits of yogic inversion and reversing gravity’s effects sends our blood in different directions, giving our cardiovascular, lymphatic, endocrine and nervous systems a healthy massage. Cocooned in a hammock, even the most laptop-arched spines are re-articulated, and vertebrae pinged back into a healthier position in your session of playing low-key circus performer.
Whatever your proportions or level of flexibility, this dynamic yoga-in-the-air satisfyingly lets you reach poses you never knew you could, thanks to being supported by that soft, stretchy hammock.
Even if you're in a city studio rather than floating in a sea breeze, the improved flexibility from an antigravity or aerial yoga session and its guided inversions still reaches parts that other yoga technique moves cannot.
try aerial yoga practices on retreat
You can experience aerial yoga at Four Seasons Maldives at Landaa Giraavaru, and for aerial Pilates, check out Shanti-Som Wellbeing Retreat in Spain. Many retreats offer yoga as an activity – take a look at all our yoga retreats.
