Silk Fitness: Yoga elevated

The fitness equipment was as soft as silk. Ten stretchy, nylon lengths of red, blue or black cloth dangled from the dance-studio ceiling like shimmery, deflated parachutes.

Still, several women in Airotique Movement’s Silk Fitness class in Virginia Beach approached the fabric as though it might bite, or at least spill them onto the floor once they got their rumps into it, or split, or, something.

A couple cast an “I’m-not-sure-that-I-can-do-this” look about the room.

Instructor Cynthia Smith slid to the front of the class and slipped her hands into one of the drapes of silk, which can be tied thin like a rope or splayed wide like a hammock. It was harmless, after all.

The class will be fun, Smith told the participants, and they would begin with several minutes of warm-ups.

“You will be stretching,” Smith warned them, “like you never have before.”

The beauty of “airotique movement” or “Silk Fitness,” the name of the classes Smith has created, is that the movements combine yoga, dance and suspension training with aerial silk. The exercises increase the participants’ flexibility and improve their strength in the body’s “core,” including the abs and lower back, Smith said.

Plus, it looks incredibly cool.

The practice of anti-gravity yoga – as it often is called elsewhere – has been around for years but gained traction when a troupe performed during one of the presidential inaugural balls in 2009. Then singer Pink wrapped herself in aerial silk and twirled high above the Grammy Awards stage last year.

Smith grew up a cheerleader and dancer of all sorts in San Diego and first became enamored with aerial artistry when she saw a Cirque du Soleil performance years ago. When she became a yoga and fitness instructor, she started paying more attention to circus performers, particularly their agility and the beauty they created in the air.

Smith’s job as a flight attendant brought her to Hampton Roads about 20 years ago, and she’s continued to teach yoga and pilates. She married a military man who exercises with suspension training, which added to the fitness regimen she’d been jelling with the silks.

A couple of years ago, she flew to Las Vegas and Atlanta to train with a Cirque du Soleil performer and another expert. She found aerial-exercise equipment and started practicing and offering lessons in her garage. Her yoga and pilates moves were designed for the elasticity and support of the fabric.

The silks are forgiving; they can be lowered or tightened to accommodate a person’s height and can hold several hundred pounds. But they are delicate. A wedding ring can snag them like a pair of pantyhose.

Smith loved the workouts, and so did her students. They said the regimen reminded them of their childhood days when it was acceptable to hang upside down and dangle from tree limbs or tire swings.

She opened a Virginia Beach studio near Oceana last fall. Students keep telling her the same thing about the new exercise.

“It’s beautiful, it’s artistic, it’s liberating,” Smith said.

That was obvious at Smith’s recent Tuesday night beginners class. The women who initially looked at the fabric with fear had warmed up to its possibilities within 20 minutes of stretches.

Smith showed the women how to wrap the silk around their arms and torsos and move into yoga postures. The fabric allowed them to lunge, arch their backs and stretch their legs more deeply than they’d thought possible.

Brigid Kahng anchored one ankle into the fabric, planted the other on her mat and eased into a dangling split.

“This is awesome!” she screamed.

Smith showed the women how to roll a bit of the fabric under their tushes and ease into it to form a hammock. Within minutes, she’d taught them how to weave their legs and arms around the silk and dangle hands-free, then stand and stretch in the fabric, like poised birds.

“That’s another pretty picture,” Smith said, walking among the class. “Remember to be sweet to your feet when you come down.”

As they worked themselves out of their silks, Smith led them through cool-down exercises, such as lying on the floor, gathering the fabric in their hands and doing the easiest pull-ups they’d ever done.

Kahng and a friend stayed after class to work the silks and take photos.

“I get that a lot,” Smith said. “They realize how beautiful and artistic this can be.”

Kahng, who teaches yoga, had learned about the class through an internet coupon but had never heard of the type of exercise before. It was tempting enough for her to give it a try.

Days after the class, she said she was sore but would sign up for more sessions.

“I thought it was great,” Kahng said. “I’m pretty flexible, generally, and it was still definitely challenging. It just pushes you a little bit more, no matter where you are.”

Denise Watson Batts, (757) 446-2504, denise.batts@pilotonline.com