I spent my weekend in an acro yoga workshop being lifted, spun around and turned upside down. Y2 Yoga, the studio where I practice and teach, hosted Scott Cooper this weekend.
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What is acro yoga? The AcroYoga website describes it as “a blend of the wisdom of yoga, the dynamic power of acrobatics and the loving kindness of healing arts. These three lineages form the foundation of a practice that cultivates trust, playfulness, and community.”
There isn’t much yoga in acro yoga. To me it feels a lot more like partner acrobatics but given my tumbling, cheerleading and stunting history, I think it’s so much fun. I actually had my first experience with acro yoga last fall and can’t say I loved it but this workshop with Scott totally changed my opinion.
One thing I loved about the workshop was that Scott brought two assistants. Clearly, Scott was the base for most of the lifts. Amanda Nash was there to demonstrate the flying aspect of acro and Kelly Leeuwen showed how to accurately and safely act as a spotter. They were all incredibly helpful and made an effort to work their way around the room and help. Scott, Amanda and Kelly’s instructions were extremely clear and they did an amazing job of walking us through the roles of the base, flyer and spotter before sending us to work on our own.
Friday night’s class was focused on mastering basic lifts that would provide a solid foundation to work from. We spent most of Saturday building on what we learned Friday and started to linking things together and smoothing out transitions.
One thing that surprised me was how much I enjoyed the partner aspect of acro yoga given that in my previous experience I was pretty freaked out and couldn’t get into it. I found that I was totally able to trust whoever was basing me and communicate with them in the air to successfully pull off whatever we were working on. I think that part of this was thanks to only working with one or two partners so you really could get in a rhythm with the other person versus shuffling around. It also helped that everyone in our group was a great spotter!
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I was able to breathe, relax, surrender and even laugh a little. That’s pretty big for me! 😉
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I can’t wait to practice all of the things that Scott, Amanda and Kelly taught us this weekend and to start getting more playful and creative with it and build sequences.
Here’s a short clip of Scott and Amanda demonstrating an acro yoga flow. This is just a small taste of what they demoed for us. They were amazing together!
Have you ever tried acro yoga? Is it something you would be interested in trying?
