I have come to praise the aeroSling not to fear it.

For years I thought you had to be Hoist Glisten-Schafft, captain of some East European gymnastics team, to get into Studio t3 at Verge Yoga Wayne. As with many people I had become comfortable in my little rut. I liked the peace and quiet yoga where the major motto was “Breathe”.

Plus there were the sinister bondage overtones: belts, latex handles, pulleys and stern commands: ” Find your 100% and hang there until you lose consciousness or I say drop, whichever comes first. ”

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. In this as in most things: I sat in fear of the unknown, describing it to myself even though I’d never been there. One day Cara mentioned taking an aeroSling Core class.

Risk is its own reward. My new motto is: when in doubt, say yes. Even though my muscles are made of dental floss, and my bones feel like they are lead, I found myself in J. Cox’s class last Wednesday night. I have always been fascinated by the word “Core”. It comes from the Latin: “Cor” and means: “The essential part of anything. The vital heart.” And so I decided to go there for an hour, just to see if I had one., a core that is. As a life long typist, I suspected all I had was cold porridge where the abs should be….

J. Cox is a great teacher. She could see me cowering up against the wall, and she made sure to not only tell us what to do, but she showed us too. Don’t worry: there is nothing at all difficult about it. Essentially the web belts just introduce a little de-stabilizing into the body’s connection to the force of gravity. With your feet in the handles even the simplest yoga postures take on an extra dimension of fun: the effort to lift a weight is coupled to the effort to keep everything straight, and so the muscles quiver more than they ordinarily would. And in the shivering motion they require more fuel…. the quivering is good. It is the in-stability that makes you strong.

The effort to be stable builds the strength. And there is music. And you can watch other people shaking and then laugh.

But there is nothing painful about any of it. It is more like a deep tissue work out. You do a few repetitions of every motion, and then you switch something up and move on.

Or at least that is what I thought was happening. After an hour we all said thank you and good night.
I thought it would be a kind of Main Line Spa type of thing, like teeth whitening, essentially for people who wanted to get their guts ready for spring swimming, or some other vain ego reason.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. I changed into street clothes and rode the motorcycle home. I felt lighter and almost giddy, transformed. I am not kidding anymore. It was incredible. The thing it reminded me most of was: that sensation in a winter snowstorm when the power goes off, and the house just becomes radically still: you are never aware of how many appliances were throbbing until they stop. And then you listen to reality, maybe a wind full of snowflakes or the purring of the cat.

I had a powerful desire to meditate for a while and so I did. The relief was overwhelming. Thank you J. Cox.

Night fell over the fields. Night deepened. And then I went to sleep and slept very well.