What's Your Workout: AntiGravity Yoga

I'm instantly attracted to any class at the gym that has the word “yoga” in it. But what if the word “AntiGravity” precedes it?

So here I am at Crunch Fitness in Friendship Heights and I see what looks like sheets hanging from the ceiling. The other students are getting ready for class, jumping in and out of the fabric, a.k.a. "the hammock."

Instructor Autumn Spence announces a laundry list of ailments that would prohibit someone from doing AntiGravity Yoga -- vertigo, recent back or spinal surgery, glaucoma and high or low blood pressure, just to name a few. Sometimes I get dizzy when I stand up too quickly? Does that count?

Autumn instructs us to get in our “womb,” a formation where you’re in the hammock sitting upright. Feet are perched and you’re hidden by the sheet. This is where we do our centering -- just hanging out (literally), taking some deep breaths, quieting our minds. But of course, I can’t even get into my womb. I’m simply kicking the hammock around till I’m sitting on it with my feet dangling. Another woman has to get out of her womb to help me get into mine. This is why I do my yoga safely on the floor.

From there we start to work on our “simple” inversions, placing the hammock at our lower back and then tipping backward so the fabric is holding us up under our bums. Feet up in the air. Head and arms dangling onto the floor. Good thing this baby got back. My rump has no problem holding me up (does that last line count as journalism?), and once you get used to the feeling of being upside down, it all feels pretty good.

From star pose, Autumn tells us to get into monkey. That’s when you stay upside down, but wrap your feet and legs around the top of the hammock.

After simple inversions comes a series of stretches and swings. Putting one foot or knee into the hammock and pushing off on your back leg to do a modified split. We also practice downward facing dog by placing the hammock under our abdomens and reaching feet and fingertips to the floor. The best part -- placing your feet into the sheet and lifting up so you can swing back and forth. Weeeeee!

Of course not everything is fun and games in this class. Autumn has us doing a series of pull-ups and strength-training moves.

Then we go back to being upside down. This time we work on the “coffin series,” where you need to do a front flip in the hammock so that you can hang with your shoulders and feet tucked into the fabric, but you’re facing the ground. I was so freaked out by the flip that I’m not sure if I ever actually made it to that final pose, called the vampire.

We ended with corpse pose, or savasana for all you traditional yogis. This is where you lay back and try not to fall asleep (best part!).

So here’s the thing about this class -- while you’re doing it, it really hurts. Autumn says you get a deep tissue massage when you’re suspending yourself in the air with the fabric. I say its pain. Resting your entire body on strips of fabric does not feel great. My guess is that it goes away after you get used to the class.

Other than that, this was soooo much fun. I couldn’t believe that I was hanging upside down and suspended in the air. I got back to the newsroom and told everyone about this.

One big question I always get when we do these segments: What about the workout? Let’s just say, the next day my upper body was incredibly sore. I was even feeling it in my abs.

Of all the workouts that I've tried out, there’s really only been one that I’ve continued doing on my own. But now I’m plotting. I need to get back to AntiGravity Yoga. If not for the workout, then for this: Autumn says being suspended upside down makes you grow a quarter of an inch taller after class, and if any of you know my actual height (without my 5-inch platforms), then you’d realize why I need this class in my life.


Lauren Dunn is the News4 medical producer.

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