Oct 27, 2016 4 min read

They say one of the best ways to stay young through middle age is to get out of your comfort zone. To that end, I plunked down my 20 bucks and prepared to try my first aerial yoga class.

What could be more relaxing and soul opening than swinging in a loopy swath of fabric? The advertisement promised this yoga would open my joints, tighten my core and bring relief from stresses.

Perfect. Let’s go.

We began by making a narrowish swing out of the fabric and leaning forward onto it. Piece of cake, I thought. We used to do this on playground swings all the time. You sway with head down and arms and legs reaching out.

Now, the instructor said, reach down and touch the floor with your hands and feet, making an upside-down “V.” Here I had to choose: I could touch either my feet or my hands but not all four. The teacher brought me a booster; my hands could reach it, but now I could not breathe – the sling fabric was strangling my diaphragm. I returned to freeform swinging.

Now it was time to make the sling into a chair and pull my legs up through the loop and land my rear end in it. Most days I do not have the upper-body strength to blow-dry my bangs. Instead, I walked around to the front of the swing and tried to sit down; that sucker was swaying all over, and I had to chase it around with my behind before finally landing. My heart rate was now 140 bpm.

OK, now let’s invert.

This is where you lean back and reach your legs up the sides of the sling, wrap your ankles around the fabric, and then backbend into a handstand, putting your hands on the floor. What the heck is preventing me from landing on my head? I retract my legs and swing quietly to myself, wondering how much worse this can get.

Much, it turns out. Now we are to wrap the fabric around our knees, get into a frog configuration and then turn upside down. I look around and am surrounded by what look like very physically fit, relaxed bats. I retreat into my sling, pulling the fabric up around me, and decide this is what it’s like to be delivered by a stork.

The teacher was so nice to me. She offered encouragement, told me to do only as much as I comfortably could, and offered to come and spot me on some of the harder moves. But this had the whiff of hopelessness.

At last, it was time for the final relaxation, the way every yoga class of any kind ends. The aerial version of this has me curled in a fetal position, fully enveloped in the fabric. I find that if I wiggle my lower body I can get the sling to start swaying. When I discover the woman in the sling next to me may be doing the same thing, I fear a mid-air collision and try to stop.

In trying to free my legs from the sling, I entangle myself further. From the outside, this must look like a few pigs fighting in a poke.

“Now you may come out of the sling,” the instructor says. She makes it sound so easy. To extract myself was like unwrapping a mummy. The dismount was not pretty.

It is now the morning after. I am so sore I can barely move. I miss my comfort zone. I think I’ll go back there, and stay awhile.

Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.