Believe you can fly
Popular partner yoga workshop coming to Ventura
By Michel Cicero 08/20/2009
In an essay for Salon.com about her experience practicing “partner yoga,” Catherine Price wrote: “My dislike of partner yoga started with a stranger’s sweaty thighs.” But her resistance to this intimate form of yoga, which some purists have criticized as not being yoga at all, turned to acceptance as she eventually surrendered to the experience, primarily to save face.
Her reaction to the idea of using her weight, and a partner’s, to stretch her body into heretofore uncharted poses and reach new heights in her yoga practice is not an unusual response and is, according to practitioners, exactly why it’s good not just for the body but for the soul.
Partner yoga, which also involves “flying yoga” (imagine being a kid and having your dad balance you, tummy down, on the soles of his feet), is a form of both exercise and therapy that is gaining popularity across the United States. Not to be confused with “yogic flying,” an extension of transcendental meditation that purportedly results in the body leaving the ground, flying yoga was featured earlier this year in Glamour magazine as the trendiest new incarnation of yoga.
Lynne Okun, a licensed marriage and family therapist who founded Kids Arts in Ventura, is facilitating a flying yoga workshop at the Art Barn in Ventura this weekend for couples and others who’d like to experience something potentially life-altering and fun. “Me and my dad used to do ‘Flying Bird Girl,’” recalls Okun, “and I loved the feeling of confidence it gave me as I naturally learned to relax, balance and fly!”
Okun first encountered flying yoga at a women’s permaculture retreat where she met Sara Laimon who along with her partner David Luke teaches a unique form of yoga called “Koha” that originated in New Zealand. Koha incorporates partner and flying yoga along with Thai massage for a therapeutic effect. “She (Laimon) was asking people if they wanted to fly and said she’d fly all 55 people who were there,” says Okun.
Since then, Okun has incorporated the flying yoga techniques she’s learned into couples and family counseling. “It’s a way of building trust and opening yourself to someone,” she explains. “It’s really heart opening also to get in that position with another person. You’re definitely bonded afterward.”
Though it doesn’t require previous yoga experience or tremendous body strength, it does give the abdominal muscles a workout. But mostly, flying yoga helps to release fears and insecurities and fosters cooperation, co-creativity, courage and connection.
Luke, a New Zealand native, says koha means “gift” or “donation” in Maori, his native tongue. Having first explored yoga as a way to recover from numerous injuries he suffered playing rugby, he now instructs others in the sublime joys of the ancient practice. Luke encourages everyone and anyone to come to the “funshop, not workshop” to experience something he says is so unique it defies description. “It’s a practice of total surrender,” he says. “The actual practice is amazing. It can be very beneficial and therapeutic. Some people feel they’ve been given a new lease on life.”
Are You Ready to Fly? A flying yoga playshop will be held Saturday, Aug. 22 from 7 p.m.to 9:30 p.m. at the Kids Arts Studio, 856 E. Thompson Blvd., Ventura. 323-360-4115. A musical pot luck will follow. $20 suggested donation.
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Let's be clear here . . . I may have accepted that one class, but I still hate partner yoga. Totally gross. Luckily, after I wrote that article, my teachers started doing less of it.
Thanks for the article!