Tag: Health & Wellness

Catherine McMahon knows what everyone’s primary concern is when they sign up for their first stand up paddleboard yoga (SUP yoga) class, and she nips it in the bud before even getting in the water.

“I totally encourage falling in,” she said to a group of first-timers at last week’s Monday morning class at Montfair Resort Farm in Crozet. McMahon noted that the boards are more stable than they look, and most people don’t actually make the splash—if they do, it’s easy to hop back on*. “When you fall you realize it’s only water.”

SUP yoga is exactly what it sounds like: practicing yoga poses on top of a paddleboard (which looks a lot like a surfboard) in the middle of a body of water. The core-strengthening combination of yoga and paddling has been increasing in popularity since McMahon returned to Charlottesville seven years ago, and it’s no surprise that she’s found herself teaching SUP yoga classes in her hometown.

McMahon lived in California for about 15 years after growing up in Charlottesville. A longtime swimmer, lifeguard and kayaker, McMahon built her West Coast life around water, studying marine biology in college and spending every free minute in the ocean with her surfboard. A desire to be closer to home brought her back to Charlottesville in 2012, and she immediately started looking for new outlets for her love of all things water.

“I never realized the beauty of the waters around here,” she said. “I had never considered the Charlottesville area a place where you could recreate on the water.”

After getting certified to teach SUP yoga (which requires a 200-hour yoga teacher certification first), McMahon founded Mango Yoga Adventures and taught her first class in July 2013.

The poses McMahon cycled through during last week’s class were all familiar to a yogi of any level—down dog, lunges, warriors one and two. But even the simplest movements, like shifting weight in mountain pose or stretching a little further in a forward fold, require a heightened sense of awareness and balance.

“Doing those fundamental poses on the water really re-informs your whole practice,” McMahon said.

It’s easy to let your mind wander during a yoga class, especially if your body is flowing through a sequence that’s become second nature. But muscle memory won’t do you much good when you’re trying to balance on one foot on an unstable surface floating in the middle of a lake—there’s no room for grocery lists or meeting agendas when every ounce of brainpower and physical energy is spent maintaining tree pose while trying not to topple into the water.

“You have to use your core to stay steady and you have to stay present,” McMahon said. “If your mind does wander you keep coming right back. I call it instant zen.”

The balancing challenge aside, there’s something almost magical about practicing yoga outside in the elements, surrounded by mountains and lily pads instead of mirrors and yoga mats. It’s certainly not for the perfectionist or control freak though—be prepared to drift away from the group, bump into neighbors, and put your pose on hold to paddle back to the center of the lake. It’s a different kind of practice for sure, but there’s nothing in the world like lying in savasana in the sun with your fingers in the water.

For more information, check out the Mango Yoga Adventures Facebook page, or e-mail McMahon at mangoyogaadventures@gmail.com. Classes are held at Montfair Resort Farm and Beaver Creek, and McMahon also offers private sessions as well as SUP classes sans yoga.

Clarification: Swimming is allowed at Montfair, but it is not allowed at Beaver Creek and only in designated areas at Chris Greene and Walnut Creek. In non-swimming areas, McMahon encourages paddleboard yogis to immediately return onto their boards in the case of falling in. 

Erica Barga has been living and breathing all things dance since she was a kid. Tap, jazz, ballet, ballroom—as long as she was moving across a dance floor, she was happy. It wasn’t until 2004, when she was teaching ballroom at a studio in Washington, D.C., that she first took a class with her feet off the floor.

“The studio had just started offering pole dancing, so I thought I’d give it a try,” Barga said. “My background was in ballet, so everything was from the waist down and I didn’t really use my arms. I’d never done any aerial dance or upper-body stuff before, and I kind of wasn’t really sure what I was even getting into.”

She took the class on a whim, and quickly got sucked into a style of dance and fitness that, despite being considered risqué and taboo, she ended up building her career around. It’s been 11 years since she did her first spin around a pole, and she has since moved to Charlottesville and opened the Phoenix Dance Studio, which offers classes in pole, exotic, burlesque and belly dancing, plus lyra (hoop) and silks, the aerial dance style seen in Cirque du Soleil. The studio also offers private lessons, workshops and parties in addition to regular group classes.

Particularly when it comes to pole, Barga said one of the most compelling aspects of aerial dance is its versatility.

“It’s something you can do purely as fitness if you want,” she said. “Or you can do it to explore your sexy side. It can be sexy, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s totally up to you.”

The stigma around pole dancing undoubtedly still exists, but even so, Barga said it remains the most sought after style at the studio.

“The pole is really a constant in terms of popularity,” she said, noting that other classes like lyra and silks tend to ebb and flow. “It’s just always something that people want to at least check off their bucket list.”

At the Friday evening pole dancing class last week, about a dozen women (all at least 18 years old, per the studio’s age requirement for pole) filled a narrow room with hardwood floors, wall-length mirrors, and six floor-to-ceiling poles. Instructor Brynne Levy, whose only prior dance experience was a few years of Irish dance as a kid, led the group through a series of basic warm-up stretches before dividing us into pairs at each pole. Most of the women had been to enough classes that when Levy handed them sheets of paper with a list of moves to practice, they began twirling and sliding around the poles, laughing and casually chatting with one another between moves.

In our own corner, two other newbies and I watched Levy as she walked us through the basic beginner moves. With straight backs, pointed toes and one hand grasping the pole high above our heads, one at a time we practiced walking slowly and confidently around the pole, pivoting 180 degrees in a full turn, and spinning halfway around the pole with one leg at a 45-degree angle. When Levy had me hook one leg around the pole, slowly bend into a forward-fold, and then snap my head back up—you know, with the hair-flip, like you’ve seen in the movies—I couldn’t help but comment on how hard it was to take myself seriously. A woman who had just climbed the pole next to ours and spun around several feet in the air in a bow-and-arrow position laughed and said “That’s kind of the point.”

With a few minutes remaining in the hour-long class, Levy flipped off the lights, instructed me and the other first-timers to have a seat along the wall, and announced that it was “freestyle time.” She reminded the class that it wasn’t a performance, but an opportunity to improvise and practice putting moves together with music.

“The idea is to not let anybody know that you don’t know what you’re doing or if you just messed up,” Levy said.

The class didn’t leave me feeling like I’d just had a workout, but it was clear from the moves that Levy and the more experienced students displayed that after a couple classes I would certainly drive home with sore arms. What did result in a couple days of soreness and a surprising desire to return to the studio, however, was a silks and lyra class with Barga. Channeling my 8-year-old self on the monkey bars, I found odd satisfaction in swinging from giant swaths of silk and hanging upside down from a metal hoop. Pulling my body weight up into the hoop and through the silks worked forearm and shoulder muscles that I didn’t even know I had, and at the same time it turns out being graceful is a lot easier in the air than on the floor. 

“It’s just fun,” Barga said. “I don’t want to go to the gym or walk on a treadmill. But if you tell me I can dance around and do it in the air, I’m on board.”

It’s easy to make assumptions about boutique fitness studios. And before she moved to Charlottesville from D.C., barre.[d] studio owner Hanna Dobbels found a lot of those assumptions to be true—workout classes were pricey and exclusive, and not entirely welcoming environments for anyone who wasn’t a size two with an extensive Lululemon wardrobe.

“My whole goal is to squash that conception,” Dobbels said. “I want a diverse student and teaching group, people of all ages, shapes and sizes.”

Dobbels opened up the studio, located downtown near Hot Yoga Charlottesville at 216 W. Water St., in February of this year. A long-time outdoor and fitness enthusiast with a knack for business management, the 27-year-old said that opening a fitness studio just made sense to her. She started teaching cardio classes before she even went to college, and as a pre-med biology major she’d always been drawn to the human body and the way it works and recovers.

Despite looking the part of a classically trained barre instructor with a ballet background—tall, lean and graceful, with long hair piled into a bun—she said she’s never danced in her life. In fact, up until an injury about six years ago, her preferred exercise was more high-impact, like running, backpacking and CrossFit-style workouts.

“I separated my back because I dropped a canoe on it,” she said, recalling the accident that ended her career as a wilderness instructor. “The only thing I could do after that was physical therapy and small movements, and that’s when I started learning about barre and I just fell in love with it.”

Now that her own recovery process is behind her, Dobbels said she wants to draw on the experience and the knowledge she absorbed teaching at and managing a studio in D.C. to make barre.[d] a place for everybody.

“My passion is really people with injuries, and runners and people in the outdoor world,” she said. “And I really wanted to bring that here and make it community-focused.”

She said she also wants to cultivate diversity, and offer classes that serve different purposes. There’s a classic, hour-long full-body class that includes isometric movements, weights, stretching and ab work, plus an evening option for beginners, which reviews form, technique and lingo at a slower pace. For those of us who can’t sit still, Dobbels introduced a run-to-barre.[d] class, which starts with a 30- to 40-minute run around town and ends at the studio for strength training, thigh work and a core set. Dobbels and her team of instructors also offer prenatal and postnatal classes, plus cardio and workouts that incorporate yoga and pilates moves. The drop-in rate is $20, which is comparable to other local studios, but class packages and auto-pay memberships can reduce that cost significantly.

“I want to cater to the likes of everybody, so you don’t get bored,” Dobbels said.

As someone who frequents local studios and has spent the last three years building relationships in the fitness community in this town, I know the stereotypes surrounding boutique gyms aren’t entirely true, and that workout facilities are not all the same. But even so, I’ll be the first to admit that I was skeptical when I entered the narrow, mirrored room for the noon 45-minute express class last week.

Like other barre classes I’ve been to, we cycled through several mat exercises before beginning the standing sequence. New to me was a set of weighted exercises—simple arm movements reminiscent of ballet moves, with an extra layer of intensity added on by small hand weights. I found myself wondering how effective such a short workout could be, with fewer reps of each set than I was used to. But halfway through the leg series at the barre, which involved small, tight movements that are only as easy as they look for the first four seconds, every muscle from my hips to my ankles was burning. 

The workout was short but intense, and what I appreciated most was the emphasis placed on stretching. After every move, whether using our own body weight or the brightly-colored dumbbells, Dobbels led us through gentle stretches for the muscle groups we’d just worked. As a runner who’s sustained minor knee and hip injuries, I’ve learned first-hand that the post-workout stretch is just as essential for the body as the exercising itself. I haven’t come across many cardio or strength training classes that emphasize stretching, so after the class I found myself less sore and very appreciative—because let’s be honest, the chances of me rolling out my mat in my living room to do the stretching that an instructor neglected to lead us through in class are slim to none. 

Dobbels isn’t the only one bringing new barre classes to Charlottesville. MADabolic owners Dar Malecki and Valerie Morini having been making strides toward opening b:core, their adaptation of a barre studio that will combine cardio, strength training and barre. According to a recent post on Morini’s blog (www.fuelsweatgrow.com), she and Malecki have been trying every barre class they can find, absorbing as much knowledge as possible so they can introduce a studio this spring that complements the local fitness marketplace but doesn’t oversaturate it.

It looks a lot like a spa or massage parlor upon first glance. Relaxing is something I’m not especially skilled at unless a beach-side bar is involved, but when I entered the AquaFloat lobby with its soft, aquamarine-and-sand-colored decor, sounds of nature playing in the background and friendly staff who immediately offered me a cup of green tea, I could feel my tension begin to dissolve. That is, until I saw exactly what I was getting myself into: an enclosed tank with about a foot of water that blocks virtually all light and sound.

AquaFloat Charlottesville, which opened last fall, offers customers a relatively new form of meditation, relaxation and, they claim, even relief from chronic pain. Flotation therapy is exactly what it sounds like—step into a tank full of salt water, shut the lid and float on your back. Owner Ted O’Neill was the head pharmacist at Meadowbrook Pharmacy when he discovered flotation therapy. He drove to Chesapeake for his first float a couple of years ago, and never looked back.

“There’s no such thing as a cure-all, but this is a help-all,” O’Neill said.

Each tank contains up to 1,000 pounds of Epsom salt—magnesium sulfate—giving the water a 25 percent salinity. The water is warmed to 93.4 degrees, which staff member Oliver Beavers said is a neutral temperature to the skin receptors. That combined with the lack of gravity allows for a whole new level of relaxation.

“Even if you’re relaxing on a massage table, you still have gravity applying pressure, but in here you don’t,” Beavers said. “So over the course of 90 minutes your body has a chance to sort of experience what it’s like without that, and parts of your body will just loosen up.” The experience will set you back $60 for a single session or up to $400 a month for unlimited floats.

Meditation, Beavers pointed out, is usually intentional. Quieting the brain’s constant jabber takes deliberate effort, and for most people, it isn’t easy. I enjoy meditating, but I’m terrible at it. So even with my slight anxiety about claustrophobia, I was eager to see what floating on my back in pitch black and dead silence would do for my ever-chatty brain.

“You get the same benefits as intentional meditation in here just by allowing your body and nervous system to respond to the tank,” Beavers said. “I’m not telling you to try to think no thoughts or try to relax. Just allow yourself to get out of your own way.”

With his instructions fresh in my mind, I prepared for my float. Each tank is in its own little room with a shower stocked with body wash, shampoo and conditioner, plus towels and a robe. I’d assumed ahead of time that I’d need a bathing suit, and felt a little silly when I asked over the phone, “So, what do I wear in the tank?”

Oh—nothing. Got it.

Once in the tank with the lid closed, I spent the first few minutes fidgeting, trying to figure out what exactly to do with my limbs. With my arms bent and hands comfortably floating near my face, I took a deep breath and turned the light off.

Beavers had been right when he told me it didn’t feel like floating in a tank—it felt like floating in the universe. The pitch dark eliminated any feeling of claustrophobia, and with my ears underwater, it was just me, the water and my thoughts.

Then, it was just me and my thoughts. The skin-temperature water seemed to seep into me in a way that made me lose track of where my body stopped and the water started. For what I perceived to be the first half hour or so, my brain chugged along as usual—impending deadlines, e-mails to send, what to make for dinner, everyday worries and fears, etc. I distinctly remember thinking, “This is O.K., but 90 minutes is an awfully long time. I feel like I’m going to be in here forever.”

After that, it gets a little hazy. I found myself in that asleep-but-awake state, and it felt like I was watching my thoughts instead of actually thinking them myself. Next thing I knew, a soft light filled the tank, informing me that my float was over and the automatic filtration system would soon kick on.

Back in the lobby, Beavers greeted me after a few minutes with another cup of tea. He nodded and laughed in understanding when I struggled to string sentences together. I was loopy, almost high in a way, yet wide awake and acutely aware of my surroundings.

Upon arriving home I immediately dove back into work mode, which, unfortunately, may have impeded some of the post-float glow I’d been basking in. Beavers said floating is all about what happens afterward, not necessarily what happens in the tank. Maybe next time I’ll give it a try on a weekend, when I don’t have another four hours of work waiting for me.