{"id":6334,"date":"2022-09-22T13:16:13","date_gmt":"2022-09-22T13:16:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.yogajournal.com\/?p=103833"},"modified":"2022-09-22T13:16:13","modified_gmt":"2022-09-22T13:16:13","slug":"i-work-for-yoga-journal-and-i-go-to-yoga-sculpt-classes-heres-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/2022\/09\/22\/i-work-for-yoga-journal-and-i-go-to-yoga-sculpt-classes-heres-why\/","title":{"rendered":"I Work for Yoga Journal, and I Go to Yoga Sculpt Classes. Here\u2019s Why"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In college, I did a lot of running, spinning, and lifting. (The smell of that musty gym still lingers on some of my t-shirts.) I was doing everything\u2014except yoga. It wasn\u2019t for me. A sequence wasn\u2019t a real workout, so what was the point?<\/p>\n

Sure, I had done a few \u201crecovery flows\u201d as a high school athlete and had attended a handful of classes here and there. (I knew what a Downward-Facing Dog was, don\u2019t worry.) But at that point in my life, I was preoccupied with pushing my body to the point of exhaustion. A workout wasn\u2019t a workout if I wasn\u2019t dripping in sweat by the end of it. So when a friend asked me to go to CorePower\u2019s yoga sculpt class with her, I hesitated, but ultimately, I was game. My rationalization: The class had weights, therefore, it counted as a workout.<\/p>\n

That first yoga sculpt class was brutal. My muscles shook in the poses, beads of sweat dripped down my face, and I\u2019m pretty sure I was panting during the cardio section. But it was in the gentle moments\u2014the long Balasana (Child\u2019s Pose)<\/a>, the hold in Warrior III (Virabhadrasana III)<\/a>, and, of course, Savasana<\/a>\u2014that I discovered that yogic stillness. This was something I hadn\u2019t known I needed. I went looking for a workout, and I came out with a new desire to seek out a larger sense of calm. In a lot of ways, that yoga sculpt class was the catalyst for my current practice.<\/p>\n

The history of yoga sculpt<\/h2>\n

Yoga sculpt offers something different than many yoga classes. The classes I frequent often include weights, so I leave the room feeling like my muscles are truly on fire. (No, this is not an exaggeration.) It\u2019s certainly a departure from the roots of the practice, moving into a yoga fusion territory that it is nothing if not complicated and controversial.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s difficult to trace the precise origins of yoga sculpt, but it can be tied to power yoga. Teacher Beryl Bender Birch<\/a> is credited with beginning power yoga in 1995 with the publication of her book, Power Yoga. <\/em>In an article for Yoga Journal, she said she sought to design a class<\/a> that was derived from Ashtanga but more accessible to those unfamiliar with yoga.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost people wouldn\u2019t take a class called Ashtanga Yoga, because they had no idea what it meant,\u201d she said.<\/a> \u201cPower Yoga, on the other hand, was something Americans could relate to and know that they\u2019d get a good workout.\u201d<\/p>\n

CorePower, which is the largest yoga chain in the country, launched its popular yoga sculpt class in 2004, according to Chief Executive Officer Niki Leondakis. \u201cIt was born from a request from our students to combine the mindfulness of a vinyasa-driven yoga practice with the strength-building and metabolism-boosting of weight-training and cardio,\u201d Leondakis said in a statement.<\/p>\n

As one of the most attended offerings, the yoga sculpt class can serve as a gateway to the studio\u2019s more traditional yoga offerings, like their CorePower Yoga 1<\/a> or 2<\/a> class, Leondakis said. For students who proclaim \u201cyoga isn\u2019t for me,\u201d it may be this class that changes their mind.<\/p>\n

What sculpt really offers<\/h2>\n

It wasn\u2019t until I started writing this article that I realized I was one of those students. It took a single yoga sculpt class for me to open myself up to the practice of yoga. Nowadays, I turn to yoga sculpt class when I\u2019m craving something that feels like a workout and a practice. I still go to CorePower\u2019s class, but I\u2019ve also had similar experiences at other studios. And whether it\u2019s because of the complete exhaustion, the heated room, or the much-needed Savasana, it\u2019s one of the only workouts where I find myself tuning out of my head and tapping into my body. Maybe that\u2019s also \u201creal\u201d yoga.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"I<\/figure>\n

Moments of stillness can be found in surprising places. <\/p>\n

The post I Work for Yoga Journal, and I Go to Yoga Sculpt Classes. Here’s Why<\/a> appeared first on Yoga Journal<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6335,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[37,35,36],"class_list":["post-6334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ayurveda","tag-blogs","tag-yoga","tag-yogacourseware"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6334\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}