I’m here to do yoga in the air. Unnata Aerial Yoga, held on the fringes of gentrified Williamsburg inside a gigantic warehouse space, is more Ringling than Om. The home of S.LA.M. (STREB LABORATORY for ACTION MECHANICS)—it's got 25-foot ceilings, a trapeze, super-thick gym mats, and primary colors. Holy after-school gymnastics flashbacks, dude.

I have no idea what to expect, but the teacher, Unnata creator Michelle Dortignac, is enthusiastic and gentle. It’s a mite distracting to be practicing next to the trapeze class; people are flying through the air and being yelled at: “Legs out! Grab it! Let go!” then smacking down hard on the red mat. And in a different class on the other side of us, women are shimmying up about 10 yards of fabric and dangling in dancerly formations. I remember stored away wisdom: “the best place to meditate is in a train station”—or, um, a circus?

Thankfully, we have nothing to do with the terrifying trapeze, but rather "silks," loops of poly-blend fabric hanging from a rig mechanically lowered from the ceiling. The bottom of each loop is about three feet from the floor.

After some warm-up poses and brief instruction, half of us grab a loop. We place the fabric over the fronts of our shoulders and under our shoulder blades and lean back. Pop! went my spine—no need for the chiropractor this week. Then we switched—while the other half of us hung and swung, my group did asanas.
Then back to the loops for side stretches; standing on it like a hammock, sliding backwards into a supported Shoulderstand and doing sit-ups; and hanging upside-down in Baddha Konasana, which was remarkably less disturbing than I anticipated. Eventually we slip into a “Grab it!”-inflected Savasana. I feel very opened—it was amazing to get gravity to do so much of the stretching—even if some of it felt hugely awkward as a first-timer.

Afterward I chat with Michelle, an Om-certified yoga teacher. She created this “Frankenstein of a class” in
2002 after merging her loves of yoga, dance, and the circus act called Tissu/Silks. Though I’m not sure I’ll be racing back—I couldn’t quite click with the silks—a fellow new student buys a 10-pack of classes, saying this was some of the best stretching she’s ever had. For those of you who want to give it a twirl, here are the deets. And Michelle is planning to hold classes in Manhattan soon—I'm curious to see how the form will evolve without those hollering trapezers.