What: Power Yoga
When: Friday at noon
Where: Kula Annex (304 Brunswick Avenue)
Who: Christi-an

Kula (aka my favourite studio and one Jill is slowly warming up to) just started offering Power Yoga classes! The best part? For the month of April, your first Power Yoga class is free! How could we say no to that?

See? Who would say no to this?

I haven’t done any “power” yoga since I abandoned my favourite ashtanga class for running. Translation? I was scared. JK, Jill and I agreed to give the power yoga class a go on Good Friday. I NEEDED some yoga that day. The day before, I weirdly busted out in a fever and chills (at the same time!) at work. I looked like a moron wearing two sweaters, wrapped in a blanket and sweating profusely. I also got a migraine (my second ever — I am not liking this trend), left work early, crashed at 5pm and didn’t wake up until 9am. My body had a lot of issues that needed to be worked through.

Christi-an was teaching, so we knew it would be fun and playful, but challenging. In this class, we were constantly moving, building from easier poses to harder ones. Since the class was packed (and it was most attendee’s first power yoga class), Christi-an thoughtfully threw in an extra child’s pose or two. Thank you, Christi-an!

I love Christi-an because she doesn’t overwhelm the class with “feelings”, plays fun but not intrusive music and encourages students to have fun with their practice. She was in her element in this power class, as some of the poses were DIFFICULT. But that’s the point, isn’t it? To build on your practice so the day you finally pop-up into that side-plank/dancer hybrid (which JK and Jill could do, but I could not!), you feel on top of the world. The other point of yoga is to have fun. And Christi-an made that easy.

It will be interesting to see how other teachers at Kula tackle this new offering. It’s very different from the other classes at Kula. I liked that Christi-an said the sequences would change from month to month, so the power offering won’t get boring, but will offer a consistency through which you can improve.

I won’t be taking power yoga every week. But I do plan to add it to my regular yoga routine. It was exactly the kind of yoga I need every now and then.

Take this class if: you want to push your practice to the next level — but have fun doing so.