PHYSICAL:
Alleviate muscle tension, neck & back pain - Chiropractor in a swing.
Promotes increased joint mobility.
Core strengthening - essential for good spinal health and posture.
Benefits cardiovascular, respiratory, digestive and lymphatic systems.
Hold powerful Yoga postures longer for a greater benefit.
The support of the swing makes it easier to work on proper alignment in yoga asana.
Novel and engaging movement experience can enhance proprioception.
Activates the parasympathetic nervous system, benefiting sleep.
MENTAL & EMOTIONAL
Helps to relieve anxiety and stress.
Improves concentration & mental functioning.
Mood lifting - stimulates the release of happy hormones - serotonin & endorphins.
Oxytocin release, produced by contact between swing and body, can enhance feelings of security, trust and wellbeing.
Putting the body into a novel and challenging environment, like an Aerial Yoga class, can build courage and confidence.
SPIRITUAL:
For those more interested in Yoga as a tool for spiritual growth and transformation (An inner orientation). The presence of mind and ease of experience,that using a swing can generate, is a great staging post from which to go on the inner journey. As soon as you begin using the swing, you have entered a union (another word for Yoga). You have started the journey to be reunited to your divine consciousness by enacting this physical union with the swing. This will encourage connection, surrender, the breaking of boundaries (physical and psychological) and presence. All of these states are part of the spiritual journey.
Benefits of Aerial yoga
Following the joy - the story of aerial yoga
I originally got a swing to practice inversions with, many years ago. It lay in the house for weeks before I eventually got around to installing it. Once installed, I began to notice how joyful and present people became when using it. This was a real 'eureka' moment for me. For years I had been trying - and failing - to get people to find the joy, pleasure and lightness in a Yoga practise. Suddenly, because of the swing's assistance, they were finding it. This is something that I’ve never forgotten. Since then, I would have to say, I have been in love with the swings. Or more precisely in love with what they can do for people. I believe they take people closer to an experience of the feeling of Yoga. It is a feeling characterised by pleasure, lightness, spontaneity, freedom of movement and presence. It is a great privilege, as a Yoga teacher, to be able to take people to that place. Initially, I had to teach myself as there was no training available at that time. Beginning with friends, moving onto small groups and then starting 'Aerial Yoga London' in 2011 - London's only dedicated Aerial Yoga studio. Within a couple of years I had given up most of my other Yoga work and by 2017 we were teaching up to fifteen classes a week of Aerial Yoga at the studio. In 2017, after 6 years of teaching classes and workshops in London, Agne and I decided to take a break and plan our next move. We moved to India for 9 months and in that time created an Aerial Yoga Teacher Training course that distils what we have learnt over teaching thousands of classes. We now feel ready to train others in how to safely, artfully and creatively use the swings to help people reach this joyful 'feeling of Yoga'.
Richard Holroyd
Get to know us
RICHARD
Originally coming from Leeds, UK, Richard began practising Sivananda Yoga and meditation in his mid-20's. He spent 4 years living in Tibetan and Theravada Buddhist centres learning meditation and mindfulness. Richard started teaching traditional Yoga in 2005 - working mainly in London. He discovered Aerial Yoga in 2011 and fell in love with it. His training in both the mental and physical aspects of Yoga has helped him to understand the potential that Aerial Yoga swings have to move people closer to a deeper, more transcendent experience of Yoga. While the many years that he has been fortunate enough to be using them, have taught him how to work safely and responsibly with this powerful tool of transformation. Only a few people in the world have been able to amass this wealth of experience in this particular field of Yoga.
AGNE
Agne is from Lithuania. She moved to the UK more than a decade ago and lived there for 10 years. Her Yoga journey started with a meditation course at Brahma Kumaris centre, when seeking for an antidote to life in London. From there it led to Yoga asana classes and Teacher Training in India, which she completed in January 2016. Later that year she discovered Aerial Yoga and after a few months of training with Richard Holroyd, started teaching Aerial Yoga, specifically focusing on beginner classes. Agne has spent some time living in different ashrams in South India and is very much interested in the spiritual side of Yoga. She has completed some of the traditional Hatha Yoga courses at Isha Foundation as part of her personal development. Agne is also a trained masseuse and is very interested in alternative medicine and body work.
