Tacoma aerial yoga studio is taking off

A friend saying, “Hey, you should come try my yoga class,” is often followed by an excuse, or maybe an eye-roll.

But in some cases, a yogi is born.

“I almost fainted in my first class, I was sweating from every pore in my body,” said Anna Gildenhar, 30, now a certified instructor and owner of a yoga studio in downtown Tacoma.

When she discovered aerial yoga, a style that has become popular for relieving stress in the back and improving flexibility, she knew she wanted to bring it home to Pierce County.

Her newly opened Uplift Yoga & Healing Arts Studio offers the style, which involves a hammock, weightless poses and a lot of hanging upside down.

“You don’t really feel it as you’re doing it, because you’re up in the air and you have lots of help from the hammock,” said Abigail Lawson, whose background is in dance. “ ... And the next day you’re like, ‘Oh, wow, I really got a workout.’ ”

Gildenhar discovered the aerial style more than a decade after she started yoga.

A 16-year-old at Bellarmine Preparatory School, she was invited by a friend to try a practice known for abundant sweating — Bikram hot yoga.

“Me and heat don’t really work well together,” Gildenhar said later.

She said she knew there had to be a better way, and, lucky for her, there are dozens of different types of yoga.

“I found vinyasa, which I fell in love with, and decided to get certified as a yoga teacher in 2012,” Gildenhar said.

Five years later, she has more than 10 teacher trainings under her belt and her certifications include paddle board, acro and buti yoga.

“I’m definitely a full-on yoga addict at this point — I think it’s safe to say,” she said.

Gildenhar’s first training for aerial yoga came after coming across the idea in a job interview in May 2014. After that, she spent the night “watching probably 30 YouTube videos in a row on aerial yoga.”

“I was hooked instantly,” she said.

After training at the headquarters of AntiGravity Aerial Yoga in New York, she “fell in love with it.”

“What first drew me into aerial yoga — and I think what draws a lot of my students in — is I actually grew up with back issues, a mild case of scoliosis, which I only started to really get treated in 2012,” Gildenhar said.

She returned to Washington to teach in Seattle at Levitas Studio, one of the first aerial studios in the state, and brought the technique to Pierce County in May 2015.

After two years of renting space at Good Karma on St. Helens Avenue, she felt ready to move into her own studio.

After the business coaching of Spaceworks and finding a space move-in ready, Gildenhar opened Uplift in a former downtown office building in May.

The primary instructor, she teaches classes that range from the basics to what’s known as “advanced flow aerial.”

Her students come from all sorts of backgrounds.

“I was hooked the first time and I’ve come once or twice a week ever since for about the last year and a half,” said Beth Richardson, a longtime yogi. “ ... I like the inversions, I like being able to hang upside down, I like the flexibility component to it. It really helps alleviate any back and neck pain that you have.”

For others, their only yoga experience was on the Wii.

“My back has given me problems for years and going upside down in a hammock, allowing my back to stretch out, decompress and everything has been huge,” said Jennifer Fagan, who has experience rock climbing. “I don’t have as many back problems.”

Lawson, whose first two lessons were months apart, recommends trying it at least twice to get use to it. Gildenhar agrees.

“I remember my first anti-gravity class,” Gildenhar said. “Even though I was a yoga instructor, I, too, was somewhat uncoordinated. Just learning how to get in and out of the hammock was somewhat of struggle in and of itself.”

In the coming months, Gildenhar says she hopes to offer more classes, bring on a full-time vinyasa instructor and expand her one-on-one Thai yoga and sound therapy sessions.

For now, she’s got it covered herself: air, land and sea.

Just not hot.

“Definitely not my type of yoga,” she said smiling.

This story was originally published July 29, 2017 at 8:00 AM with the headline "Tacoma aerial yoga studio is taking off."