Last year I made it my personal commitment to continue my own professional development myself through exploring different styles of fitness and dance. I have been lucky enough to explore so many different kinds of dance & yoga throughout this year, but most recently I have been doing flamenco lessons and aerial yoga.

I have always loved flamenco, so I jumped at the opportunity to try it when we were involved in the Feet First Festival at QPAC in June of this year. It was an amazing festival of dance, accompanying the incredible Bolshoi Ballet, and it really showcased our fantastic dance community here in Brisbane. Each group did a demonstration and hosted a workshop, and it was all free! I caught Simone Pope’s Flamenco group’s performance and it moved me to tears. As I said, I’d always been very into the style of flamenco. I finally got a free afternoon, and I signed onto lessons for the final term. It is such a passionate, complex and technical style of dance with a lot of similarities between Bollywood and Kathak dance. Highly recommended!

I have also been doing the most amazing yoga. Anti-gravity aerial yoga is yoga suspended in the air with the use of a hammock. Now, it’s not as terrifying as it looks! Or at least, the class I’ve been going to isn’t. I have been doing the restorative anti-gravity yoga with Renae at Flight Skool in West End. She holds these sessions about once a month and it really is an amazing feeling. It’s reportedly, ‘not as intense’ as their other yoga sessions, and I always feel absolutely elated afterwards! Hanging upside down in an inversion, you really feel your body decompress, and blood coursing round your body! The hammocks give you your own little white walled world, where you can concentrate on you, your breathing and your body; without casting your eyes on the people next to you and checking out how they are stretching… Heaven!! And finally, I am scared of heights. But this was nothing to worry about. You’re not far off the ground, and the lovely Renae makes sure your “monkey-hold” is secure and correct.

Fun fact: a clinical study at Newcastle University, UK showed that 77% of patients suffering from back conditions, who received inversion therapy alongside physical therapy, no longer needed surgery.

~ Drea