Go 'Round the Bend: Circular Yoga

ONE BY ONE, as students entered the yoga studio last week at the Tysons Equinox (8065 Leesburg Pike, 703-790-6193), their mouths dropped open — forming the exact same shape as the things that had shocked them: circular yoga mats.

"Don't be afraid. They're just round," coaxed group fitness manager Gia-Ninh Chuang, welcoming folks to the local debut of Yoga 360, a class that promises to bring something new to the posing public by changing the very base of the practice.

That's right: Unlike other riffs on yoga, which have toyed with the music, the mind-set or the temperature, Yoga 360 messes with the mat. Desi Bartlett, a well-known West Coast fitness instructor, wanted to boost the fluidity of her practice. So, she designed a mat that's five feet in diameter (so it folds away into a cone rather than a familiar roll) with grid lines giving her four quadrants to explore.

"Instead of having to stop and turn, you can continuously move. It helps me link postures and gives me greater freedom," explains Bartlett, who describes the mat shape as "feeling like a cocoon."

To the newbies plopping themselves into lotus pose in the middle of the mats on Monday night, though, the first comparison to come to mind was with lily pads.

"You can say 'ribbit' instead of 'Namaste,'" Chuang jokingly suggested before turning the show over to instructor Nica Tran, who also tried to reassure the crowd immediately: "It's still yoga!"

And there's no doubt about that. Tran hits on many of the standard poses, including downward facing dog, warrior 1 and plow. She even spends a section of class focused on headstands, teaching a step-by-step method for convincing one's body to prop itself on a noggin.

But what an experienced yogini would find unusual about this session is the focus on what Tran calls, "circles, ellipses and arcs." Her instructions almost never leave students facing in the same direction for more than a few moments. Rather, they're pivoting and twirling between moves, which means Tran has to be more active than the typical yoga teacher, fluttering around the room to try to be in the "front" of the class.

There's a bit of a showgirl element to it, especially when Tran throws in fan kicks as transitions. ("We're going to start a dance yoga company," Tran said when everyone managed to twist their bodies into side planks in unison.)

The goal isn't to perform, but to derive mental benefits from the class. Tran says she's had students who can do a series of poses perfectly while facing the mirror, but turn them 90 degrees, and they're lost.

"Adding control of body and space crosstrains the brain," she says. "Cognitive decline decreases the more you're challenged."

Student Lilian Rouly, 59, came out of class convinced. "I actually lost my sense of direction," she noted.

But for Paul Gutschall, 40, another student who stumbled in last week, the appeal was more in the mental release than in bulked up brain power. "You feel like you're moving with the breeze," he said. And thanks to the Yoga 360 mat, he can go anywhere it sends him.

Photo by Lawrence Luk for Express