Fitness fad is a timely scream

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On Saturday, I stirred an imaginary cauldron. I pretended to swim around my backyard, I threw metaphorical earth over myself. I exhaled loudly, enthusiastically, almost orgasmically, in such a public display of emotion I’m sure my neighbours thought I had officially cracked.

But this wasn’t the mental strain of COVID house arrest; I was taking a Kinrgy class.

Kinrgy is the latest L. A.Goop-drenched fitness craze, from U. S. dancer Julianne Hough, who is fast becoming Californian wellness royalty. She appears on Gwyneth Paltrow’s Netflix documentary The Goop Lab and recently took her Kinrgy classes on Oprah Winfrey’s 2020 Vision tour, alas cut short by the pandemic.

This cardio- dance workout is less about abs, goals or perfection than about spiritual and emotional empowerment that is as likely to make you cry as sweat.

The 45- minute classes are streamed live weekly on Zoom and in free 15- minute workouts three times a week on Instagram.

The chance to dance and be sarcastic about something designed to “help you connect to your essence” felt too delicious to pass up, so I found myself last Saturday in my yard at 7 p.m. screaming into the sky.

Hough appears on screen, saying “when we activate our imagination, we go into a world of infinite possibilities, we tap into our fifth-dimension self.”

My inner sarcastic Brit was howling. Yet the next thing she said was less Goopy. She spoke about how adulthood had stiffened us up, restricted us, how as children we were unafraid of expressing ourselves.

As if on cue, my neighbour’s kids began screaming next door, in pure jubilation on their new trampoline. I was about to add my own screams. Kinrgy is fundamentally about loosening you up in every sense of the word — letting you feel free to be silly, loud and ungainly.

It has some L.A. spirituality — inviting the elements to be a part of you, imagining yourself in water, fire and air — encouraging you to make noise as you move. It’s not about strict choreography or technique.

It’s a potent mix of heavy breathwork and intense cardio, with aspects of interpretive and tribal dance. You will sweat, you will tire. But what it does emotionally I wasn’t quite prepared for.

Roughly 15 minutes in, once I had “invited fire” within me and started throwing metaphorical earth around, Hough’s voice and the music soared and I lost myself a bit. I embraced the silliness of it all, threw my body around, whooped into the air.

It was so liberating I almost cried, then almost laughed hysterically.

And that’s why Kinrgy may just be what we need right now.