Disco yoga will give you your groove back
Richard Jones discovers how a touch of ‘Saturday Night Fever’ is transforming the midweek workouts of jaded yoga-lovers
We are 20 minutes into my firstever yoga session when suddenly Kung Fu Fighting starts blaring from the speakers. As I karate chop the air while hopping around on one leg, I notice a solitary, glistening bead of glittery sweat run down my forehead onto the mat below. Disco yoga has me sweating glitter.
On a warm summer’s evening, I would normally be necking my second pint in the local beer garden. Instead, I am in a dingy basement at Trapeze in Shoreditch, east London, adopting the downward dog to the growls of Barry White. I am a millennial, and this is how we must live now.
Billed as an event for “healthconscious millennials who love to train hard and party hard”, according to its organisers Rosie Barker and Sarah Hunt, disco yoga class has been “inspired by a new generation of mindful drinkers”. The pair have been running disco yoga nights for more than a year, but this summer launched the concept onto the summer festival circuit. It culminated with their biggest crowd last month, at the Latitude Festival, when 300 people turned up on a Saturday morning, hangovers in tow, to glitter up and boogie on down, yoga-style.
Sarah, originally from Canada, has been a yoga teacher for the past ten years, while Rosie is the DJ part of the duo, setting a disco playlist to go with Hunt’s jazzed-up yoga moves.
“It’s traditional yoga, but with a bit of flair to it,” says Hunt. “It’s not so important to get the moves right but more important to have a night out and get a workout in at the same time. Disco yoga is also really upbeat and energised in a way that normal yoga isn’t.”
Disco yoga seems to tap neatly into two millennial trends: just as disco is having a revival – no modern wedding reception is complete without Daft Punk’s Get Lucky, the song that brought the genre back from its Seventies abyss – so too is yoga’s popularity reaching ever-greater heights among a younger crowd. According to a recent Lancaster University study of British social media, “yoga” is one of the top 15 most-used words.
Barker agrees: “There’s definitely a trend to make not just yoga, but fitness more accessible. Nowadays, the young generation prioritise their health above almost everything else, but they also have a social life to consider.”
Hunt chimes in: “I think people try regular yoga studios first, then come to us to spice their routine up.”
And how! Those arriving for the class immediately make a beeline for a toolbox in the corner of the room, which is crammed full of more sparkling body paint than a five-yearold’s princess party.
Sarah and Rosie call it their “glitter station”. At disco yoga, applying some shimmer is an acceptable warm-up.
The swarm of young women (and the occasional boyfriend) buzzing around the glitter box makes it hard to get to any colour but the silver.
Rosie helps me “glam up” so that I look like a resurrected Marc Bolan, sticking a jewel on my forehead. I am
now Instagram-worthy. Putting on the glitter is the easy bit. I’m about as flexible as a penguin and can barely touch my knees, let alone a full stretch down to the feet. And then the class begins.
The session starts off with some relaxing ambient Brian Eno as we lay on the floor, palms facing upwards – good, I can do this. But, my mind is now starting to race with self-conscious thoughts about whether my gymwear is too tight.
After trying to put us into a meditative state, relaxing our shoulders and muscles, the music picks up as we get into the disco groove.
As Diana Ross begins to warble and a beat comes in, everyone starts to giggle as we’re encouraged by Sarah to get loose and not to worry about our shoddy yoga poses.
“If you feel like you’re going to fall over, just style it out into a dance move,” she says through her Britney mic.
To me, the stretches are unbearable. One pose has us in plank position trying to touch our elbows with our feet, like an adult game of Twister set to the Bee Gees’ Stayin’ Alive. I’m trying to, Mr Gibb.
“In my other yoga classes, it is all classical music and very serious,” she tells me before the beginning of the night. “People get very competitive and they want to be the best in the class and get really angry if they can’t do a pose. But, here the music helps people relax and just have fun with it.”
It turns out I’m useless at yoga – but here, no one cares. In fact, it’s actively
encouraged. I fall over backwards and the girl on the next mat smiles.
The session finishes with a “Namaste” over some more soothing Eno. But as opposed to being in some soulless room in your local health centre, we are surrounded by shimmering disco balls and neon lights. I am officially abuzz.
The night ends with a complimentary cocktail in a disco ball cup, which comes with the £16 ticket. I have a “Blame it on the Blueberry” – everything is disco-themed here – but, most of the class are happy to just sit around on the mats having a chat, eschewing the booze in the knowledge that they’ve had a good night without it.
With glitter pouring down my face – which has a healthy, yogainduced glow – I feel like I’ve had a wilder night than I would have on the treadmill at my local gym.