In college, I did a whole lot of running, spinning, and lifting. (The smell of that musty gym still lingers on a few of my t-shirts.) I used to be doing every part—except yoga. It wasn’t for me. A sequence wasn’t an actual workout, so what was the purpose?

Sure, I had done just a few “recovery flows” as a highschool athlete and had attended a handful of classes here and there. (I knew what a Downward-Facing Dog was, don’t worry.) But at that time in my life, I used to be preoccupied with pushing my body to the purpose of exhaustion. A workout wasn’t a workout if I wasn’t dripping in sweat by the top of it. So when a friend asked me to go to CorePower’s yoga sculpt class together with her, I hesitated, but ultimately, I used to be game. My rationalization: The category had weights, due to this fact, it counted as a workout.

That first yoga sculpt class was brutal. My muscles shook within the poses, beads of sweat dripped down my face, and I’m pretty sure I used to be panting throughout the cardio section. However it was within the gentle moments—the long Balasana (Child’s Pose), the hold in Warrior III (Virabhadrasana III), and, after all, Savasana—that I discovered that yogic stillness. This was something I hadn’t known I needed. I went on the lookout for a workout, and I got here out with a recent desire to hunt down a bigger sense of calm. In a whole lot of ways, that yoga sculpt class was the catalyst for my current practice.

The history of yoga sculpt

Yoga sculpt offers something different than many yoga classes. The classes I frequent often include weights, so I leave the room feeling like my muscles are truly on fire. (No, this is just not an exaggeration.) It’s definitely a departure from the roots of the practice, moving right into a yoga fusion territory that it’s nothing if not complicated and controversial.

It’s difficult to trace the precise origins of yoga sculpt, but it could be tied to power yoga. Teacher Beryl Bender Birch is credited with starting power yoga in 1995 with the publication of her book, Power Yoga. In an article for Yoga Journal, she said she sought to design a category that was derived from Ashtanga but more accessible to those unfamiliar with yoga.

“Most individuals wouldn’t take a category called Ashtanga Yoga, because that they had no idea what it meant,” she said. “Power Yoga, then again, was something Americans could relate to and know that they’d get a very good workout.”

CorePower, which is the most important yoga chain within the country, launched its popular yoga sculpt class in 2004, in line with Chief Executive Officer Niki Leondakis. “It was born from a request from our students to mix the mindfulness of a vinyasa-driven yoga practice with the strength-building and metabolism-boosting of weight-training and cardio,” Leondakis said in a press release.

As one of the vital attended offerings, the yoga sculpt class can function a gateway to the studio’s more traditional yoga offerings, like their CorePower Yoga 1 or 2 class, Leondakis said. For college kids who proclaim “yoga isn’t for me,” it could be this class that changes their mind.

What sculpt really offers

It wasn’t until I began writing this text that I noticed I used to be one in all those students. It took a single yoga sculpt class for me to open myself as much as the practice of yoga. Nowadays, I turn to yoga sculpt class once I’m craving something that seems like a workout and a practice. I still go to CorePower’s class, but I’ve also had similar experiences at other studios. And whether it’s due to the entire exhaustion, the heated room, or the much-needed Savasana, it’s one in all the one workouts where I find myself tuning out of my head and tapping into my body. Perhaps that’s also “real” yoga.