Taking flight with aerial yoga

By Erica Scripa

Yoga instructor Jayne Bernasconi guides 30 Towson University students into the downward dog position as they stand on an array of pink, green, orange and blue yoga mats.

With a calming voice she leads the students through breathing exercises, spiritual chanting and a variety of different poses in a studio room at the Center for the Arts Building on a Tuesday last month.

There is a peaceful silence in the studio, the only sound being feet sticking to mats as the students transition into their next pose.

“The most important thing is the process,” Bernasconi said.  “It’s not what you look like on the outside.”

Bernasconi should know. She has been teaching dance at Towson for 15 years and owns a yoga studio on York Road. In addition, Bernasconi combined her love for dance with her passion for yoga to create aerial yoga.

Bernasconi didn’t start out in yoga, though. She discovered her love for dance as a freshman at Johnson State College in Vermont.

“I struggled a little with dyslexia, so I think that’s why I moved towards things that weren’t reading or writing geared,” Bernasconi said. “Dance just felt really natural for me.”

But it wasn’t always easy. Bernasconi said she had to overcome negative comments from people who told her that dance would not amount to a career. She was also at a disadvantage because she didn’t start dancing until she was 18 and was competing against people who had been dancing their entire lives.

“I think if you have the passion and the will, you can do anything you want,” Bernasconi said.  “I didn’t listen to people who said, ‘You can’t be a dancer.’”

Bernasconi said her athleticism through swimming, skiing and diving propelled her long-term dance career. She moved to New York after college in 1980 to dance professionally. It was eight years later that she began taking yoga.

“I didn’t go out seeking yoga,” Bernasconi said. “We had this amazing teacher from the Kripalu Center. He totally blew me out of the water.”

It was the teacher’s inventive spirit that sparked her passion for yoga. However, when Bernasconi could not find another yoga teacher to continue her education, she decided to train herself by reading books.

“I moved to Boulder. There are amazing yogi’s out there,” Bernasconi said. “Yoga’s really big in Boulder so I studied there for a while.”

She eventually moved to Baltimore for her husband’s job and continued teaching yoga and taking classes. But something else caught her sights in 1995 when Bernasconi said she saw an ad for an aerial dance company.

The ad had a woman hanging effortlessly by one arm on a trapeze with a smile on her face and veins popping out of her arms. Bernasconi’s mind was made up.

“I looked at it and went (gasp) I wanna do what she’s doing,” Bernasconi said.

Aerial dance, Bernasconi said, comes from the dance tradition and is considered a merge between the circus arts world and the dance world.

“We blend the floor with the air so all of our choreography happens equally on the ground and in the air,” said Bernasconi, who wrote a book called Aerial Dance with her mentor, Nancy Smith, which was released in 2008.  “We’re not just up in the air doing all sorts of tricks. There’s an esthetic in dance. There’s a beginning, middle and an end. There’s a whole composition.”

And that’s how her most creative combination was born, 13 years ago. Bernasconi was teaching a beginner aerial dancer a basic move called a knee hang in which the dancer holds onto the lifted trapeze bar, puts his or her knees up over it and hangs upside down.

“Sometimes people get really scared and nervous and I would just say breath, inhale and exhale and I started finding as I was teaching I was kicking into my yoga teaching methods, so a little light bulb went off,” Bernasconi said. “I should try developing postures in the air.”

She immediately called Smith and said she wanted to develop a new type of yoga: aerial yoga. She spent an entire summer creating what is now a rapidly growing field.

“It first developed on the trapeze,” Bernasconi said. “I transferred it over to the silks because silks in hammocks are more user friendly.”

When her book came out, Towson brought in trapezes to help her teach.

“I love these studios and I love teaching here,” Bernasconi said. “I had a company for 10 years called Air Dance Bernasconi, but when I opened my yoga studio I had to let something go, so I folded my company to open my yoga studio.”

The studio, Yoga on York, opened in November 2010 and caters to all people.  The studio offers a variety of classes, including Moms and Tots, Stiff Guy, teens, and gentle and advanced yoga.

“We don’t see yoga as a sport,” Bernasconi said.  “Ours is more of a traditional hatha based, and our specialty is aerial yoga.”

This year, Bernasconi celebrates her 20^th year in aerial dance and is excited to get back to her dance roots. She has an upcoming aerial performance with her daughter on April 30. The sold out event benefits the Baltimore Child Abuse Center and will be held at Power Plant Live.

“I feel like I’m getting my arms back in shape,” Bernasconi said. “I’ve been so committed to my yoga studio that I’ve let go that part of my life. But now it feels really good.”