This week, our spotlight shines on the amazing Asatta Jones! You can read her instructor bio (https://lotusfitnessstudio.com/asatta-jones/), but we wanted to get a little deeper than just the Cliff’s Notes, and let Asatta share her journey, passion, and mission with you!

Asatta started pole fitness in 2009, with no background in dance or fitness at all. This was her very first foray into athletic training. She was quickly hooked, and threw herself into her classes. Asatta says her first goal was “just to climb. I wanted to climb to the ceiling, and that was it.” Before long, she could do that and so much more. She improved her mental health and shed fifty pounds in the first few years of pole training. She even started teaching pole classes! Unbeknownst to her, she had a misalignment of the vertebrae in her neck, and ended up with a debilitating injury involving swelling in the muscles of her neck as well as a constant feeling of dizziness.

After consulting with doctors, Asatta realized she needed to cross train for control and flexibility, so she added yoga to her regimen in 2012, and that changed everything. However, she was intimidated away from traditional yoga at first. Like many people, she felt that traditional yoga required years of background education, that it was beyond her reach. She found aerial yoga more approachable and comfortable, and from there she gained the confidence to learn the traditional, grounded approach as well.

Now, yoga permeates Asatta’s outlook and approach to everything, including pole fitness, dance, and especially fitness instruction. “Yoga gets peppered into every mode of class,” Asatta says, “whether in the warm-up, in concepts for proper positioning and stacking on the pole, or just in combining movement with breath.” Asatta loves that yoga is applicable to every situation, as a philosophy of connection: connecting mind and body; connecting person to person; or just connecting with your breathing.

Just as yoga is adaptable to many situations, Asatta loves that pole is likewise adaptable to every style of movement. For her, pole is more than just tricks. “Freestyle is for health of mind,” she says. For her, pole is about movement, about connecting with different aspects of ourselves and really living in our different sides, whether that’s our sexy side that we’re usually too shy to reveal, whether that’s allowing ourselves to be vulnerable in a melancholy contemporary dance piece, or whether that is rage dancing, or living in a moment of celebration. Asatta believes in the power of pole as therapy. In fact, she says that her first goal of climbing was “clearly a metaphor for climbing out of depression,” and for her, it worked big time!

Asatta’s favorite part of instructing is connecting with her students. She loves giving students a moment of release, of escape, or just time to focus on their health and move their bodies. She finds opportunities in her group fitness instruction to practice acts of service, including helping students realize their visions with choreography coaching, as well as offering free, open pole time on Sundays in what she has named Karma Pole. For Asatta, instruction means building relationships and trust. In addition, it means approaching every experience from a place of love.

It is very important to Asatta that her students know everything she does, even if she seems like she is being hard on them, it’s from a place of genuine love. But that doesn’t mean she’s going to just go easy on you! Asatta believes in pushing ourselves beyond the limits we create for ourselves, and sometimes testing our boundaries means “eating humble pie,” as you will frequently hear her say in her classes. She is huge on “training your veggies” and doing the hard work that makes the amazing tricks function and look great!

Asatta loves Lotus Fitness Studio first and foremost because of the “really awesome group of instructors!” Lotus operates with solid structure, and clear expectations for students and instructors. She loves the high standards for Lotus instructors to do their homework and focus on safety in training. She loves that students can trust Lotus instructors with their safety, choreography, and comfort. Asatta is a true asset to our team. If you haven’t met her, make it a point to try one of her amazing classes. See you in the air! …or on a yoga mat!