Happy to bend over backwards

Yoga IT might seem strange that when Adam Woolley turned 26 in November, a group of his colleagues sang “Happy Birthday” as they, and he, were doing handstands. Handstands, though, are not so difficult for this crowd: they’re all students in a contortion class taught by Jonathan Nosan, and for most of them basic acrobatic moves are child’s play. The class, which Mr. Nosan has been teaching weekly since last fall at the Sankalpah Yoga Studio in Manhattan, tends to draw people who, as one student put it, use their bodies to make a living. Mr. Woolley is a professional hand balancer, and aerialists, a fitness pole dancer and ballet and modern dancers are among the other regulars. Even Isaac Peña, who founded the studio (with Jude English) and teaches yoga, takes Mr. Nosan’s class.
At first blush, it resembles some yoga classes, minus music, chanting or incense, but it transforms. “Yoga is more of an all-around wellness sort of thing, where it’s all about balance,” Mr. Peña said after a recent class. “Contortion is more extreme.” Students spend a good part of the 75 minutes bent over backward. And they’re not just poised in a backbend, but doing exercises like “the waterfall,” which requires them to lean back, touch the floor, return to a standing position and then repeat the motion several times — a reverse toe touch, more or less. “This one is a real sternum cracker,” Mr. Nosan said during one class as he coached his charges (and made an observer cringe).
The atmosphere in what Mr. Nosan calls his “contorture chamber” is light. The instructor giggles, and students joke and congratulate one another after difficult maneuvers. The camaraderie is palpable, partly because, outside of class, some of these folks move in the same circles. “The circus world is minuscule,” said Rachel Salzman, an aerialist and hand balancer who has done yoga with Mr. Peña and performed with other students in the class. “We all kind of know each other somehow.” But the airy atmosphere belies students’ intensity, and Mr. Nosan can be exacting. At a recent class he took time to work with Mr. Peña on the placement of one toe. “Are you feeling something?,” he polled the students while they were doing hanging back bends (long leans backward, but your hands are not touching the floor). “I would hate to have you in this position and not feeling anything.” Once he even advised a student to “relax the forehead.”
That actually counts as job advice for this crowd. “I’ve been doing yoga for a long time, but you don’t train like this in a yoga class,” said Marlo Fisken, a teacher and performer who won the American Pole Fitness Championships last fall, but still finds contortion class challenging. “I come here to work on my weaknesses,” she said. Clearly this class is not for everyone, but it may not be as much of a stretch as it sounds to those among us who huff and puff when bending over to tie our shoelaces. Mr. Nosan himself couldn’t even touch his toes 20 years ago. A former academic devoted to Asian studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Fulbright scholar, Mr. Nosan is today, at 42, a full-time contortionist who has performed in theater and circus events and has been a stunt double in films and commercials. He can touch his toes now, even bending over backward.