BATON ROUGE, LA (WAFB) -

Walking into Open Barre studio, you are greeted by all the essentials of a yoga class: big open space, mats and barefoot patrons. However, there is one other addition in this studio. Suspended from the ceiling by sturdy straps and secured by military grade hardware are a series of individual hammocks made from a stretchy, jersey material.

It's so weird. It looks like a little bat cocoon or something, said instructor Ryann Pinkerton of her usual workout scene.

This studio is tailored for aerial yoga, the latest evolution of the centuries old practice. It combines the stretching poses of classic yoga with the challenging lifting of aerials- choreographed movement in the air.

It just combines to make this fantastic workout that works your body head to toe. You'll sweat, but at the end of it you feel so relaxed. It's just a beautiful thing," said Pinkerton.

Pinkerton has the petite, lean frame one expects of ballerinas. She has an extensive background in both yoga and aerials, which is why she makes motion of pulling your entire body up into tangled positions seem so easy. Believe me, looks can be deceiving. I'm no yoga guru, but Ive taken my fair share of classes and I do some strength training.

When Open Barre invited me to try their class, I felt confident that I could keep up and maybe even relive some of my own days as a ballerina. The class started out pretty easy with some of the traditional yoga warm up stretches: versions of cat, cow and downward dog. It wasnt long though, before the skill level escalated.

As the class stretched over the hammocks, contorted into the hardest crunches Ive ever done and pulled our bodies up into gravity defying poses my muscles shook, twitched and burned with the effort. Each move, even the "easy" ones, felt like it worked every muscle in the body. However, its the core that is hit the hardest. Pinkerton told me later, that is the whole point.

"Everything radiates from your core, everything starts from there. That is your base, the beginning of your being," Pinkerton explained.

There are classes for every skill level, and the moves get easier with experience.

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Aerial yoga sweeps students off their feet