When I bumped into yoga instructor Kevin Courtney in the stairwell of Kula Yoga five minutes before our workshop was to begin, he engulfed me in a colossal hug and said, “I can’t wait to see what happens to you in there.” There was a sagelike, prophetic quality to his words, and as I unrolled my mat on the studio floor and scanned the hard-bodied, turmeric juice–swilling crowd, I wondered whether I was in for some sort of psychic breakdown.
The Bridge, as his new class is called, is the creation of Courtney, a yoga teacher, and Chinese medicine doctor and Qi Gong instructor Thomas Droge. The pair share a man-of-the-woods aesthetic (think: topknotted hair and button-down shirts as exercise clothing) and have been teaching in separate rooms at Kula in Tribeca for 19 years combined. Now they’re tackling body, mind, and spirit together, with a hybrid practice that bridges (get it?) their disciplines.
“The Bridge takes what yoga does and makes it even more dynamic and potent,” Droge told me a few days prior to the event. We were sitting on blankets and blocks on the floor of the yoga studio—he lotus-legged and erect-shouldered, his tight-hipped visitor positioned rather more awkwardly. “If yoga is a straight line, Qi Gong is a spiral,” Courtney added, his brown eyes growing wide. “It has raised my yoga practice to a whole new dimension.”
A central focus of Taoism, the Eastern religion to which Qi Gong is closely linked, is the relationship between earth, body, and heaven. When we master these connections, the wisdom goes, we can see more clearly and lead more harmonious lives. This trichotomy is the focus of the Bridge, for which Courtney and Droge have concocted a trio of three-day weekends spread out over nine months—each retreat focused on one of the pillars—building up to a total spiritual reboot. But those of us who don’t have the time, yet still crave a taste of the “kernel of awakeness” that Droge describes, can sign up for a one-off workshop. (Warning: They sell out quickly.)
The first portion of the evening resembled an excellent yoga class—vigorous, yet alignment-oriented enough—with Courtney leading vinyasa sequences while an electric violinist-cum-DJ named Haana stood over a black MacBook making sonic stardust. We spent 10 minutes on a moving meditation in which we ever-so-slowly rotated our Warrior One poses 180 degrees. As we shifted, Droge talked to us about encountering new aspects of ourselves, and Courtney told us to think of removing the boulders that sit in our life path and prevent us from walking effortlessly. But it wasn’t until Droge took over and I found myself jumping up and down on my mat and screaming “Huh!” for 15 minutes that I knew I’d alighted in a new realm. (I would later learn that we were chanting “Heng!” which translates to “sacrifice” or “let go.”)
The instructors seamlessly took turns leading the class as we alternated between yoga sequences and standing portions in which we worked to hold our “rooster feet,” “monkey back,” and “eagle shoulders.” “Find the quiet in the movement,” Droge instructed us over the trippy music. “Find the stillness in the subway car at rush hour.” A musky heat took hold of the room, and participants let loose all manner of roars and sighs and chirps. I glanced at my neighbor’s watch and saw that nearly two hours had passed. Wow. Even more surprising: I wasn’t craving my iPhone. Soon I was absorbed in tracing the reflection of the moon in the imaginary lake by my feet, then scooping up a handful of moon water and offering it to the heavens. My mind never finds complete stillness in yoga class, but the mental ticker tape—What should I make for dinner when I get home? Did I respond to my neighbor’s text about her trampoline party?—was on its dimmest setting.
Droge raised the lights after the final savasana and nobody budged—except for a couple now stroking each other’s backs. “You’ll want to pay close attention to everything that happens to you over the next few days,” Courtney said. “You might notice changes in the way you feel and communicate, so pay attention.”
I returned home feeling aglow, if not wholly transformed. The following morning, though, the effect of the class was made clear as my son and I were walking to school. His thermos exploded inside the backpack that I’d slung over my shoulder, drenching half of my skirt in water. I was sopping wet and uncomfortably cold, and my burgundy skirt was suddenly the worst kind of ombré. The timing couldn’t have been less propitious: I had a staff-wide meeting in the office that morning and the Vogue holiday party that night, but my normally reflexive irritation couldn’t be bothered to flare up. My reaction was more of a mental shrug, and I quickly picked up my conversation with my son about whale blubber.
Stillness at rush hour: highly recommended.
The next New York workshop of the Bridge will take place at Kula on March 20. The first of the weekend intensives is at Kripalu in Lenox, Massachusetts, April 15–17. For more information, visit thebridgepractice.com.
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