On Aerial Yoga as Therapy with Jo Stewart

Before I met Jo, my mental image of aerial yoga was mostly circus-like. Beautiful, yes. Fun, sure. Relevant to the yoga teachers and therapists I work with? I wasn’t convinced. Boy, was I wrong.

Jo Stewart (she/her) is one of Australia’s most experienced aerial yoga teachers. She founded the Garden of Yoga studio in Northcote, Melbourne, co-hosts the Flow Artists Podcast, and has spent years developing a genuinely accessible, therapeutic approach to aerial yoga, one that understands that different brains and bodies need different pathways into regulation, rest and inner awareness. Her first book, Eight Limbs of Aerial Yoga, is published by Singing Dragon and is out now.

Aerial yoga, it turns out, is not what I thought it was. The hammock in Jo’s practice is a prop, in the same spirit as a bolster or a block. For students who are neurodivergent, living with anxiety or PTSD, or who simply don’t find stillness regulating, aerial yoga can open up a whole range of options, like gentle rocking, cocooning, deep pressure, spinning, or closing the world out entirely, while still practising alongside others.

We also moved into territory I find myself returning to again and again. How do we reckon with the harm caused by influential yoga teachers while still practising within traditions they shaped? Jo explores this honestly in her book, and we unpack what it means to hold that complexity without erasing it.

And then I turned two questions from the Samādhi chapter of her book back on her. How would you act if you were already enlightened? And what stops you?

It was, as Jo put it at the end, a little bit like therapy. I’ll take that.

In this episode, we explore:

• What aerial yoga actually is, and how the hammock functions as a therapeutic yoga prop rather than a circus apparatus.
• Why stillness is not the only route to calm, and how the hammock allows for movement-based regulation in a group setting.
• The particular benefits for neurodivergent students and those with anxiety or PTSD, including options for deep pressure, vestibular stimulation, cocooning and visual control.
• The historical roots of supported inversions and fabric use in yoga, from the Indian thottil through Krishnamacharya’s ropes to the Iyengar rope wall.
• The difference between circus and yoga, performance versus inner experience, and what aerial practice genuinely shares with both traditions.
• How to navigate the harm caused by influential but abusive teachers, and why Jo chose to name B.K.S. Iyengar’s complexity directly in her book.
• The importance of teaching students to trust their own intuition over any teacher’s authority.
• What it looks like to act as your highest self now, without waiting for the perfect moment.
• People-pleasing in helping professions, when is it genuine service, and when is it something else?

Connect with Jo Stewart

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