Yoga is good exercise for the body. Music nourishes the soul. Put them together and you have rock ‘n roll.
Shel Greenberg Erba teaches Wild FreedOm Punk Yoga classes at the Beachland Ballroom and at the Black Market in Cleveland. A 200-hour certified yoga instructor, she has taught at traditional hot yoga studios in Cleveland, Hudson and Kent. She has also taught classes at a drug and alcohol treatment facility, at an afterschool program for at-risk high school students, and donation-based sessions with funds going to Bright Pink breast cancer awareness, the Waterloo Alley Cat Project and the Friends of Cleveland Animals. She presently teaches regular yoga classes at the Tremont Athletic Club and at Great Lakes Brewing Company for their employees and residents of nearby apartments.
Greenberg Erba said she was first introduced to yoga when she was in her 30s. “I decided to go to graduate school for language arts,” she explained. “Graduate school knocked me on my butt. I went back to school because I wanted to help teens, and suddenly I kind of needed saving. Yoga helps people realize that we all wobble. We all fall down and get up. And we keep doing it.”
“I got into exercising to punk rock because it is basically what I do in my living room,” she said. “I started Wild FreedOm Punk Yoga to see if there were others like me who enjoyed practicing yoga to punk music. It’s a slower-paced, yet core-strengthening practice. Slowing down your breath, opening your mind, and adding space and light in between your bones and muscles with fast or loud music is a total rush.”
“Punk yoga helps me find the low bass beat in life,” she added. “It is the calming beat when life moves too fast, when chaos or stress is around you. It even helps in times of excited happiness, which also causes our bodies to tighten up.”
Greenberg Erba said that her husband (punk rocker Tony Erba), friends and a fellow yoga instructor encouraged her to pursue her idea of teaching punk yoga classes. “I approached Cindy Barber and Monica Doyle of the Beachland Ballroom. There had been punk yoga classes there years before. They were totally open to my idea and it’s a great collaboration,” she said.
Her students range in age from Mini Warriors under age 7 to Junior Warriors 8-17 years of age, and adults of all ages. Class size has ranged from eight to 36 students, according to Greenberg Erba. Class cost is $14 for adults and $7 for juniors. Mini Warriors get in free. “I encourage parents to bring their kids,” she said.
“Anyone can do punk yoga. It’s a practice,” she noted. “We are all new at one point in our lives. We all are wobbly and fall down. But it’s learning how to fall down, how to get back up, and how to laugh and also honor one’s own courage, dignity and kickass beauty. Punk yoga isn’t about looking like a perfect Instagram selfie. It’s about being truly proud of oneself and shining positive light into the world that will help others. Punk yoga is even as simple as smiling at a stranger. It’s that light that erases the dark in life.”
“Wild FreedOm Punk Yoga is for all levels, and all-ages vinyasa flow, meaning one pose flows into the next with the use of body and breath,” she explained. “It is set to punk rock and various other genres of music. I create a new playlist based around the theme of each session. I play a lot of Bowie, Iggy Pop, Dead Kennedys, Beastie Boys, Blondie, X, Black Sabbath, Mos Def, Sleater-Kinney, Joan Jett, Queens of the Stone Age, Ramones, Rolling Stones, as well as Journey, Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton.”
“You feel the beat of the music going all the way up through your body. Black Sabbath’s ‘Iron Man,’ for example, drives you like a pendulum and that’s good for your hips,” she said. “I taught an all-Bowie class and a week later, we learned of his passing. The second Bowie class that I taught turned into a memorial.”
“Some of my yoga students say they feel as if they don’t belong in a pretty yoga studio wearing $98 leggings,” she said. “We all belong. We’re all in it together.”
Greenberg Erba’s Wild FreedOm Punk Yoga classes are held at the Beachland Ballroom from 11:15am-12:30pm on Saturdays (She’s hosting a class this Sun 8/28). Classes at the Black Market retail establishment in Gordon Square from 7-8:15pm every Monday.
