Empowerment. Lightness of being. Poetry and grace. These are what many women are looking for in their workouts today. And that's what they feel when floating through the air with nothing but core body strength to hold them on a suspended swath of silk — or flying through the air on a trapeze, controlling aerial projections with abs, arms and legs of steel.

It's an exciting way to work out, taking to the air and letting the spirit soar.

Andrea Torres of Samadhi Hawai'i teaches classes in tissu (silk rope) and trapeze. Her classes are seeing a surge in popularity. Torres believes this is because "Women today want to be strong, but they also want to be feminine. Doing something that requires strength with beauty is empowering."

Class participant Jesa Goodrich of Kailua, a lifelong dancer, calls tissu exercise "the best — having the opportunity to dance in the air and be so in the moment; then you walk away completely satisfied." However, she added, it requires total focus: "You have to give it your full attention. You literally can't be anywhere else."

True. You don't want to be making a grocery list while hanging upside down 20 feet off the floor. Aerial dancing releases all thoughts of the everyday world while placing focus in a new realm: the air.

There is risk, of course. Samadhi Hawai'i does not use safety lines. That's why optimal conditioning is absolutely necessary.

WHAT IS IT?

• It's really more aerial dance than acrobatics. Graceful and poetic, it brings dance into the air.

• Samadhi Hawai'i offers classes in conditioning, strengthening, trapeze and tissu (silk).

• The tissu class employs yards of silk fabric suspended from the ceiling which students learn to climb up, using graceful movements to progress and wrapping the silk around arms and legs for support.

"Core strength, flexibility, and a sense of form and rhythm help, as does yoga, which brings focus, relaxation and a sense of how to shape the body into postures," Torres said.

WHO SHOULD GO?

• No gymnastic or acrobatic training is required, however these classes are not for the fitness neophyte.

• Classes are most effective for someone who has already achieved a level of fitness that enables them to do some key Pilates and yoga exercises, as well as push-ups and pull-ups.

• The class we attended was made up of yoga and Pilates practitioners, as well as hula and ballet dancers. All looked to be in their 20s and 30s. However, Torres said she has a 63-year-old in her tissu class who made it to the top.

• Anyone who wants to get away from a boring workout routine and make the spirit soar.

• Although the majority are women, men are welcome in the classes.

WHAT DOES SAMADHI MEAN?

It's a Sanskrit word meaning a state of profound absorptive contemplation of the Absolute; a state of joyful calm and rapture in which one maintains full mental alertness and acuity.

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR

Andrea Torres, a native of Brazil, has been a dancer and aerialist all her life. She began studying ballet at age 10 and danced for about 10 years.

After moving to Hawai'i she began dancing Brazilian and African styles, then joined the Iona Pear Dance Theatre (now known as Iona Contemporary Dance) and later the Tao Dance Theatre as a contemporary dancer. She also performed aerials in concert with kumu hula Sonny Ching.

Torres was the original Hina in Maui's " 'Ulalena," where she did aerial dancing for eight years.

She began the Samadhi Hawai'i dance group in 2005 and started teaching classes three years ago.