Los Angeles AcroYoga Community
Fly Together In LA
AcroYoga classes, workshops & community jams across Los Angeles. All levels welcome — come find your base, your flyer, your people.
What is AcroYoga?
Where Yoga
Meets Flight
AcroYoga weaves the mindfulness of yoga, the dynamic power of acrobatics, and the healing arts of Thai massage into a single partner practice. Every session is built on a foundation of trust — between base, flyer, and spotter.
Whether you're stepping onto the mat for the first time or throwing icarian sequences, LA's community has a place for you.
Acrobatics
From L-basing fundamentals to icarian pops and whips — dynamic movement that challenges, surprises, and delights both partners.
Yoga & Presence
Breath, alignment, and mindfulness anchor every practice. AcroYoga deepens your yoga through the immediacy of partnership.
Community
LA's AcroYoga community gathers weekly for open jams, workshops, and classes — welcoming every level with open arms.
The Community
Los Angeles didn't build one AcroYoga community — it built several. Across a region famous for its neighborhood-by-neighborhood identity, distinct scenes emerged organically from the early 2010s onward, each shaped by the venues that hosted them, the teachers who committed to them, and the practitioners who kept showing up week after week. Today that network spans from Santa Monica to Orange County, held together by shared workshops, crossover teachers, and a single WhatsApp group that functions as the city-wide nervous system.
The oldest and largest scene took root on the Westside. Christopher Filkins and Ahni Radvanyi launched Westside Acro at Laughing Frog Yoga on Santa Monica Blvd in 2010, running 150+ consecutive weeks before venue changes moved it through Santa Monica and Culver City studios. Original Muscle Beach — a grassy lawn where partner acrobatics have been practiced since the 1930s — became the community's outdoor heart, hosting Sunday jams that still draw practitioners from across the city. Over the past decade, the Touchstone Climbing gym network — Hollywood Boulders, LA Boulders, and Cliffs of Id — has become a major home for organized teaching: an era Sonia Peltzer and Casey Stroud began around 2015, with teachers from across the city following, making climbing gyms an unlikely but natural home for the practice.
Across town, the Eastside built its own identity around Highland Park, South Pasadena, and the northeast neighborhoods. Kinship Yoga in Highland Park anchors weekly classes taught by Catherine Hamilton and Linnea Sablosky — both certified through AcroYoga International, and both known for technically precise yet welcoming instruction. The East Side Acro Jam at Garfield Park in South Pasadena draws the outdoor crowd every Sunday afternoon. The Eastside community has cultivated a distinctly close-knit feel, with deep ties to the bouldering scene at Cliffs of Id and The Stronghold.
The San Fernando Valley has sustained a practicing community for over a decade. Adam Weisman built Valley Acro through years of free, donation-based classes starting around 2012, eventually passing the torch when he relocated. Today Malaika Butoyi carries the Valley's tradition forward under the Valley Acro name, offering classes at Yoga Loft LA in Woodland Hills. The Tuesday night jam at JJ's Gym (Jack & Jeri's Training Space) in Valley Glen — a long-established circus and stunt facility — is one of the oldest running indoor acro jams in LA, drawing a dedicated core who'd rather not cross the hill.
Orange County rounds out the Southern California scene under the AcroYoga OC banner, gathering at TeWinkle Park in Costa Mesa and VIBE Gymnastics in Orange. Though geographically separate, OC practitioners regularly appear at LA jams and workshops — and vice versa. Across all four regions, the same dynamic repeats: a teacher opens a class, a community forms around it, an outdoor jam takes root at a nearby park, and the network quietly expands. It's how AcroYoga grows — not through institutions, but through people who keep showing up.
Recurring
Classes
Structured instruction across Los Angeles, hosted at gyms, climbing walls, and yoga studios. Book through each venue's website.
Community
Acro Jams
Open practice sessions — drop in, find partners, fly. No registration required at most jams. All levels welcome.
The People
Meet the Teachers
Our Roots
How It Started
LA's AcroYoga community grew one class at a time — from a single certified teacher in 2007 to one of the most vibrant acro scenes in the world. Here's the story, pieced together from the people who lived it.
The practice of merging yoga with partner acrobatics is taking shape on two continents simultaneously. In Montréal, a collective of circus artists and yoga teachers — AcroYoga Montréal — is developing and spreading their own flavor of the practice before any formal organization exists. In San Francisco, Jason Nemer (world-champion sports acrobat) and Jenny Sauer-Klein (circus artist and yoga teacher) meet at a 1am loft party and begin formalizing what becomes AcroYoga International (AYI) — writing the first manuals in 2004 and certifying the first AYI teacher cohort in 2006. LA has no acro scene yet.
Sonia Peltzer — born in the French Alps, raised in the California Sierras — gets her AYI Level 1 certification and becomes LA's first AcroYoga teacher, holding the city's first regular class in a park in Pasadena. Angela Baumgartner teaches early workshops at the Zen Shiatsu School in Santa Monica through early 2008. Sonia then departs for the Peace Corps, leaving a brief gap in LA's only regular acro instruction.
Lara Catone, certified at an AYI training in Greece, starts a class at Coldwater Canyon Park in summer 2008 while Sonia is abroad. Sarah Yovovich assists from the first sessions, earns her own AYI certification in August 2008, and steps up as co-teacher that September. The same month, Sarah Vosen moves to Santa Monica and begins teaching donation classes at Crescent Bay Park and the Shiatsu School of California, joining Becca Fresco at Shakti's Elements. The "two Sarahs" era has begun.
Sonia comes home from the Peace Corps. She and Sarah Yovovich — who falls in love with Thai massage that year — start a class at Urth Yoga in Echo Park that runs until 2011, then moves to The Raven in Silverlake. The partnership becomes the gravitational center of the LA scene for years. The pair lead regular "Hike & Fly" workshops in Griffith Park — Matt Lyons' first classes — and Sonia teaches weekly at Black Dog Yoga in Sherman Oaks, with Sarah, and later Casey Stroud, co-teaching. Sarah Vosen comes east to teach at Urth and The Raven as well.
The Westside grows its own bench: Sara Laimon, Whaka Luke, and Yogi Hendlin begin teaching around 2009–2010, and Chris Filkins and Ahni Radvanyi launch AcroYoga at Laughing Frog Yoga on Santa Monica Blvd — a studio where nearly every teacher in the scene eventually teaches, and the seed of what becomes Westside Acro. Jon Rea is active in the Valley. The teachers hold regular AcroYoga LA meetings (with the occasional group pyramid photo), run a joint website, and coordinate a citywide class plan. And everyone jams at Original Muscle Beach, soaking up wisdom from Ernie Thrash, the "Mayor of OMB."
Adam Weisman finds acro through classes at Black Dog and in Venice — learning from Jon Rea, Sonia, Casey, and both Sarahs. Sonia and Casey co-found Yoga Squirrels, launching their first retreats in Joshua Tree and Moab — AcroYoga, Thai massage, rock climbing, and desert wilderness woven together. The Joshua Tree New Year's retreat becomes an annual tradition.
Adam starts teaching through Valley Acro in a tiny capoeira studio in the San Fernando Valley alongside Karen Barnes — who quickly bows out, leaving Adam to teach solo. He runs it for nearly a decade. Daniel Scott is also teaching around this time. Westside Acro at Laughing Frog, now two years running, continues to build its following. And Casey takes over Sarah Yovovich's spot teaching alongside Sonia at The Raven while Sarah heals from injuries. That same year, the two Sarahs develop Sarahpeutics and 5 Element Thai Massage — a fusion of AcroYoga therapeutics, partner yoga, acropeutics, and Chinese medicine — and go on to teach weekend, 5-day, and 8-day trainings in LA and internationally.
Catherine Hamilton takes her first acro class (at Black Dog, with Adam and Jon Rea — and, in her words, she and other newcomers "held the advanced folks back"). The community now includes Sarah Tonin and Kelly Thayer (Partner Acrobatics TT). In the Valley, Tari Manello becomes a key player, hosting "elegant acro" jams and workshops at his giant house — a scene that runs for several years. Multiple weekly classes are running across LA.
Adam moves out of the Valley after 3.5 years of teaching and passes Valley Acro to Kyna and Stephen, who carry the San Fernando community forward. Around the same time, The Raven class winds down as Sonia and Casey shift to teaching at the Touchstone climbing gyms — LA Boulders, Cliffs of Id, and Hollywood Boulders — quietly opening the era that will define the next decade of LA acro. Sonia also becomes an AYI teacher-training instructor, teaching internationally and in LA, and goes on to train hundreds of the teachers who teach today.
Kinship Yoga in Highland Park becomes the anchor of the Eastside AcroYoga scene. Cody and Siobhan help establish acro at Kinship around this time — building the community that Catherine Hamilton and Linnea Sablosky will continue to grow into one of LA's most active weekly programs.
Sarah Yovovich — subbing in the Touchstone classes since 2016 — takes over Casey's spot as Casey relocates to Bishop, CA (Yoga Squirrels' retreats continue). Catherine Hamilton and Robin Sargan both complete AYI certifications and begin teaching at Touchstone that same summer, working alongside Sonia and Sarah. Matt Lyons also earns his cert that year and teaches at Touchstone until his hospitalization. RIP, Matt. The gyms — Hollywood Boulders, Cliffs of Id, LA Boulders — are now the primary institutional home for weekly LA acro classes.
Manuel MmLavin teaches AcroYoga at Veda Yoga in Culver City through 2025, sustaining one of the community's longest-running studio programs through the post-pandemic recovery years. Sarah Yovovich returns to the Touchstone gyms after the pandemic and has taught continuously at Cliffs of Id ever since. Today the community has rebuilt and expanded: climbing gyms — Hollywood Boulders, LA Boulders, Cliffs of Id, The Stronghold — serve as the primary institutional home for weekly classes, an unlikely but natural fit for a practice built on strength and trust. Teenie leads a new all-levels class at Primal Moves in Marina del Rey. Open jams continue in Culver City, Santa Monica, and beyond. From one certified teacher in 2007 to a thriving scene spanning every corner of the city — the WhatsApp group ties it all together, and the community keeps growing.
History is community-sourced and almost certainly incomplete. If you were there and remember something different — or something more — reach out.
Gallery
Community in
Motion
LA's AcroYoga scene through the lenses of photographers who've shown up to the jams and classes. Photos coming soon.
Get Involved
Join the LA
AcroYoga
Community
Whether you're brand new to AcroYoga or a seasoned flyer, you belong here. Los Angeles has one of the most vibrant AcroYoga communities in the world — join us for jams, classes, and connection.
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