i’m going to start this with a confession.
for a long time i wasn’t sure saolful was real. i was building a community that did not yet exist. i was writing the manifesto for a movement of one. you make the website and you book the venue and you tell people what time to arrive and you walk around quietly suspecting the whole thing might be a sentence you said out loud and then had to keep.
then we did on top, after a big night out, on the rooftop of the standard x in fitzroy. it was the morning after a saturday people were unlikely to fully remember. the event copy promised no mirrors, no pressure, no pretending you’ve got it all together. a slow yoga session for staying close to the floor, and then a pilates class that, to quote our own promo, doesn’t apologise. movement for bodies that lived a little.
i sat at the back. i watched. and there was this moment, i don’t know how long it lasted where everyone was in sync. breathing at the same time, moving at the same pace, with the city behind them. and they were not performing it. they were just doing it. together. on a rooftop. on a sunday. somehow not hungover enough to leave. and i thought: oh. it’s a thing. it’s an actual thing.
lauren said something afterwards that i wrote down on my phone so i wouldn’t lose it. she said it was nice to be in a beautiful space where judgement doesn’t exist. which is the whole brand, said better than we have ever said it ourselves, by someone we did not pay to say it.
the thing i learnt is that the class is not the point. the thirty minutes after the class is the point. people stayed. they enjoyed a margarita. they didn’t rush off. the post-class hang is the actual product. the movement is the excuse to be there.
we are doing this again soon. if you’ve been wondering whether you’d feel slightly weird about coming, you would. so does almost everyone in the room. that’s the point. just bring your bff.
permission to be human and imperfect.
love,
saolful.
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.