To begin my first one-on-one lesson in gyrotonic, a Pilates-like exercise method originally created for dancers, my instructor, Liza, had me sit down on the contraption commonly known as “the rack.” We would start moving as we talked, she said. So I told her about my torn hip cartilage and we rocked on our sitz bones, tilting back and forth like we were on coil-bottomed horses in a playground.

My hips have hurt for about a decade. It wasn’t until two years ago, though, that my pain was vaildated by an MRI that revealed torn cartilage in both hip joints––probably from a combination of hatha yoga, dance, and genetics. Though I’ll probably have to have surgery some day, in the meantime my chiropractor’s been recommending gyrotonic. Called “yoga for dancers,” the fitness method (officially called Gyrotonic Expansion System) was developed in the 1980s by ballet dancer Juliu Horvath. The yellow flier from my local studio says, “he dreamed of a machine that would help a dancer achieve a better pirouette.”