Discover Your Higher Self, an intimate space for hanging out

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When Robyn Luna was in elementary school, she was the kid on the jungle gym doing forward and backward flips on the bars, sometimes with no hands.

Now Luna, 37, owns Your Higher Self, a yoga trapeze studio in Las Vegas, where she teaches her students to stretch, twist and hang upside-down from hammocks in mid-air.

It sounds like something out of a Cirque du Soleil show, but it’s quite beginner friendly. So much so that Luna has worked with clients from ages 9 to 90. In fact, it’s the accessibility of the hammock that attracted Luna to Yoga Trapeze in the first place.

“I found something I could hold onto … something that really supported me and also challenged me at the same time,” said Luna, who realized right away, “I want to share this.”

Luna, who is Mexican and Indigenous, has been physically active her whole life, but admitted that while growing up, her desire for health and fitness wasn’t shared by her family and community in the Mission District of San Francisco.

She now spends one week of every month with them in California and has made it her mission to inspire them to be more active and to try Yoga Trapeze, noting “hammocks were created by indigenous people.”

Yoga Trapeze provides many benefits primarily due to the act of inversion. The hammock helps support students while going upside down, which is great for spinal traction, relief of back pain, core strength development, deeper backbends, shoulder tension release and body strength.

Luna trained to become a certified Yoga Trapeze instructor in 2019 with Yoga Body in Barcelona, Spain. Though she was born Robyn Barnes. she embraced Robyn Luna as her artist’s name during training because it felt like a better fit.

In 2020, she moved to Las Vegas and opened her studio, Your Higher Self, which is a play on becoming a lifted version of oneself, literally and figuratively.

The 500-square-foot Your Higher Self studio is in a detached space on Luna’s home property in West Las Vegas. Classes are intimate and personal with the studio accommodating only four hammocks. The walls are painted with the chakra colors, all inspired by the four elements: earth, water, fire and air.

“I’m obsessed with ‘chakras and the moon … and astrology so I infuse all of that,” said Luna. “Whatever moon phase we’re in, there are certain poses that are better for the body. Whatever astrology season were in, there are also certain things that are good for your body … blockages that we have in our energy centers and chakras … I take all that knowledge that I’ve researched and learned, and I put that into my classes.”

Luna also utilizes essential oils, cleansing sage and a rain stick during her classes to “inspire movement not only with the body, but the mind as well.”

While she recognizes some of these concepts are foreign to the Western World, she hopes people will come to class with an open mind. She admitted she knows what it’s like to feel judged, due to her mixed heritage, so “I make a point to make everyone feel warm and welcome.”

It’s a bit different from a typical yoga session and may appear intimidating at first, so Luna offers potential students a 30-minute free discovery class. After that, a single class is $44, and a monthly 4-pack is $133.

“It’s kind of like trying a new food,” she explained. “You got to see if it’s something you like and maybe want to commit to.”

Luna is also a professional photographer and thrives on taking pictures of her students when they’re in poses, even creating a short album for them of their Yoga Trapeze journey.

“It’s like a timeline,” she said, “and it really does help them see their form, shape and structure. I just really love being able to do that for them.”