Stacey Lei Krauss takes on Denver heart and sole with barefoot training
“Once you learn how to use your feet, everything else will be easier,” says Stacey Lei Krauss, Denver’s barefoot- training movement guru.
I’ve used my feet since I could stand and life hasn’t been any easier because of this skill-set. But, when I recently jumped into Krauss’s signature class, willPower and grace® at Cherry Creek’s Pura Vida Spa, my paradigm shifted from head to toe.
I’ve done my share of yoga holding Eagle pose while ardently avoiding toppling over. But, in Krauss’s willPower and grace® workout, I feel energy emanating through the floor and can’t even conceive of the possibility of toppling in this room.
Krauss starts by reintroducing us to our feet – their connection to the floor, the movement of our toes, and the stretch of our Achilles, making us supple and ready for balance.
Instantly, Krauss - small, nymph-like, and lean - commands the stage expecting us to plant our feet into that energy, keeping strong and graceful through the end of the hour. No half-way engagement allowed. Krauss offers her signature motivational mantra to us: “What if you had to...what if you had to run out of your high-rise office building at top speed, barefoot?”
One of Krauss’s newer students back in New York City nearly ten years ago complained that she didn’t fully buy into the barefoot premise. Coming back to Krauss’s class just weeks after 9/11 she’d had to do just that – run shoeless down flights of stairs escaping one of the Twin Towers as it collapsed into rubble. Because of Krauss’s class, she performed it nimbly enough to save herself.
Krauss’s cardio-based fusion of the most efficient elements of yoga, Pilates and dance, combined with the functionality and balance of barefoot- training, makes you stronger, leaner, and less injury-prone in everyday life. A rocking body is just a perk.
Krauss also engages your mind and spirit by inserting ideas like energize and achieve, creating word pictures you live in while you train, cementing strength and well-being into your synapses with every move.
After endless planks, lunges, squats and twists, we also work on opening our chests and collarbones. Krauss blazes her dazzling white smile pushing us to “open your wingspan and let go of things you’re holding onto that no longer inspire you, ‘cause you don’t need that, that’s called baggage…see, now you’re free.”
I’m a lean, free bird now, and I’ll be back for more.
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