Leah Simmons offers free KAAIAA fitness workouts during Sydney lockdown
The latest celebrity workout craze is now being offered to hundreds of people stuck in Covid lockdown for free.
Fitness guru Leah Simmons is keeping Sydney strong during the lockdown and offering the same workout sessions keeping celebs Mike Tyson and Pip Edwards in shape to hundreds of people stuck at home - for free.
The Bondi-based personal trainer has been hosting free workouts over Zoom every day at 7.30am AED for the past few weeks to help people stay fit physically and mentally during the lockdown.
“I just knew that the work had to be out there for people to be able to get through the lockdown. And for me, I have a deep seated belief that the more you give the more you get back,” she said.
The free sessions have been incredibly popular, with up to 700 people everywhere from Sydney to Denmark and Amsterdam joining the session at any one time, and some saying the workout “changed their life.”
“The response has moved me to tears. People have had some major breakthroughs whether it’s finding the courage to leave a toxic relationship or take their first step out of a hospital bed or leave the house after a year at home,” she said.
Simmons’ revolutionary KAAIAA fitness program is not your ordinary workout, with each one-hour session integrating four pillars of health: the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual by combining Pilates, body weight exercises and meditation.
She launched the program earlier this year after seeing a gap in the market and has since had huge success, with socialite Edwards, boxing legend Tyson and actor Joel Edgerton all trying the workout.
“It’s a workout so it’s satisfying the need to be physically moving but it also allows you the space to find your centre and invite some deep breathing into your practice,” she said.
“We start off with breathwork then we start our physical pillar, which is rooted in my training as a Pilates teacher. Then we do a guided meditation and finally, the spiritual pillar which includes an integration technique.”
The workout is a combination of Ms Simmons’ skills as a Pilates instructor and Kundalini yoga teacher in Bali. But it was a difficult period in her own life that inspired her to create the workout program.
“This has been a 14 year journey for me. I was in the fitness industry for a long time and I was very much swept up in the Instagram wave when it started … I was obsessed with training and felt I had to look a certain way,” she said.
“I started to feel a massive disconnect between the way that I looked and the way I felt. I was miserable, and I started to ask myself, why, when I was training so much, was I so unhappy? And it made me realise we are so much more than just a body. We are thoughts, we are connections, we are emotions.”
Now, Ms Simmons hopes the free sessions will allow her to share her own transformational journey with others and help people find the strength to get through the lockdown.
“If there’s one thing that we know and especially throughout this situation, you can only control the way you respond to it and what I try to teach people with KAAIAA.”
People can sign up here.
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Originally published as Leah Simmons offers free KAAIAA fitness workouts during Sydney lockdown