Her-Story · Setting the Record Straight

I Used to Tell This Story the Way It Has Been Repeated Online Since the Early 2000s

I owe you a correction. In an earlier version of this post, I repeated the claim that the modern dance pole grew out of belly dancers using tent poles at American State Fairs in the 1920s. That story has been passed around in pole communities, cited in articles, and told in studios for decades. I told it too, because I had not yet done the deeper research.

In writing my book POLISTIC The Pole Yoga Guide, I went looking for the actual source. The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia, the authoritative academic reference on the 1876 Centennial Exposition, states plainly that those dancers were simply not at that fair. The story gets repeated with confidence, yet the primary source does not exist. UK pole researcher Sarah Shaw, who has done some of the most careful historical work in the pole community, put it plainly — I can find no concrete proof that poles were used prior to the 70s. There are no firsthand accounts of this that I can find. Its a game of telephone.

The strongest picture we have of where the modern dance pole actually came from points to Toronto in the 1970s. Strip clubs on Yonge Street added vertical pipes on elevated stages after licensing changes, and the dancers in those clubs developed the climb, invert, and spin vocabulary that became the foundation of Pole Fitness and Pole Dance as we know it today. That lineage is real, it is built from what dancers themselves remember, and it deserves to be honored.

What actually happened with those Egyptian and Middle Eastern dancers at American fairs in the 1890s is a story worth knowing, and it runs much deeper. The Ghawazi were hereditary Egyptian dancers, many from Dom and Nawar communities, who had been performing at weddings, festivals, and life cycle ceremonies for generations. Their movement was called raqs al baladi, dance of the country, and raqs al sharqi, dance of the East. These women led with muscular intelligence — spinal undulations, hip circles, pelvic isolations that connected directly to childbirth, pelvic health, and nervous system regulation. There are accounts of women dancing these movements while another woman labors, a circle of women using their bodies as live instruction so the birthing mother could remember what she already knows.

The word hoochie coochie did not come from Arabic. It came from American minstrel songs and was pasted over these women as a branding insult. Anthony Comstock pursued Ida Craddock, a mystic, sex educator, and early yoga practitioner who defended this movement as sacred pelvic education. What scandalized people was a clothed woman’s sovereign control over her own body. That is the her-story the pole carries.

The Deep Lineage

The Pole Has Been a Sacred Tool for Thousands of Years

The roots of pole practice go far deeper than most people realize. Every human body is built upon a vertical column, the spine. Every human culture has carried that truth outward into symbol, ritual, and tool. The pole is this memory externalized — a staff of sovereignty, a portable temple, an axis mundi. To touch the pole is to touch this memory.

In ancient India, the practice of Mallakhamb, meaning wrestler of the pole, originated over 800 years ago in Maharashtra. Practitioners used a smooth wooden pole, sometimes laced with castor oil, and trained speed, reflexes, concentration, and coordination. Yogis practicing Shivastambha Yoga climbed the pole as a demonstration of the alignment of mind, body, and spirit. The pole was a divine staff, anchoring practitioners to the earth while guiding them toward something higher. Polistic Yoga honors this ancient lineage while creating something entirely new.

The Chinese pole dates back before the 12th century. The Maypole, the Sun Dance pole, the Maori taiaha, the Shinto sacred pillar, the Norse Yggdrasil — every culture named its own vertical axis and built practice around it. The staff everywhere was portable sovereignty. When you stand at your Yoga Pole, you are stepping into that same archetypal current, claiming your own staff of authority, rooted in the ground and reaching toward the unseen.

When Fawnia Mondey created the first instructional Pole Fitness video in the late 1990s, she brought the pole out of the club and into living rooms around the world. Pole Fitness became a worldwide home fitness movement. Pole Olympics now exists. One day, the world will recognize Pole Dance and Pole Fitness as the legitimate, respected sport they have always been.

Polistic Pole Yoga · Est. 2008

From the Strip Club to the Yoga Studio, and Safely Home to You

I walked into a strip club at 18 and met the pole for the first time. It took the form of many poles, creating a large cage in which we danced. That is where I met it. Dancing activated the entrepreneur in me. I became pregnant at 19, and by 20 had opened my first business, a secondhand baby store in Hot Springs, Arkansas, a spiritual hub that introduced me to healers, makers, creators, and mystics from around the world. My second business was a spa at the Velda Rose Hotel in the historic district. I was only 20, surrounded by tribal elders and thought leaders who provided more formative training than any traditional institution could have. It was there that I met my first true yogi, and my life was never the same.

I became yoga certified in 2002. By 2004 I had opened iRelax, one of the first public yoga studios in Arkansas, a health and wellness center where I met alternative healers, light workers, and emerged in studying energy and esoteric teachings. That same year, Sheila Kelly appeared on Oprah talking about pole fitness and changed my perception of the pole entirely. I had only known the pole as a tool in the strip club, and she opened my eyes to using it as a fitness tool. I purchased my first home pole in 2004, making me one of the first people in the world to have a home pole.

In 2008, during a week-long juice cleanse under the guidance of my mentor Vera Dixon, I was doing Pole Yoga at home when it clicked. My pole was near the wall and during a session I thought to put the wall and the pole together. For the first time in my life, I experienced a blissful handstand. I was hooked. I became obsessed with converting yoga asanas into pole poses. I have loads of journal entries and scribbles from that era. Those words and drawings echo through my book POLISTIC The Pole Yoga Guide.

Polistic Yoga is a blend of aerobics, calisthenics, Pole Yoga, stretching, and energy tuning, all built around a single stationary vertical pole. It is the only refined and defined ground-based system using a vertical pole plus yoga in the world. Every one of the 52 poses stays on the ground, which opens this practice to every body at every level. The pole is held, leaned into, pressed against, and breathed with. Think of the pole as a rod, a staff, an energy tuning tool that holds you in balance and guides you deeper into each pose using your own body weight. It becomes a tool for realignment, decompression, and nervous system regulation.

In Pole Dance and Pole Fitness, polers use their skin to grip the pole for tricks, climbs, and aerials, which is why minimal clothing is part of that practice. In Polistic Pole Yoga, we stay grounded and clothed in whatever feels comfortable. We practice barefoot. The feet are the foundation. Polistic took the pole from the strip club to the yoga studio and into the bedroom.

This practice is for athletes, moms, healers, skeptics, and sacred rebels. All ages, sizes, genders, and starting levels. My whole family loves to practice Pole Yoga. Moms, kids, grandmas, and men all practice Polistic Yoga.

Understanding the Roots

What Yoga Is and What Makes Polistic Pole Yoga Different

Yoga is a group of physical, mental, and spiritual practices that originated in India. The term yoga has become synonymous with its asanas, or postures, and as a form of exercise. Swami Vivekananda was the first yogi to advocate yoga in America in the late 1800s. In the 1920s, western medical researchers began studying yoga as a science. In 1992, Dean Ornish, a follower of Swami Satchidananda, connected yoga to heart health and legitimized it as a purely physical exercise outside of esoteric circles and unconnected to any religion. Yoga moved into hospitals, gyms, and living rooms. It became mainstream.

Polistic Pole Yoga incorporates those same yoga asanas with the pole. Two practices. Two controversial histories. Both movements of the body. Both, at their root, about sovereignty, power, and presence. Put them together and the controversy dissolves or explodes. It just depends on your perception.

Many yoga poses, like inverted poses, can be intimidating and difficult to master. The pole offers a place of balance and assistance. Weight loss, mindfulness, spinal alignment, and a balanced body are among the results of a regular Polistic Pole Yoga practice. You only need the space of two yoga mats. Your space, your time, your transformation.

Start Your Practice

Join the 40 Day Metamorphosis and Witness What the Pole Does for You

The 40 Day Metamorphosis is the foundational program inside your Polistic membership. Forty days of guided sessions, 15 to 30 minutes each, walking you through all 52 poses. At the end, you receive a certificate of completion.

This program meets you exactly where you are. Every age, size, and gender can practice because these poses can easily be modified and the poler simply uses their own body weight as resistance. The pole gives you what you give it. Showing up consistently is the key. Master these 52 poses and unlock power forever.