31 July,2026 10:58 AM IST | Mumbai | Aastha Atray Banan
Aarifa Bhinderwala
Once you have done a class with Aarifa Bhinderwala, somehow everything seems possible. It's a pole fitness class that will change your perception of what's possible. How is that? For me, a curvy 44-year-old, the classes came by when I was feeling as if I had lost that spark. You know, when you don't connect with your body anymore, and somehow, well, you stop feeling beautiful.
And so, recently, after a few consistent classes, when I could actually lift myself up, climb a pole and float a bit above the ground, I finally felt one with my body again. That's why Bhinderwala's Pole Burnt classes are the most popular pole fitness classes in town. Bhinderwala came across pole while she was visiting her sister in Australia.
"I went for a class out of curiosity and wanting to explore something new in a new city. I fell in love with the feeling of defying gravity and the sense of stillness that spinning on the pole gave me. I wanted to take this back home and wanted people in my country to experience this. And thus I pioneered pole fitness in India and worked on the challenges that come with introducing something completely new and creating a new field that didn't exist before. I've never been into sports or dance and didn't have a degree in business. All the strength I've built has been on the pole and grew it into a business by learning on the field," she tells us.
What I also love about the classes, which have become a non-negotiable now for me every week, is that it's graced with all types of bodies. If you think you have to look like a model and be at peak fitness to do the pole, you are wrong. You need to be consistent and enthusiastic. The class is filled with the tall, short, curvy, athletic, skinny - and everyone supports the other. I have seen and heard the class fill with claps every time a fellow pole lover accomplishes a move.
"I've taught thousands of students over a decade and take immense pride seeing how much they've grown with this skill. The sense of achievement in getting a new move and the resulting dopamine hit keeps them coming back, and getting their friends and family along to learn. A lot of them have expressed how pole helps build body confidence and how that's translated into their everyday life. The uniqueness of this movement discipline is the fact that it blends the worlds of sports and art and has something for everyone," Bhinderwala explains.
It surely does build confidence. I have walked out of the class feeling elated - and feeling like if I could do this, well, I can do anything in life. For Bhinderwala, these classes represent the embodiment of power and grace and what it actually means to feel confident in one's own skin, owning one's presence while discovering one's own strengths and honing it.
"It's an empowering space of bold transformation which often may start with a simple spin and celebrating these small and big victories with a community of like-minded women who hold you with a beautiful warm sense of camaraderie," she says. Her future plans? "To contribute to the further evolution of this movement discipline; with more studios and prestigious collaborations in the field of arts."
