A little over 10 years ago, trainer Silvia Pina brought dance fitness to Cortez with her popular Bootylicious class.

Now, Pina, a certified personal trainer and lifestyle fitness coach, is planning to expand the town’s fitness horizons using her newly opened fitness studio, SOAR Mind Body Fit.

Located on the corner of Empire Street and Highway 145, the new studio will host Pina’s Bootylicious class, which allows participants to dance while engaging in a lower body workout full of squats and lunges.

“There are not a lot of places that you can go dance in Cortez,” said Pina. “It can be a pretty intense workout depending on how much you put into it.”

In addition to her dance classes, plans are in the works for Pina to begin female self-defense classes at the studio in the spring and expand to ballet classes at the studio in the fall.

“This has been a dream of mine for a long time, to have my own space,” explained Pina. “It’s going to be an evolution.”

Keying that evolution, Pina says, will be an ever-present focus on the mental side of physical training and a never-wavering focus on working with the mind.

“It’s not just about focusing on losing weight and getting fit,” Pina said. “It’s about targeting some of the emotional aspects holding you back. If you start to feel good from the inside, it will move outward.”

Most important, Pina’s studio promises to provide a fun and rewarding experience.

“You think of your body being sore, but it’s really your body soaring,” Pina said. “It’s like the phoenix situation where you burn down in flames and rise out of your ashes.”

An interesting concept to say the least and one that makes for an intriguing trip to Cortez’s newest dance studio.

For more information, contact Silvia Pina at 970-739-0601.

imclaren@cortezjournal.com