At a spacious studio in Hollywood, a barefoot Julianne Hough is hyping up a group of dancers auditioning to become trainers for a new workout method she’s created. Wearing shiny mauve leggings and a matching sports bra, she paces back and forth, doing her best to make eye contact with each person.
“We’re creating an environment that’s inclusive and where everyone is accepted,” says Julianne, eliciting cheers of Yayyyy! and I hear that! from the crowd. “That’s the world I want to live in.”
Dance has always been a part of Julianne’s life—she began competing at age 9 in her home state of Utah and went on to become a pro (and later a judge) on Dancing With the Stars. She landed her first lead acting role in the 2011 remake of Footloose, yet never really understood what dance gave her until recently.
“Dance is my superpower, and it has been my whole life, but I didn’t even know it,” she says. But others did. Before Julianne started choreographing what she calls her “high-sensory activated dance method,” she remembers people telling her they wanted to dance like her.
“What does that even mean?” she mused in an Instagram post earlier this year. “Do you want to do a high kick, pirouette into a split?” No. They wanted to dance without feeling self-conscious.
“I have no boundaries when I dance,” she says, now seated on a couch, snuggled up in a sweater and nursing a jug of lemon water.
For Julianne, dancing without limits is all about the mind-body connection. By creating her dance method, Kinrgy (kin as in family and kinesthetic, plus energy), she wants to encourage others to move freely and feel transformed.
Julianne’s own “massive transformation” started four months after her July 2017 wedding to professional hockey player Brooks Laich. Marriage was her big happy ending, she thought, but then she realized she wanted more. She needed to find her purpose. That purpose, it turns out, is helping lift others up through dance.
Her original idea for Kinrgy was straightforward: to create a class or app that would be like the SoulCycle of dance. But she ended up scrapping the idea; it didn’t feel substantial enough.
A meeting with Endeavor talent agency CMO Bozoma Saint John, who’d done Julianne’s method at a retreat and become hooked, was pivotal. She urged Julianne to think outside the box. “Let’s create a movement,” Saint John told her. “I was like, ‘I want to do that, but how?’ ” Julianne recalls. “You just do it,” Saint John replied. “The minute that happened, everything shifted for me,” says Julianne.
Expanding her reach—with plans for both a studio in Los Angeles and global events in which participants around the world will dance simultaneously—meant the practice had to be more accessible.
Designed for nondancers, the 45-minute method isn’t about perfecting the choreography—which does include moves such as “sexy lunges” and Magic Mike–like hip thrusts—but instead, moving in a way that’s nurturing to each individual.
And developing Kinrgy proved to be cathartic for Julianne, who says it’s helped her unpack some tough childhood experiences. “I’ve been de-layering all the survival tactics I’ve built up my whole life,” she says. “Now, I feel limitless.”
Her hope is that others will have a similarly life-changing experience when the method launches this year. “When I think about what I want to create, I want to help people connect back to their truest self. When that happens, they can relate to the people around them with no filter and experience the world how we’re supposed to experience it—in its most pure form, which I believe is love.”
Julianne recently got a crash course in the whole “no filter” thing in a different way, posing for the cover of this Naked Strength issue. “I didn’t want to do a demure shoot where I was trying to cover my body,” she says. “I wanted to do something where I was free.”
Though the America’s Got Talent judge says she’s never been shy when changing in front of other dancers, the photo shoot shifted her perspective. “Now I’m walking around naked all the time, and I love it!” she says.
For Julianne, that unabashed body love has, at times, been hard-earned. Back in 2008, following a diagnosis of endometriosis—a condition in which the tissue lining the uterus (the endometrium) forms outside of it, causing severe pelvic pain during menstruation and sex—Julianne grappled with feelings of insecurity.
Only after accepting her endo as part of her was she able to see it in a new light. “I feel I’ve created a more peaceful and harmonious relationship with it.”
Acknowledging the aspects of her condition that may be out of her control (like getting pregnant, as almost 40 percent of women with endometriosis struggle with infertility, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists) has also been a challenge.
There hasn’t been a specific “you cannot have children” talk with her doctor, but in June, Julianne and her husband revealed they were starting in vitro fertilization to increase their chances of conceiving. And she’s choosing to look on the bright side: “I’ve always put it out there that it’s going to be okay,” she says.
Knowing she has Brooks by her side through the ups and downs only reinforces her resilience. However, there was a moment during the past year when she feared he wouldn’t vibe with her evolution.
“I was connecting to the woman inside that doesn’t need anything, versus the little girl that looked to him to protect me,” she remembers. “I was like, ‘Is he going to love this version of me?’ But the more I dropped into my most authentic self, the more attracted he was to me. Now we have a more intimate relationship.”
That new intimacy has allowed Julianne to reveal truths to her husband that even he didn’t know. “I [told him], ‘You know I’m not straight, right?’ And he was like, ‘I’m sorry, what?’ I was like, ‘I’m not. But I choose to be with you,’” she says.
“I think there’s a safety with my husband now that I’m unpacking all of this, and there’s no fear of voicing things that I’ve been afraid to admit or that I’ve had shame or guilt about because of what I’ve been told or how I was raised.”
Julianne’s radical evolution has also helped her reconnect with another love: music. Though her first album debuted at number one on the Billboard Top Country Albums chart in 2008 and she won the Top New Artist award at the Academy of Country Music Awards in 2009, the lead single on her never-released second album underperformed, and she halted her music career in 2012.
“I gave up because of my fear of failure,” she admits. She’s since changed her tune and has started writing lyrics again. And no surprise here: “Every song has been about transformation,” she says. “It’s so where I’m at. Being able to move stuck energy, I let down my walls.”
With her sense of emotional and mental well-being transformed, Julianne is careful not to ignore the physical either. She exercises five days a week, doing a mix of SoulCycle and hot power yoga, plus weight training with her husband.
And she’s started to love her early workouts, even if she’s not a morning person. “If I don’t move my body in the morning, I have a fine day,” she says. “If I move it first thing, I have an excellent day.”
Before every workout, she slurps down a glass of lukewarm water with half a lemon, 8 to 12 ounces of celery juice, a green superfood drink, two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar, and an adrenal supplement.
Post-sweat, she drinks a healthy-fats shake made with avocado, almond butter, almond milk, spinach, protein powder, blueberries, and a banana. She loves switching up her main meals and eating different kinds of body-nourishing dishes, but she tries to stick to one rule, given her health struggles: Avoid foods that cause inflammation.
And though she’s committed to maintaining all of the habits she’s adopted—from the morning exercise routine to the more mind-blowing relationship and internal changes she’s made on her journey—one thing is certain: Julianne knows she’ll continue to evolve.
“I’m going to shift for the rest of my life,” she says. “I’m not like, ‘Oh, I got it.’ But I’m trusting myself now, and when I’m totally connected to me, I feel full. I want others to see that in themselves too.” There’s a transformation in motion for Julianne…and one just waiting to be sparked in the rest of us. Who’s in?
Photographed by Brian Bowen Smith • Style Editor: Kristen Saladino
