By LYNN COOK

Think hot yoga is so last year?

Totally over the belly dancing trend?

Try hot belly dancing.

That’s right. These two workouts have merged at Your Body Center in Montrose.

Mix the blast-furnace atmosphere of a 105-degree hot yoga class with the hip shimmying moves of la danse orientale and you’ve got the basic idea.

Instructor Talina Grimes teaches traditional belly dancing around town at places like the Alex Rodriguez Academy of Dance, but says many gyms over air-condition. The fast-acting sauna-like atmosphere at Your Body instantly helps limber up students.

Truth be told, the “hot” part of this belly dancing class isn’t nearly as sweltering as the typical hot yoga class. The heat is turned off before the dancing begins, allowing the room to cool by a few degrees just as students arrive.

Don’t get me wrong — it’s still North Africa hot. And that’s precisely where some people contend belly dancing got its start.

Moroccans, Egyptians and Turks all lay claim to the ancient moves, but belly dancing’s origins have never been completely traced.

Some say it was performed by virgins about to be sacrificed to the gods. Others claim belly dancing started as a female communal ritual to celebrate the birth of a child.

Yet another version of the story — the one Hollywood picked up on — holds that Arab women in harems used belly dancing to get the attention of their masters.

Let me state, for the record, I am a belly dancing failure.

I’ve only tried one class, and Grimes swears practice makes perfect. Nobody gets it the first time around, she assured me.

“Usually, people find they do one thing really well. Students with some background in dance or yoga pick up the concepts a little faster, but everyone has moments of feeling totally uncoordinated and silly,” she said.

At one point when the class finally puts isolated rib cage circles together with flowing, serpentine arm movements, I turn to the mirror expecting to see something akin to the veiled temptresses of black and white movies. Instead, I look like Steve Martin in The Jerk. Horror.

“Don’t think about it. Just feel it and let your body do it,” Grimes shouts over the upbeat Arabic pop music.

Practiced belly dancers come off as a collision of curves, but they’re really isolating different body parts all at once. That takes serious study — and stamina.

Keeping the head, neck, arms, legs and hips completely still while moving the rib cage around in a fluid circle is tough. Seriously, try it at home. I’ll bet you can’t do it.

Anybody can throw around their junk in the trunk to Shakira, but making the tightly controlled movements of a belly dancer is another thing entirely. That’s why I’m so intimidated when Grimes calls for figure eights with the hips.

I avoid the mirror and focus on the women in the front — the regulars who wear little mesh skirts tricked out with metal discs that jingle-jangle over their yoga pants.

I try to do what Grimes keeps telling the class — not to over think it, just feel the movement and go with it. That’s when a stylish woman, one of the good ones with the cute skirts, turns to me and says, “Get after it, girl!”

“Really?”

“Yeah, you’ve got it. You’re doing it.”

Score.