From two spin-class pioneers comes a ‘workout for your relationships’ – what fresh hell is this? | Emma Brockes

The New York venture Peoplehood invites you to pay to join a gather', and laugh and learn' with strangers. Shudder

The vogue in self-improvement this new year is for leaning out, that is, for giving yourself permission to relax on the understanding that some fugitive benefit will take hold to make you more competitive than those leaning in. I'm in favour of this for general reasons of lassitude, but it will be interesting to see how it plays out in the market. To wit: the team behind SoulCycle, once a phenomenally successful fitness franchise, now a dated brand with empty storefronts all over Manhattan, has launched a new business - notably, one in which no one has to do anything so basic as to sweat or hunch over a bike.

Or rather, any sweat triggered by Peoplehood, a company that invites strangers to attend 60-minute discussion groups called gathers", will be for reasons of embarrassment, not exercise. Does the notion of attending a group workout for your relationships" amuse and appal you? Does the concept of a gather", with its strenuous avoidance of the gerund and vague whiff of Gilead, make you shake with laughter? Then you may want to learn more about Peoplehood (a hundred bucks says they toyed with the idea of capping the H and styling it PeopleHood), an enterprise which, on the earliest evidence, promises to offer a lot more value in this vein.

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist