#adaptable acrobat

I was expecting that the first time around I’d be working on fairly short stilts like they do with kids, like 18 inches or so, but nope, these ones were probably about 30 inch stilts. Which, when you are short as anything to start with is a significant difference. It was scary, but it was really cool. I’m not yet able to do anything by myself except for standing up against the wall, which is still scary, but I’m able to walk back and forth on the stilts holding a spotter’s hand. And occasionally go down to one hand to high five people on my last pass back and forth. 

I had a really good time. It was a ton of fun, and it was super cool to get a chance to try something new. One of my big goals has been working towards being more well rounded in my circus skills, so I feel like one step forward and one class at a time I’m starting to get there. I think I can’t wait to try it again even though it’s still in the terrifying stage. But definitely less terrifying by the end of the night than it was to start. 

Up until now I’ve been learning skills mostly, and we hadn’t really done tricks yet because I needed to learn all kinds of basic skills first, but today we started working on some tricks for the first time.

So, I learned leisure sit to baby, which feels super awkward, but isn’t actually that hard, and I learned an inverted split. I still need a bit of a boost to get into the inverted part of the inverted split, but I’m getting closer to inverting on my own (Literally now all my coach has to do is hold onto my leg so I have something a bit higher than the floor to push off of) and I can hold myself inverted once I get there. 

Now that I’m doing things more strongly on my own I’d like to go back to angel and reverse angle and see if I can actually manage to do them in the air now, even if I cheat my way into them. We also did a pullover trick today too, but I feel nowhere near confident enough in that to call it one that I can do yet. 

It sucks because I was actually starting to make some progress a bit. We are working on training one of the mounts, and we are mostly training it decentricly at the moment so that I can build up the strength to get there. I’m learning how to use rosin, and to manage my hips and balance and all of those things. 

I even made it up to standing today and did a cross back, which is like super simple, but it felt really hard. And I am starting to need way less help and spotting getting into inversions. I still need some help, but it is so, so much less.

My pancreas is bothering me and I’m in pain this morning (which might have been why I felt so crappy yesterday if this was brewing).

We’ve been doing a lot of work lately on helping me be more embodied and being able to listen to my body better. As I am sitting here this morning reading academic articles about disability in circus (If you are at all interested check out Tina Carter’s work, it’s fantastic and she is awesome! It’s so well worth the read), my body started to become obsessed with getting into faux baby. 

Since I know the names of things are different everywhere, this trick starts from a scissor sit. The forward leg is bent with the apparatus resting in your knee bend, as the back leg stays straight pointing downwards, and the upper body is brought through the apparatus to rest on the shoulder of the same side as the forward leg. Your hips should be behind and lower than the apparatus. 

So, since I’m trying to do a better job of listening to my body, and have no aerial apparatuses at home, I figured let’s try hanging off the side of my bed and seeing what happens. Turns out my body let go of a ton of gas, and stretched out a tight hip, and while I’m probably going to have to repeat this several times before there is a lasting effect there were actually a few moments of relief. 

These last few days as I’ve been doing conditioning and such at home instead of classes since they’ve all been cancelled this week post-show, I decided to throw them into my stretching routines. 

I found out from this that one of the reasons that I’ve been having so much trouble with my bridges is not flexibility or arm strength (My mental idea of the culprits) but the trouble was simply not having any kind of an understanding of the bio-mechanics needed to sustain a bridge pose. Turns out that I wasn’t engaging my core or butt nearly enough, and that coming off of the exercise ball I can sustain a bridge on my own for a few seconds. So, I’ll keep working at it like this and see how it goes. I’d be willing to bet if I keep practicing regularly in a few weeks I’ll be able to hold it for longer and get progressively closer to being able to get into it without needing the exercise ball.