Most overstimulating day ever.

Yesterday got rolling early on, when I had lunch with a former owner of Yoga Power studio in Waltham to talk about her experiences as an entrepreneur in the local fitness business. She made some good points about being careful with compatibility between business partners, but wasn't able to speak directly to a lot of the things I wanted to do (like not start a startup). That was overstimulation #1.

At the same time, I got from her a Matt Furey booklet on handstand training, which made for the perfect pre-workout Starbucks reading. One thing I didn't expect: all 20 exercises he describes are done against a wall, and he doesn't address different ways of getting up into a handstand except kicking up with bent legs vs straight. I don't even remember a sentence on making sure you kick up equally with both legs. Still, there were some neat exercises in there that I hadn't thought of, like kicking up against a wall and then trying to walk laterally along the wall. I tried that. Also did a 90 second hold against the wall (having found a place over in the free-weight area where there's a column placed conveniently in front of a clock). I keep gaining and losing my ability to jump up with two legs... it's definitely a body awareness thing, not a strength thing, so I will just have to pay attention and be patient.

While at the gym I ran into an ex-coworker from DSB, a younger guy who I talked with about careers for a while. I described how happy I was to have found mentors in the industry who are in their 40s and have really been around the block; he said he's always been the lead on his projects (DSB was like that because it was so small) and couldn't imagine "bowing down to anyone like that" at this point. Ugh. I said something about different learning styles, but think I failed to adequately make the points I would have liked to. This may not sound like overstimulation but I thought about it for quite a while.

After getting home we barely had time to get a Christmas tree and some dinner before going to see Pilobolus, a dance company that is in a lot of ways not very dancy, and much more acrobatic. Their whole style is based on "weight sharing", which means they do a lot of lifts, and people swinging one another around... but they do it very very fluidly, just pouring themselves onto one another, and they did some really amazing things where more than one body was used to make, well, a creature of some kind. One of my favorite moves was simple and I think almost any group of people could do it: three people hold each others' shoulders in a tight little circle and hunker down a little bit. Three more people hold each others' shoulders (or arms?) in a slightly looser circle. The loose circle gets on top of / around the tight circle. Then the tight circle stands up, and everyone starts to spin the circle around until the outer circle's feet come off the floor and they're all swinging. Wheeeeeee! This happened during a piece called "Aquatica" so I interpreted the whole thing as a jellyfish.

I need five of you to come over right now, please. :)

There were other things that were harder to explain; anyone interested should definitely google image search on Pilobolus though, and then imagine them in motion. They don't really do handbalancing, and there was only one recognizable full split in the program, but they still had this amazing quality of movement. heisenbug and I are now considering going to their adult workshop next summer. :)

<-- Pilobolus!

After all that we stayed up late to finish watching The Incredibles. Now that I've seen it, I don't get all the complaints about violence; every theme in the movie is very adult. I was thinking about that, or possibly about Nala curled up against my leg, when I fell asleep.