flexagon | Acroyoga workshop synopsis (Reply)

What a long, surreal weekend. Going to acrobatic flying today was the right call. Sadly, though, I didn't get ANY PICTURES of myself... not a one! I would love nothing better than a photo shoot of the things we did, but in the meantime I've tried to find pictures on the web for illustration.

Friday: inversions and how to spot them. Basically, a scissor lift is the best way to get a beginner upside down, and then hot-potato spotting with hands on the person's ~~hipbones~~ handlebars.

Friday part 2, acro basics: folded leaf, walnut, "high flying whale" (hee hee, that's such a silly name) and the one where the base is on hands and knees and the flyer does a shoulder-standy thing on them. The only thing new to me is when we went from that last one to a counterbalance, with the base able to take their hands off the floor.

Saturday part 1, thai massage: I learned a whole sequence of thai massage moves for the lower body, which I should try to write down separately and/or practice on

heisenbug soon so I don't forget. This involved some really cool moves involving elbows, knees, shins and a lot of pouring body weight around.

Saturday part 2, therapeutic flying: pretty basic sequencing of folded leaf / superyogi / twisting type stuff. Also back flying: birdcage, and then finally birdcage-into-bat transition, which I had done before but only once, 1.5 years ago. The new thing I learned was the "plop" dismount from birdcage; the flyer just grabs the base's feet, goes into a tuck and lowers down.

Sunday is where things get crazy, part 1: acro training tricks. This definitely gave me some things to practice. We did:

Normal abs consising of hollow-body rocks; shoulderstand rolls to tuckup; V-ups
Crazy partner butt-bumping abs, with two people lying down, grasping hands and shoulder-standing to switch butt positions repeatedly
Fast pushups, fast down-dog pushups (ha ha)
forearm stand, which I can rock pretty well, and tripod-headstand-to-crow-and-back, which I can rock really well
Assisted headstand straddle presses; assisted headstand-to-handstand presses (the spotter is behind the person, in goddess pose)
Handstand walks, which in theory is the first 2 inches of a handstand press repeated again and again... ha freaking ha. I would have thought it was impossible except that I saw it done right in front of me.

Once everyone was thoroughly exhausted from that, we put it all together in a 1-hr asana practice that had strength moves sprinkled through it. Uffffff, I was soaking.

Sunday is where things only got crazier, part 2: acrobatic flying.

Straddle throne, from which one can transition to folded leaf, one foot at a time:
Bird to dhanurasana
That twisty transition from folded leaf to the reverse (and thence to bat), which is too crazy-confusing to describe here, but I hope to be able to do it to apfelsingail at Christmas. I think this is a picture of someone halfway through that move, which means mid-twist.
Bird to "shoulder stand", aka "candlestick variation", like this:

and then from there the flyer can bring one knee down into a stag position on one of the base's feet, and let go with the hands while the base brings one foot back down; very pretty and impressive looking and yes, apfelsingail, I will definitely remember this one and pictures will be gotten. :)
Some winding-down Thai massage where we walked all over the other person's forearms. Very nice.

What did I actually learn that I want to remember and keep practicing?

That whole massage sequence I didn't describe.
If I'm basing and my flyer has a layer of slipperiness over their hipbones, pronating my feet so that the feet cup their bones can help a LOT.
In handstand, it is good to practice pressing off the wall with one toe and finding balance with the fingers.
Acroyoga teaches that there is no way to correct an underbalance in handstands, which seems kind of silly to me, because yes there is.
The ribcage part of the hollow body is still too hard for me to find. Maybe I need to do that often, like Kegels, when I'm lying in bed or bored in a meeting.
Those "handstand walk" mini-presses. I need to find a productive way to work on them. Maybe I'd do better going from a step to ground level.
As a base I have to push into a person so they'll be comfortable falling onto me. This goes triple for new people who don't realize I'm strong and don't trust me to start pushing at the right moment.
I am pretty freaking awesome and can do great things, and am capable of learning more!