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The festival is over.

Saturday Acroyoga festival:

Session 1 Flying Blind

In this class we did acro with our eyes closed. We had to go through each move four times to get there. First we'd do the move under consideration, then the flyer would close their eyes, then the base would close their eyes while the flyer opened theirs, and finally both would close.

The most important thing is for the base to "paint" across the flyer's body with the free foot during transitions, so they can both feel where they are in the movement. Also, it's slow: each partner should feel they're really waiting for the other.

We did barrel roll, and what I've named "high barrel roll" -- this comes through side star on the way down, not through reverse bird like I thought. AWESOME.

For all the lack of detail here, this is the class I most want to take home to my usual base. I really found it revolutionary.

Session 2 One arm / one leg with Jason & Chelsea from YogaSlackers

"The thinker" comes from straddle throne.
Curl back, a bit like koala, to "bed" pose, the flyer's leg can still be hooked though.
Spin this to HFW, second foot steps to armpit, then first foot steps between thighs and flyer is side flying. (Side cross.)
Take hands and return to straddle throne, or shift weight directly to Thinker.

"Bed" can also rotate the other way to go to Star.

Last, they showed a transition from low foot-to-hand to back bird.
Flyer bends over, presents hands (but need not quite take them yet), does forward roll onto base's shins. Base has feet & toes flexed, straightens legs as flyer arches into back bird. Didn't get to try this, but it's something to play with at home.

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Sunday Session 1: "From Russia with love" flow with Jason/Chelsea

Hopping to thighstand is pretty easy! Who knew?

Full flow:

Free bird, to free shoulderstand, base brings feet to floor and flyer pikes or straddles down to land the arches of the feet on the knees. Flyer leans back, base sits up, thighstand.

Both lean in, optional free thighstand. Base puts head through legs, plants shoulders just above knees, stands up -- flyer is horizontal, hollow, hands at sides. At a signal (base squeezes once?), flyer bends down and squeezes around base's waist. Open/straighten to open straddle, base lets go.

Base brings hands up and back, flyer pike straddles, brings legs to press hard against the front of base's shoulders. Flyer slides down, base's legs need to go wide, flyer brings shoulders through legs and the head is close to the floor. Both can now do "cross" position, and bring hands in and out like blades. Very Russian.

Base takes heels, bends over a bit -- flyer pops through, extends horizontal for quick easy counterbalance.

Base comes more to down dog, flyer places hands on butt, wrap legs to the outside, then inside and hooks feet strongly out. Way up by the crotch works best! Then, flyer curl back and down, base press curl up onto just hands. WHOA AWESOME. To come out, base return to ground, walk the dog in a bit, flyer return to sitting up.

Flyer hook ankles, base stands, counterbalance... then...

Flyer curl down to ground, take base's ankles. The base leans back placing flyer's feet in armpits and gives all weight to the (former) flyer, who is now basing. :D

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Two sessions with Jim and Det over Sunday and Monday. More hopping to thighstand is all I remember from the first one. The lesson was that the flyer should stay super straight and *not* aim for the thighs because that makes the flyer pike. Counterintuitive, but it worked.

Oh, now I remember, after that we did two-highs and the nice dismount, then high candlestick. Nothing new to me, only refinements.

The second was shoulder and shoulderstand-on-hands focused.

Shoulder stretch: like London Bridge, two people face each other, put hands overhead, and lean into each other's hands. The difference is no piking this time: put all the stretch in the shoulders.

Then a handstand drill with spotting from the shoulders: the base sits in a pike, feet pointed, feet the width of the flyer's shoulders. Flyer grips the ankles (one finger straight, the thumb on the foot side of the anklebone not above), and tucks or straddles or kicks to handstand there. This was my first experience with being spotted from the shoulders and I liked it.

They also had us tuck-jump up to star with the base's legs and hands extended the whole time. Much more work, but I can do it now at least sometimes! A good exercise now that it's within reach.

(The actual shoulderstanding stuff they taught in that class had a strange handgrip and few people managed it, so will have to let that go; won't be practicing it.)

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"Free Liquid" class was interesting, using a partner as a support for one's OWN stretching/release without worrying about them too much. My first 2-3 partners it was great. The last one was with a guy (I had a moment of uncharacteristic worry: would it be weird?). It wasn't that weird but it did get a lot more acrobatic and less just about stretching than it had been with others, and I felt a bit ooky wondering where that extra energy came from -- could have been from discomfort. (I'll just add here that though the room was full of super attractive people of all genders, this wasn't one of them.) Of course he thought the flow we did was incredibly beautiful, and maybe it was, how would I know? My eyes were closed. :P Anyway, that was the weirdest class for me, though the beginning part was one of the best parts for me and I want to teach the bug what we did.

(I had skipped out of "Ecstatic Dance" completely the day before, and later heard it involved some naked dancing people. In some ways it's good to know it got weirder -- I did not experience maximum out-there-ness.)

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In the final jam I got to do some teaching and some learning, some basing and some flying. One of the best parts was demoing how to fly spider roll, for a girl who was trying to do it without knowing what to do: the base was awesome and made the hard transition easy, in a way I hope to teach to my base at home.

Then that same base (who studies in Seattle under Lux, like half the most amazing people I met) taught me the ninja star. It's pretty easy to fly -- seems like mostly a base showoff move. Because it has a fast rhythm it really is getting close to foot-juggling.

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The closing ceremony was fantastic. First we formed a moving mandala by dividing up into concentric circles. Each circle learned a simple four-breath flow, and then we all formed up and did our flows simultaneously. I can't wait to see video. I don't think they had a camera on the ceiling above the center point, but even so it will be neat.

After the mandala stopped there were a few oms. Then the folks who were leading the mandala thing asked Jason and Jenny to come to the center and sit back to back; and they asked the rest of us to do a "full body blessing" by lying down stretched out toward them. Since we were all already in perfect circles, the effect must have been fantastic: two or three hundred little lines arranged radially and saying "thanks, thanks, we really mean it so much that this prostration thing feels pretty reasonable under the circumstances". The speaker was crying as she thanked J&J, not just for organizing the festival but for starting the whole acroyoga movement, and Jenny was crying when I looked up (couldn't see Jason) and I may have shed a tear myself.

The moment and the day then dissolved into a sudden hailstorm of logistics, as such moments and days always do. That was yesterday. This morning finds me at the Zillian mothership, deeply disoriented. I don't recall what I'm supposed to be doing. One thing for sure... I'm not working out today.

Date: 2010-10-12 07:27 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] nevers.livejournal.com
wow, i wish i had been there! maybe next time. especially if you're there next time. is this annual?

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