Way to make a girl blush

[flexagon]

Weird, the last TWO updates on my Facebook timeline are totally unprovoked compliments about acro. Also, last week someone asked me if I was an acro teacher, which had never happened before (although people think I might be a yoga teacher all the time). Splutter. It's so public, there is nothing I can do but gracefully accept the compliments, and I feel conflicted about it. I'm not a superstar! ...although the circus training is definitely giving me some tricks that stand out in the acroyoga world.

I am thinking about trust, and how I bailed a couple of times on Weds night when being pitched by Heatwave ("sorry, trust issues!"), but with the Ant I was totally fine being pitched up to head height. He said how high he wanted to take it, I said yes, he caught me every single time, the end. Weirdly, we all happened to be looking over at another group just as a flyer freaked out mid-pitch and karate-kicked her base (soong, as it happens) in the face on the way down. It was kind of neat-looking, in a Matrix-y way, and also horrifying, and I think it reminded the bases that they're depending on me, too.

Comments

[nevers.livejournal.com]

trust! it's such a big deal in flying!

i tried to fly some hand-to-hand on a great base today. i hated it. first try i wasn't tight. second try i tightened up but i still hated the feeling of my hands moving around, and he wasn't able to balance me. as a base i can balance most flyers, at least briefly, so i feel like i must have somehow been really awful, although i am not sure what i could have done better.

have you flown banquine yet?! that's where two bases interlock hands/wrists (forming the basket, or banquine) and toss the flyer from there. i got an intro to it today. basing is hard because you have to match timing and force with your partner, and it's painful on the hands and wrists. then as a flyer i stepped into the banquine and let the porters bounce me around but wouldn't let them lift me. they said i was really good and tight and "flew light" and had great form, and all the compliments made me a little more inclined to try it more, but it was also kinda terrifyingly awful. it's so hard to be in a situation where ALL you can do is stay tight and keep trusting, and if you break either of those, you ruin the trick. i could feel how i have the potential to be (or to have been) a decent flyer; shutting down the what-ifs and focusing only on doing my job is something i'm not bad at. but at this point i don't have any interest in switching.

three tangents

[soong.livejournal.com]

Maybe it was an off night or we were tired or something, but with that flier we've gotten 99% of the way to pitching to hand to foot (in lines). Hm, maybe the lines are a bigger crutch than I'd realized. Maybe if we warmed up in lines and then tried it without we'd be more confident that night.

I've gotten "are you a teacher?" about dancing. After a couple years of getting that I taught a 6 week intro course to a bunch of beginners.

Now in acro world I have gone to hippie festivals and led people through basics like thighstand, flag, stacks, camel, candlestick, assisted backflip, etc. All that takes about an hour and a half and everyone leaves tired and happy.

Re: three tangents

[flexagon]

Sure. I'm not, as I'm sure you understood, picking on that flyer. Things happen. I lost my form in the air once that night too (feet backward though, not forward). Please believe me though, it looked pretty shocking, from the side. And I hope your face is okay.

Pitching is such a terribly specific trust thing. I'd let our teacher pitch me all day, and I'd let the Ant do most things. You're my third favorite (we've had some really great pitches to that demi position), and after that there's a big gap and a long slide down into I-don't-like-this-at-all. I mean, I don't even like it with Scooper, and I have a ton of physical trust with him on most tricks. :P

I like teaching beginners (1:1 or in trios), and feel confident enough that I could teach a beginner class, but still for some reason I was shocked at being asked. Pleased, though. :-)

[flexagon]

Trust is a big deal in flying and a HUGE deal specifically in pitching. I only have two people that I trust near-unconditionally to catch me on the way down, and one of them is the teacher so he hardly counts. (The Ant is the second one.) And that's just with straight pitches -- even the Ant will drop me sometimes if trying to catch me in high foot-to-hand or bird. That's why we still do those things in lines.

i tried to fly some hand-to-hand on a great base today. i hated it. first try i wasn't tight. second try i tightened up but i still hated the feeling of my hands moving around, and he wasn't able to balance me.

Oh, super interesting, and to be honest I expected something like that. You are a handbalancer, and my guess here is that you were trying to do a handstand. :-) Have you heard of the difference between "righting reflexes" and "tilting reflexes"? Very relevant. Check out this post by Toledo:

http://www.facebook.com/portal.ido/posts/507207749297859

Basically, flying hand-to-hand means doing two of the three parts of a handstand. You are responsible for alignment and tightness, but NOT BALANCE. And the part of your body that stays still is more around your midpoint, rather than being at your hands, as it is when you do a handstand on the floor. This is the same way things are when you walk on a slackline (another somewhat evil feeling), where your foot is not the balance point. Worst of all in hand-to-hand, the balancing is not done by you. It gets easier when you TRULY give up that control to your base, and just make yourself into a stick. They balance the stick.

(You might try a standing hand-to-hand, if you aren't worried about heights or can try it in lines. The base has a lot more opportunity to balance you there, since they can actually walk to get under you if need be.)

[nevers.livejournal.com]

i swear i was tight and not balancing myself! also i dan had just read that portal post :). i WAS able to acheive tightness when standing on the banquine but of course it's easier standing than handstanding.
i would be game for trying a standing hand-to-hand in lines.

[flexagon]

haha, okay, I believe you. :-) It's not always conscious though. I have the same problem at times, and my body is not nearly as trained in handbalancing as yours is.

Btw, I've done the tiniest bit of banquine in Z-dawg's class long ago; not since. I spotted some at acrotastic in 2010, but never flew.

(There's a four-hour acro workshop starting, in 3.5 hours and all I'm doing is jittering around the house waiting for it to start and trying to be productive.)

[ellenclaire.livejournal.com]

Banquine! I love Banquine. I wish we had the ceiling height at Esh to play with it. Certainly demands a lot of trust, but oh it's so much fun!

[flexagon]

Ummmm, there's definitely ceiling height enough for the level of tosses I'd be comfortable with! Heck, nevers was talking about just bouncing without real tossing, which sounds like a fine place to start. :-) Or what about tiny little pop-downs from standing to cradle, like at 0:10 here?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJ6w70t9lIA

One thing for sure, it'd be new to everyone.