of Avatar, Acro, and Archery

I had the privelege of viewing Avatar (the Movie) in a 3D cinema this weekend with my children. From about 8 minutes in all the way through the end, my eyes were filled with tears of joy. Never before have I seen a vision so powerfully translated to the screen, in fact, it felt, seamlessly translated from the archetypal future memory of humanity directly into the brainstems of viewers.

In particular the entire vision of the Na'vi race was so so so so beautiful. When they leapt from the trees, when Nayeli leapt and shot an arrow from apogee, when they ran along the tree limbs, when they climbed the root rocks, when Sully mastered his dragon, when they flew... OMG the flying!!!!!

It felt as though these Na'vi skills were accessible to all of us, and I feel closer and closer to it every year. If there is ever an expression of the grace of archery, those two shots she took exemplify it. If there is ever an apt metaphor for taming a wild stallion and settling a wild beast into a true companion, the dragon taming scene was it.

I really struggle to find the words to describe my sheer joy in experiencing this movie, and the wonders that are the Na'vi life and Pandora.

The highest praise I can give it is this: it has expanded my vision of what is possible for myself as a human, and for my species, my planet, my children, and the future of imagination itself. I applaud James Cameron and the thousands of artists he collaborated with and directed to bring this vision to reality.

Onward!

Power of the Pyramid

I didn't understand what was going on... the Goddess pose was simple enough, yet my body was shaking and vibrating like a car with a wheel out of balance... our local circus community has been getting more and more into multi-tier human pyramids, and this day I was fully engaged in the practice. In the next few moments we deconstructed the pyramid into its component parts, and by instructing my bases to tilt their pelvises by only a few degrees, all the shake was gone, and I was my rock-solid self again!

In the past I've strongly favored partner acroyoga practice over group pyramids, but this day, Christmas Eve in fact, I learned many many new things from my full participation in the pyramid construction gang :)

First, as a base, typically with the weight of 2 or more humans bearing atop me, it required really perfect form and bone stacking technique. I've always marvelled and taken some small joy in the fact that with acroyoga basing, pure strength can compensate for slight misalignments and imperfect technique. But as the loads increase (one person, two people, etc.), the required strength becomes excessive, and the only "solution" to these human puzzles becomes rock-solid, perfect alignment.

Additionally, when the mid-tier or fliers places their loads on the proper structural points (sacrum through to feet, shoulders through to hands), it absolutely re-inforces perfect form; its like having an awesome yoga teacher push and pull your body into the correct alignment.

Which brings me to the second realisation, which has been entering my practice more and more via acrobatics: the "active" nature of poses. Once a yogi has achieved a decent degree of flexibility and body awareness, most asanas can be held with a minimum of muscular exertion... now enter "tightness drills." Whereas previously I had achieved a "lazy headstand" with near perfect bone stacking and balance, now I was being asked to hold that rock solid while a partner pushed, pulled, and prodded my legs with significant force. This required a new practice, known to acrobats and gymnasts as "one piece."; i.e. making the body completely rigid so that any force exerted on it would move it as one might move a marble sculpture. Now, instead of simply stacking and hanging out, I am focusing on tightening every muscle in my body, from fingertips to shoulders to abdomen to thighs to toes. This is a whole nother form of asana practice; and it also is very much required in pyramid basing.

The final realisation I got was that of micro-alignment and communication. While doing a mid-level pyramid asana, I was in Goddess pose with one foot on the sacrum of each of two bases. By instructing the bases to alter their pelvis angles by only a few degrees, I was able to transform my pose from shakey wobbly to rock solid. Similarly, when Todd was performing a headstand atop my back, his instructions to widen my shoulder blades by about a centimeter made a massive improvement in his ability to achieve the inversion. These accurate anatomical communications between all levels of the pyramid allowed us to achieve some pretty spectacular structures.

Always learning, always growing.

injury & why warm-up = juicy goodness

Just this morning I injured my neck again. For the third time in 2 months. I'm kind of tired of injuring myself. So I'm gonna do a little extroverted introspection here to get to the root of it.

So here were the sources of the injuries:

1. Extreme backbend partner yoga, from cold start
2. Swing dance backflip, cold start after 4 hours driving in car.
3. doing 40th (pushing muscle failure) rep of parallette dip / push-ups

The first two I will put in the category of "insufficient warm-up" and the third I will place in the category of both "insufficient warm-up" (those were my first exercises of the morning) as well as "pushing too hard."

As a child I had a body-building instruction manual co-written by Joe Weider and Arnold Schwarzenegger, which amongst its gems included:

1. "Never count your reps. If you need to count, just say in your head "one, one, one..."... all that matters is the last rep. You've got to push your muscles to exhaustion. Its in the last 10% of your reps that you get 90% of your muscular growth."
2. "If there aren't enough weights to load up the bar for your max squat, simply have a friend stand balancing on top of your shoulders to add that amount of weight."

Those have been words of inspiration my entire fitness career. The first part has, honestly, been a bit more useful than the second... though with my acro practice, I am starting to really see the wisdom of point 2... I would actually amend it by saying:

3. Drop all the weights. Add humans atop your shoulders and increase their weight and number gradually as you improve both strength and balance. Start with small children (40-80 lbs), transition into fit girls (80-120 lbs) and move up from there until you can comfortably squat supporting an adult male (175 lbs)

Oh, and to get back to the initial subject line of this blog:

ALWAYS WARM UP BEFORE PRACTICE!!!!  :)

Yours in health and play,

Greg

Antigravity Perfect Balance

Twice in the past month I have gotten, playing base, to this magical place of perfect balance with my flyer... once with Saki and once with Sally, once in shoulderstand and once in pashi. So, both have been with my partners full weight on my arms, and my arms stacked perfectly through the shoulders, all the way to the solid ground. And when that perfect moment of lateral balance is found, literally, the asana takes absolutely zero effort to maintain. In fact, it freaked me out so much both times that I thought something was wrong, and I intentionally pushed each of them back off balance so that I could exert some muscular control over the situation. I mean, its very strange when you are using strong muscles to bring something into manifestation, and then all of a sudden, poof! its like God just came in and lifted the whole weight of the flyer right off of you, like they are really *free flying*.

*next time* it happens, I will recognize it better, and just begin to blissfully laugh at the perfect balance. Soon, soon...

AcroFlow 2.0

Just got through my second private AcroYoga jam today, and it was as blissful as I dared to imagine.

We had all the time in the world, so we started real slow with partner stretches, and some of the stuff I had warmed up with in NY at the Om Factory. That was nice, since my practice had been getting more and more acrobatically, and simultaneously, macho oriented. Which only means, acro / circus has a tendency to jump straight into the advanced / highly physical stuff, and I've begun to really miss some of the really basic stuff which is the real foundation of the practice: like, two people coming into trusting physical contact.

What really brought this home to me was class on Sunday, where there was a 60/40 mix of complete newbies and experienced acroyogis. The experienced group was really pushing into some new ground which, with some of the heavier partners, was really beginning to strain my shoulder, so I went back and played with some of the new kids. To see, feel, and spot the instability of some of their basics (folded leaf even), really brought me back to foundations... and then to see the look on their eyes after completing... pure bliss and joy!

So H and I went through the foundation and got really relaxed and comfortable prior to a deep therapeutics session. My stated intent was to really start working on our flow... as in, really intuitive, natural transitioning through poses and full sequences, so we could get to that magic place of being.

We went through three or four sessions of intense practice, and worked verbally and bodily through some intriguing places and body spaces. One of the synchronistic highlights of the afternoon was when I had her up in throne, working through some nice one leg poses and arm movements, and she placed her hands above her head and said "wow, this feels like a halo..." literally at that precise moment the chandelier flickered and leapt to like 300% brighter than it had been. I looked up and saw all the arms of the chandelier (which she was perfectly positioned below) extending from her head, and it was a moment. :)

Since it was just me and H, my body/legs needed to recover between sessions, so we often returned to the mat and just did gentle partner mirroring work while having a natural conversation. Being able to have conversation while in physical flow was something completely new to me, and it was refreshing and fun. Normally I am so caught up in the blissful physical intensity that I am speechless.

So tonight I'm up now, after crashing early, and I received some intense dream intelligence about acro flow.. yes, finally I'm getting to the real reason for this post :)

Working through acro-flow with a partner is like a microcosmic mirror of working through a relationship with a person. The way your bodies feel, touch, balance, move, and flow together, how it feels for each of you, where the sticking points are in the pattern, how you choose to work through them together, the dance of flyer and base... these can all be seen (and in my dream, they were literal manifest) of the story of flow of the relationship... THIS MIRRORING IS THE CORE TRUTH OF THIS DREAM.

the real kicker was towards the end of the dream, where we started to add mechinical externals to the core acroyogic play. I visualized this as actual metal knobs bolted onto our hip bones for external attachment. H is an aerialist as well (trapeze, silks), so soon this will probably integrate into the practice. And the trapeze is a form of technical gear, a step away from purity but also an augmentation... and then I woke :)

AcroYogi / AcroBat

This Sunday we had another Jedi Kula class with Todd at Jai Shanti. A good diversity of players. We started off with simple and deep therapeutics, then moved to some forward flying, advanced to forward flying bow, and just as I was starting to think: "Oh, this is all such basics!" Todd threw us into some serious full inversions, including both candlestick and some other thing which required SERIOUS abdominal / core pushes along with real arm strength for both the base and the flyer. In fact, in this class, I began to realise the limits of my body, and where some old old injuries came out.

Playing with PC was very fun. She has a joyous and confident and ambitious energy to her that is fun to be around.

It was funny enough how the class began. Late to show and just in time was Vincent(?), a classically trained acrobat and dancer who had actually spent several years in the Circus... like, as a real job! He gave me some very detailed tips about how to place my hands and how to work grips that really allowed me to get into the advanced work.

In the end it was Trish and Vincent and I pushing the limits of our bodies with an inversion. As I tried for the second time, I could feel my muscles beginning to literally pop in both my triceps and legs, like I was going to pull one. That scared me a little. Nothing would suck like pulling a muscle while upside down 4 feet off the ground. Nonetheless, I was determined to hit the pose, so after stretching and breathing and jumping jacks for a few minutes, rejoined the fray... and damn if I didn't HIT IT! BAM!

Once I was up and in layout, it was all about balance and less about strength... hooray!

We also began to learn about "wrist love" in addition to the core practice of "leg love." Good stuff all around.

I realised leaving (in a very high state) that we had really begun the transition from AcroYoga into Acrobatics. Great stuff. And I now know where I need to build strength (arms and core). Boom! :)

Capacitor

The *other* handstand

So, on one of the online gymnastics tutorials I've been reading, it suggests to practice handstand, instead of kicking up into the wall, instead face your face towards the wall, tuck, and walk your feet up the wall. Then, once your legs are fully extended, walk your hands back towards the wall. This was a *completely* different way than the "dyno" style (shout out to your rock-climber-boulderers out there!) handstand I'd been practicing... and with the ability to free my feet and actually press my *stomach* against the wall as the only means of support, it really felt like it helped my balance.

I am so *jonseing* to get a free form unsupported handstand going. Cmon boy! Go Go Go!

art of hand balance

It all started with Ashtanga yoga. These kids have a special move, the "jump" from downward dog into forward bend, which has become almost universal throughout vinyasa flow practice. The trick of it is to make it graceful, prolonged, and fluid. Downward dog, for those of you unfamiliar with yoga, is simply placing your body in a pyramid position, with your feet back, your ass high, and your head low, your arms straight, your hands on the floor in front of you. Spine maximum straight, and legs straight. The proper form is a perfect triangle with the ground as the base.

Forward bend is simply "stand and touch your hands to your toes."

So the transition from dog to forward can be done with a simple walking of the feet, or more gracefully, by shifting the balance to the hands, flying the feet up into the air, and softly landing the feet back down between the hands.

Practicing this, one experiences a profound shift of both weight and balance, from the feet to the hands.

Another place I found this was in an AcroYoga warm-up that Becca put us through, the "donkey kick". In this, you start in forward bend, and kick your legs up high over your head. The point is to get as forward as possible, and hold the elevated (inverted) donkey kick pose as long as possible, without falling over forward.

And then there is the reverse bridge, and contortion videos.

Finally, there is the handstand.

It becomes clear, rather soon, that in acrobatics, and yoga, the hands and feet become interchangeable grounding mechanisms. Once you gain the flexibility to bend your body over and place equal weight on the hands and feet, and once you gain the strength in your wrists, forearms and fingers to maintain balance, and once you gain the overall kinaethetic awareness and body balance in order to shift from feet to hands and vice versa, well, thats the grok of the hand balance.

Then its just a world of creative movement possibilities. :)

Tha Hang(ing) Man

I was recently dealt the Hanged Man Tarot card. This terrified me. I had always had fearful associations with this card... in a personal journey self-loathing kind of way.

I'll start this story with an aside. I recently met a girl at a Burning Man party. She had a Chinese character on the back of her neck. I asked her what it meant, and she replied "Chicken Soup with Rice". That was funny. As we got deeper into the conversation, she expanded on the meanings. She had picked it quickly from a book, under the impression it meant "princess, queen". Upon further exploration she found it also had a somewhat negative meaning, and this made it difficult for her. I felt she really had to own it, in the sense of getting all the vibe from it and recognizing it as a part of her past.

Now I'm feeling the same way about the Hanged Man. Here's the image, followed by some notes:

Grimaud, Tarot of Marseilles - France (1963, reprint of 1761 of Nicolas Convert)


Now, color me surprised, but this "Hanged Man" is clearly an acrobat. His face is calm, his leg is stagged perfectly; his foot is in a hanging loop. This is an aerialist at play! So there! :)

Handstands

I am getting very very close to the handstand.
My Tarot of the Day was the Hanged Man, which gives me thoughts about inversions.

At AcroYoga Jedi Kula Training, we did spotted handstands, and Becca, our coach, called out timings as we held it: "30 seconds, 45 seconds, 1 minute". When I applied for AcroYoga teacher training, one of the items on the questionairre was: "How long can you hold a wall handstand for?" I timed myself at just over a minute. I was sure at the time I coulda done longer, but it seemed sufficient for the application. Plus, what I *really* want is:

1) to hold a handstand in perfect balance, without support, and then my Holy Grail:

2) to push up into a handstand from a headstand

I nailed this second one a few weeks ago after Revolva and I exchanged some emails on technique. I realised that there were two key factors: a) spreading the hands *wide*, and b) just *gutting* through the first few inches of elevation. After my head was off the ground and I had broken through that psychological / strength barrier, it was easy.

Now, re-invigorated from the AcroYoga practice, and re-determined to nail my handstand, I've found a great web coach:

http://www.beastskills.com/Handstand.htm

Beast Skills. Love it! :)

backflip 101

oh yes, spiderman cometh!