Yoga for Aerialists

I am introducing a new series on the blog called Yoga for Aerialists. If you already practice both, you may already understand how yoga and aerial arts seem to go hand-in-hand. I practice mainly flow-style yoga and I often find myself thinking about what postures would be a great fit for someone working on strength and mobility for aerial arts. It may not be possible to climb up 20' in the air every time we wish to condition, so searching for alternative methods of exercise is not a bad idea.

Side note: it's also worth investing in a pull up bar. I have the same one Laura mentions in her post, the Iron Gym, and I love it! It's super easy to install and can be easily removed and stowed away. Most yogis I've spoken with (myself included) were completely humbled their first time climbing up on a silk. Even if you do a ton of yoga, aerial arts will challenge you in an entirely different way. In yoga we do a bunch of pushing motions (planks, down dogs, chaturangas, arm balances) but we rarely have the opportunity to pull up the body the way we do in aerial arts. Can anyone think of any similar pulling movements we do in yoga? Please comment below, I'd love to get a dialog going on this subject.

But with that, yoga does have many benefits for aerialists, so I'll be sharing some yoga poses and short flows that can be practiced alone or in conjunction with your aerial conditioning.

I love sharing what I know and helping others enjoy yoga, however, please note, I am not a doctor and you should always consult your physician before starting an exercise program. Also, I am not with you to offer assistance or guidance so please proceed with caution, listen to your body and never force yourself into a position. Always ease yourself into a posture and at no point should you ever feel strain or pain when stretching. If something feels too intense, please back out of it. With time, patience and consistency, you'll increase your strength and mobility safely.

With that, happy stretching!

If you have a particular trick, skill or area of the body you would like to work on, just let me know in the comments below!

Without Trapeze

Grounded. Again. That's what it feels like.

Like a child who has been sent to their room, no iPhone, no Netflix, their favorite toy taken away. That's life for a flyer without trapeze.

It's been pretty quiet around here because there's not much to report trapeze-wise. I haven't been up in the air in two months, so rather than continuing to relive old memories, like I'm reliving old glory days on the football field, I've just been suffering alone in silence (sort of). 

The only up side is, the loss of grip strength has resulted in my fingers shrinking down to their normal size, which means my wedding and engagement rings now fit once again. And my palms are no longer terrifying to little kids (and my husband).

I know I'm not the only one of my Orlando friends fiending for flight. We talk about our lack of a trapeze home on the regular and discuss plans for a big family trip to a rig out of town. A date and location is still TBD. It turns out it's pretty tough to find a full-sized outdoor rig that is operational through the summer months. We have high hopes for the new rig opening up in Sarasota and look forward to making it down to the West Palm rig as soon as they are back up and running. 

The weather here is finally cooling down to a temperature where you aren't sweating the second you walk out the door. Great news for outdoor flying because that means the chalk will retain it's chalky-like texture and not turn into soap seconds after you apply it to your skin. While I love a nice, hot, sweaty yoga class, I prefer my trapeze at a temperature where I don't feel like me, the trapeze and my catcher are all melting.

This shift in weather also brings with it, a change to my status from grounded to flying trapeze mouse once again. This weekend I'll finally get to scurry up the ladder to my favorite perch in the air. I am so grateful to have this opportunity to fly with some close friends, at a place that's very special to all of us. 

Immediately when I found out about flying this weekend, I started running over everything I need to work on (my layout/force out/returning/etc). I had to literally tell myself to pump the breaks, reminding myself that this weekend is just for fun. A time to be with my flying family, enjoying our favorite activity together. I then made a promise to leave my A-type personality and the pressure I put on myself at the bottom of the ladder. If my forward over is there, it's there, if it's not, it's not. It doesn't really matter if my form isn't flawless or my harder tricks aren't solid, because what does matter is that I'll feel the air breezing by my cheeks once again and I'll feel the tight grip of my catchers hands around my wrists and the embrace of my friends as they scoop me back onto the board, tasting that freedom and friendship that drew me to flying trapeze in the first place.

My intention for this weekend is to RELAX and go back to a place where I was just grateful to be in the air, laughing on the board, cheering on my friends and making new memories.

With that, I'll relive one more old memory with you...

Last year on the board with Rob and Uncle Tony

A Summer of Trapeze Firsts

Another flashback post to summer and flying trapeze. I would love to post about my current trapeze situation, however, it's nonexistent at the moment. Side note, if any of my Orlando friends have a large piece of property, get at me, because I have a proposition for you.

This summer I grew exponentially as a flyer and an instructor. I had hoped the intensive nature of the job would result in huge gains, which would hopefully make up for the lack of flying I had experienced in the few months leading up to it. 

Truth be told, I spent a great deal of the summer frustrated and disappointed in my progression. I swear it took about five weeks for me to feel like I was flying at the level I had left off a few months prior. And it wasn't until the last two or three weeks before tear down that I actually felt good about how far I had come. (We are our own worst critics). 

That being said, some pretty cool things happened this summer flying- and otherwise. This post will focus on flying and I hope to recap the other fun stuff in another post.

Mojo and I were lucky enough to go straight to Cotton Candy Club as our first order of business in California. Felt really great to be back in the air and so happy that our first flight of the trip was at that gorgeous pink rig! Thank you again Nicolina!! <3

By far one of the coolest and most memorable experiences of the summer (and a top 5 life experience) was flying under the full moon. It was my first real night fly and it was so surreal catching in the dark underneath that big bright pie in the sky. That night I posted the photo below on instagram with the caption:

When you wake up to a phone call in the middle of the night that says, "it's a full moon and we're going to fly," you wipe the sleep from your eyes, throw on your tights and race over to the rig because something magical is happening.

Another really special experience was having my husband Alex finally agree to take a swing. He did great for his first time and he even managed a fly away! It was really cool to send him off the board and welcome him into my circus world! :D

As for my own flying, I worked on my cutaway quite a bit this summer. I caught it for the first time with Efe back in June. There's a video on my instagram from one of those first few catches. We played around with some return variations, including this splits version with Rob. We never had the chance to clean it up, so here's a silly version that still makes me laugh looking back at it. 

It was pretty exciting to finally meet up with my trapeze evil twin CC! It was so much fun chatting and flying and my goodness, the time went by too quickly! She brought me to Richie Gaona's Trapeze Workshop and it was just as wonderful as I had imagined.

Christie is a beautiful flyer and person! It was so nice sharing the board with her, she calmed me down and made sure I was okay (I was so nervous leaning out to the bar. It was a faaaaaar reach for a shrimpo like myself). At the rig, I mainly worked on my layout and then started throwing doubles for fun. It was my first time working on a double back tuck and I fell in love immediately. It felt like I was rotating for an eternity. Here's my layout catch with Terry:

Efe and I had talked about uprises being a good trick for me and my interest in doing a forward over. A few weeks before the summer ended we finally got around to working on them. Within a few days of learning an uprise, I was throwing catchable forward overs (in lines of course). After struggling my way through my swing, layout and cutaway for so long, my mind was completely blown at how easy the uprise forward over felt. I can't wait until it's passing leap ready (hehe one day)!

In addition to flying, I learned so much about rigging and teaching trapeze. I can now tie a clove hitch and a double figure eight in two different ways each. I can also switch out the fly bar without shaking and sweating profusely, terrified that I'm going to drop a cable. I even hung from the catch crane and rigged up the catch trap!

I came to Pali only knowing how to run board, but I left able to pull and call for tricks as advanced hocks salto. I really enjoyed pulling lines and I think it made me a better coach and flyer. 

In addition to trapeze, I also worked on other circus-related activities. While, it was not my first experience with acro yoga, I'm including this as a first because Rob and I put together pretty chill flow and also because I finally nailed this pose:

Lastly, as the summer came to a close, I put together my first doubles act with my aerial soul sister, Adi. We are still awaiting footage, but hopefully it turns out as rad as the raw footage looked. PS we scored these sweet leo/dresses for $10 at a sample sale.

I feel like there was so much more that happened this summer. And I'm sure I'll remember stuff after I post this. I have hours of trapeze footage on my iPad that I still need to go through. And there are so many other things that happened that I don't have photo/video of, like Mojo taking his layout on his own timing...multiple times... that's his trick now. :) Heck yeah!

Rim of the World

SR 18 is a two lane road that winds its way around the mountain top...its other name is Rim of the World Highway. And at 6,000+ feet above sea level, it certainly felt like we were living at the top of the world. We drove the same two mile jog of road for 11 long weeks and the view from the van window never grew old. Some days we could see straight down to Redlands and San Bernardino through the hazy sky...

And some days the cities below were completely concealed by the clouds and it felt like we were living at the top of Olympus, hidden away from the rest of the world below.

With views like these, how could one ever grow tired of them? Cell service always cut out on the same stretch of road during the drive between camp and the house. It was as if the mountain was reminding us to look up from our phones, look around us and take it all in while we still had the chance. 

I miss the mountain and feel forever changed after having lived there for these three short months. These photos don't do her any justice. I'm very thankful to have the memories of her beauty and to have been able to share it with so many friends.

NOTE: all of the photos above are unfiltered/unedited for color

Goodbye California, Hello Florida

This summer turned out to be pretty hectic, leaving me without much time or energy to write. Sorry for the noticeable absence from the blog. I can't believe 11 weeks in the California mountains already came and went! It's true what they say about time and having fun. I returned back to the the 'ol sunshine state this past Monday. And truth be told, I'm having a bit of trouble getting acclimated to Eastern Standard Time. I find myself only sleeping a few hours a night, only to nap periodically throughout the day. My goal is to get back on track tomorrow, which means NO NAPPING. (We'll see how it goes haha).

Over the next few weeks I will attempt to recap my summer in trapezeland. Once again, we'll see how it goes. ;)

Until then, I leave you with this sneak peek into circus camp:

Follow the White Rabbit

I took this photo exactly one year ago today.

I was sitting on the beach with my trapeze partner in crime and best friend, Alex, watching the moon set as the sun rose. It was beautiful and oddly poetic, a symbol of all the changes that were on the horizon. We camped at the beach the night before to celebrate our final days together before he and a group of friends ventured off to California. My trapeze home had closed up to relocate for the summer and with it was going the people I had come to consider my close friends and my family. It was a sad time for me and I struggled for months, coping with the loss of the place that brought me so much joy. Thirty feet up in the air was my therapy and sharing our joint successes (and set backs) as a group gave me such a sense of comraderie and kinship, it was pretty tough losing it all at the same time.

So as we quietly watched the night transition to the day (and snacked on white fudge Flipz) my thoughts wandered around my life and career, feeling like I was trapped as an observer, unable to control where they were going. I had no idea how I was going to break free and make the changes I needed in order to be happy. I watched so many of my friends chase their dreams and crush their goals. And while it was so inspiring, it was also incredibly difficult not to compare my life to everyone else's. I decided at that point that I needed to stop being paralyzed by the comparison game and start acting on creating the life I wanted for myself.

I was halfway done with my yoga teacher training and I knew that I wanted to teach yoga to some capacity in the future. I was already teaching flying trapeze and needed it in my life even though my rig was closed. Yoga and trapeze changed me in the best way possible and it was time that I figured out how to continue sharing my passions with others. It was a scary thought, it can be notoriously difficult to make either a lucrative career and both come with the possibility of burn out and exhaustion, but if I never tried, I'd always wonder what if. 

So it's now one year later since that night on the beach and my life has significantly changed. Since then, I graduated teacher training and I've been leading a group of friends through their yoga practice every other Sunday. It turns out that teaching yoga energizes and inspires me in a way that I never even knew was possible. Also, since last summer, I've managed to continue flying and teaching trapeze as well. 

And now as the moon sets and the sun rises once again, I am in a much different place than I was that night on the beach. 

This time as the trapeze rig makes its way back out west, with it not only goes my trapeze family, but also myself.

I'm following the white rabbit straight to California, where I will spend a summer teaching flying trapeze. Leaving my full time job is a risky (and terrifying) move, but I have an amazingly supportive husband and together we'll make it work. It feels incredible to be going after my dreams and I'm very lucky to have Alex supporting me 100%. It's uncertain what will happen beyond the summer, but we're embracing it with open arms and an open heart. 

The moon is setting on my old life and the sun is rising on the new...I'm nervous, I'm excited and above all, I'm ready.

How Are Your Hands? Part 2

"When you give a message, it is also a back scratch." (Kyla's 10 Ways to Spot a Female Flying Trapeze Addict). That is an extremely accurate assessment of a trapeze flyer's hands. Any mate of a bar-based apparatus student/teacher/performer can vouch for the legitimacy of this statement.

In my previous post about trapeze hands, How Are Your Hands? Part 1, I mentioned how we proudly wear our craft on the surface of our palms. In this installment, Trapeze Hands, Numero Dos, let's talk about hand care.

Disclaimer: I am not a medical professional, so keep in mind I am just sharing what works for me. Please see your doctor if you have any questions about treatment and before caring for any open wounds.

Overgripping. Hot, humidity. Flying until my hands are screaming. I've ripped more times than I care to remember.

I am trying to be more conscious about my saving my hands, so I'm making hand care and hand mindfulness a priority going forward.

That being said, I've gotten my post-flying hand care routine down. I keep a pair of nail clippers in my grip bag. In the event that I rip, I try to trim off the excess skin as soon as possible. If I blister, I try to leave it alone and let it heal itself under its natural, protective layer. Which for me is a huge exercise in self control, because my instinct is to fidget with it until I can no longer take it and then clip it off.

Other supplies I also keep in my bag (pictured below) include unscented baby wipes and Joshua Tree Climbing Salve.

Baby wipes are awesome to remove the chalk from my hands, wrists (elbow, face...how the heck did I get chalk in the middle of my back?...) I prefer the unscented kind because they are more gentle on the skin.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I will fly until my hands are burning hot and yelling at me to stop. Regardless of whether I rip or not, I always try to soothe my hands after a good fly session. I had some cuticle cream lying around and decided to try it on my hands after flying one day. I noticed it helped calm my hands and moisturize my sensitive, roughed up skin post-fly. It was particularly useful when I would crack, softening up the skin and taking away the stinging pain.

A few months ago, Jen, my fellow lady flyer from across the pond, recommended Joshua Tree Gymnasts Salve. She said it saved her hands during a week-long trapeze vacation to the Dominican Republic. By the way, pop on over to her blog and read about her trip and her experience at Kaiceitos Circus, it sounds like a trapeze dream come true.

When she mentioned it, I remembered seeing some sort of Joshua Tree hand cream at the climbing store the week or two prior. I went there to check out the carabiners and ended up sampling the JT climbing salve labeled "try me." Coincidence? After checking out the JT website, I noticed that the ingredients in both the gymnastics and climbing salves appeared to be the same. So I decided I'd pick up some of their climbing balm next time I was out that way. (And by next time I was out that way, I mean, the next day I made a trip out to Travel Country specifically to grab some haha!)

Joshua Tree boasts that its organic, unscented products moisturize and promote healing of skin without softening the calluses. The balm does have a distinct scent to it, probably a result of all the natural herbs and essential oils. To me, it smells like tea tree, which is one of ingredients. I used the product after I ripped BAD and I noticed that it appeared to heal my hands faster than any of the other moisturizing treatments I've used.

Recently I have been practicing lyra quite a bit. This gorgeous gal was gifted to me by a good friend...she's 7/8" hollow steel tube...sighhhh...so dreamy...

As a result, my calluses have built back up nice and solid, but my roughed up hands wind up feeling pretty dry. I notice a huge different in how my hands feel after I apply a light layer of JT across my calluses. It is a bit oily at first, but then it soaks into the skin, leaving the hands soft to the touch. I wish I could place my palm on the computer screen for you to touch and feel how supple, yet strong my calluses feel haha. I have been applying JT after I fly as well and IT IS AWESOME. It's definitely worth checking out if you are looking for something designed for people who use their hands like we do. While I'm sure my husband loves the back-massage-slash-back-scratch combo, it's nice to be able to tone down the intensity of my "construction worker" hands (as they've often been referred to). I try to apply one coat in the morning and reapply as needed throughout the day. The full usage instructions are available on the JT website. I saw Joshua Tree products in climbing stores in Salt Lake City as well, so it appears to be widely available.

I know this sounds like a sales pitch, but I assure you, I have not been paid for this review, I just cannot say enough great things about this product. Thank you again, Jen, for the recommendation!!! Unwilling to commit to a product I was unsure about, I just grabbed a sample size. I will definitely pick up the large tub next time!

Side note, if you're looking to buy any steel props/apparatuses, I know a guy and would be happy to put you in touch with him...and yes, this one is a sales pitch. ;)

Leave me a comment and tell me about your post-flying hand care ritual. Happy Flying!