NECCA day 1

So, we've had a couple days at NECCA to get acquainted with the space, and today we had our first rope lesson, but I'll get to that in a bit.

First, I want to show you where I live, because it is awesome.

The lake outside my house

Yep, that's Lake Pleasant, and it is well named, that's for sure. While I took this picture, I was sitting in a little wooden box on one side of The Bridge of Names

Every single one of those slats of wood has a name on it, everybody from Picasso to V. Van Gogh to Bob Dylan to MLK, JFK, and RFK (those three all on one slat) and a whole bunch of people who I have no idea who they are, but I'm sure they are all fascinating.

That's the whole 360 view from my little box, and I absolutely love it - it's where I go to eat my breakfast. I get to listen to the birds and the bugs and the wind and the water. It's about as serene a scene as one could imagine.

So that's where I live. Yes, it is awesome.
TRAINING
So we are in this big building that used to be a cotton mill, and aside from the circus center, there is a pottery room, a dance company, a toymaker and a whole bunch of other stuff.
Including this particular item.

This guy is up on a wall in the hallway outside of NECCA and his head/body (not including tentacles) are about as big as I am. I just thought he was way cool.

So in the actual studio, there are lots of cool things, like

ALL OF THE APPARATUSES!
Also, they have

German wheels! But I won't get a chance to use them, but still, cool to know they have them. Also, not pictured are Roue Cyr (Cyr Wheel)

So we did a rope class, and we went back to basics, which both Emilie and I needed a lot - anyone can teach you a trick, but only a true professional can point out the flaws in basics. So that went well, we will hopefully have video of us on the rope once we get a little bit more into it and start doing things that are interesting to people other than me.

In the meantime, while Emilie was doing her contortion class (that's what she's doing with Bill, pictured above - it's not a massage, it's contortion class, I promise) I went into the side room and got up to some shenanigans.

First of all, this is the coolest thing I've ever seen, and I need one in my house.

And by need, I mean as soon as I get a house, I am going to build one - looks pretty easy, just some screws in the floor, a couple tiny pulleys and some nice lengths of rope.

Also in that room, I was working on handstands and decided to film them for your pleasure, but also so I can see how I'm doing (it isn't exactly easy to look in a mirror while handstanding)

This is a weird little tuck thing I've been working on, it has a ways to go yet, but I'm well on my way.

I've also been working on a back bend while doing a handstand, and again, I'm well on my way, but still a long way to go.

So that's what's up in terms of what I'm doing, but while I was there, I had the pleasure of seeing some of the other people studying there do some of their things, including Aimee (my handstand teacher) and her flyer doing some duet work.

So that's all the updates and pictures and videos that I have for now, aside from the thunderstorm that we had to run through to get dinner tonight. I've never eaten dinner while literally dripping water before.

Ah well - we have this weekend off, then straps and handstands next week!

Expectations

I want to talk for a minute about expectations and how rarely they match up with reality.
I want to talk about self-confidence and the power of a self-defeating attitude.
I want to talk about how many of my eye-rolls I do as a result of people whose expectations are lowered by their self-defeating attitude.

So the other day I was at work and I had a newbie, this happens about once a week. This newbie was, as are the majority of my adult students, female. Society has been telling this woman from birth that she is weak and pathetic and can't do anything physically as well as a man (which I am, for all intents and purposes) and so when she sees me doing something that looks physically difficult, her assumption is that she is not going to be able to. I tell her "don't you see - it has nothing to do with strength, it is all about technique, you can be the strongest man in the world, and without technique, you can't do a fraction of the stuff I can" and I try and I try to impress upon her that it has to do with the way you are doing it, not the size of your biceps.

She tried to climb and couldn't do it. She said "I can't do this, I'm not strong enough" and for anyone who has EVER taken my class you know that "I can't" is an unacceptable phrase unless it is followed by "yet."

Her particular problem was that she was rushing through a technique because when she was in the air doing it, she had to support her weight by her arms alone, and because she spent her whole life hearing "you are weak" she believed it. So, naturally, I decided to prove her wrong. I told her to do a dead hang - and to hold on to the rope and pick up her feet. She held on for about 10 seconds before her arms gave out. For those of you who have never done dead hang, for a beginner, 10 seconds is a very very long time. She got this huge look of surprise in her eyes like she never expected to do what she just did, and almost didn't believe it.

Then she climbed the rope to the top. Twice.

She expected to be weak, and so she was, and when I proved to her that she was not, she nailed it on the first try.

In my years of martial arts, dance, aerial arts, fire arts and sports, I have realized exactly one thing: people are way stronger, way smarter, and WAY more powerful than we give ourselves credit for.

I cannot count the times I hear a student say "I can't do it" and then I say "tough, do it anyway" and then they do it. I also cannot count the times I have heard a student say "I can't do it" and I say "tough, do it anyway" and then they get halfway through and give up, not because their arms gave out (I know what arms giving out looks like - you don't land gracefully or talk while it is happening, arms giving out is the point of falling) but because they didn't think they could do it.

You need to have faith in yourself. You need to stand up to everyone who ever said you can't, and you need to get right up in there and say "Watch me"

You need to believe that things are within your physical abilities. Sometimes they may not be. There are many things that I cannot do. Yet. But that list gets smaller and smaller every day, and that is because I push myself to realize my potential.

We are so complacent and so willing to give up, and sometimes, even with a teacher saying "I know you can, you just have to try" that we are so afraid of... actually, I have no idea what people are afraid of.

And then there are the people who come to my class and complain about it hurting or it being hard. To which I have to spend a great deal of energy not to reply "FUCKING DUH!"
When you do something amazing, you should expect it to be difficult, and you should expect that you will struggle, but if you do not expect that you will succeed, you will not.
If you do not go into an activity or a test or any aspect of life saying "I can do this" I almost guarantee you that you will not.

So please. If you want to come to my class to bitch and moan and whine about how much it hurts and about how hard it is and about how I make it look so easy -
1) how do you think I got to this point?
2) shut the fuck up and let me teach someone who actually wants to learn this stuff

The woman I was talking about earlier - I hope she comes back, because I can see the walls starting to come down and that is awesome, that is how it has to happen. But I have another student who is taking my aerial class and
1) is afraid I am going to drop her in acro
2) has a low threshold for pain
3) cannot do a pull up
4) doesn't want to strength train in class
5) wants to learn more than just climbing, which she has yet to do successfully

for those of you who don't know much about what I do - 2, 3, 4, 5 pretty much is what aerial is. It is pain, it is doing pull-ups, it is strength training, and it is climbing. What did you think this class would be like?

So (finals words, I promise) the next time you decide to do an activity, I want you to ask yourselves some questions
1) what do I expect this class to be like, and on what basis am I basing that expectation
2) what are my fears/desires and how far am I willing to push those
3) what are my physical limits and how far am I willing to go to increase them
4) what do I expect from myself
If your answer to number four is vastly higher than your answers to 1-3 would allow, I would suggest revisiting your priorities and what you actually want. Are you willing to go through the learning process in order to know what you want to know? Because if you are not, don't waste your teachers' time - we have better things to do than listen to you talk about how hard this is and then refuse to do any exercises that would make it easier.

New Year's Resolution

So, this past weekend I gave myself a haircut. This is it.

This was not a rash decision, not one I made lightly - I loved my hair very much. This is the shortest my hair has been in my memory. I did this for a reason, and it is a good reason, and I'd like to share it with you all.

Last year I made a very large new year's resolution. I made it about two weeks late, but it was on my mind, and with the help of an amazing human being, I found the courage to do what I needed to do: I changed my name. It was hard. It took time. It took struggle and alienated a few people, some temporarily, and some it has certainly altered my relationship to them forever. But at the end of the year, sitting with my friends on new years eve, spinning fire, drinking champagne - legally, for the first time in my life, I might add - playing music and doing acrobatics and hand-balancing (welcome to our parties) someone introduced me to a stranger. She was a fellow fire spinner working for my friend's fire troupe, azer, which is somewhat of a sister group from my acro group aeros. Anyway, introductions, and I was introduced as Fenix. This has become quite common, everyone calls me Fenix now over here with the rare slip up which is quickly corrected, and this was not different in any way. But I remembered that at the beginning of the year, I said that I would change my name, and that by the end of the year, there would be people in my life who didn't know that I was born under a different name. I succeeded in my goal, and this year I wanted to try to improve my life again, so I decided to cut my hair.

I also intend to give away a bunch of clothes wear, but really don't need, to get rid of a lot of the other crap in my life, and some crappy stuff in my mind and in my life. I am cutting my hair because it gets in the way with circus. I am getting to the end of my college career, and circus auditions are looming, and I want to be ready. I want to be compact. I want to be sleek and efficient and effective, and I resolve to make the appropriate changes in my life to make this so.

Acrobalance is ROCKING

So about two months ago I started an acrobalance group in the park, just as a place for us to play around, and it really picked up. If you don't know what acrobalance is, I really don't want to explain it, so I'm just going to send you to the Acro Wiki so you can go do your own research (or, in terms of my new motto, which I'm fairly certain I partially stole from my father: Go. Read. Become Educated).
Anyway, the group really picked up and we kept gaining members, and then someone pointed out something which I was avoiding thinking about - it rains in Eugene. I am not worried about the rain, actually, we can always go to a park under an overpass and work there, but it gets cold, and it gets wet, and that is just not fun. So, we moved ourselves into a brand new space called Core Star Cultural Center where they teach martial arts and yoga, basically, nice sound system, and slightly bouncy floors. Oh - and most importantly, a roof and heating.
So this was our third week in the space, and we had TWO people there who were not there by any of our invitations, they found out about us through Core Star. YAY ADVERTISING!

So this week the theme was mounts and dismounts, and we went crazy figuring out really creative and outlandish ways of getting into the simplest of positions (in fact, we did the three simplest tricks I could come up with). Anyway, the video that inspired that lesson contained within it an amazing combination that I wanted to try with my main acro man, Eli. I love this guy, he loves acro, he is really strong, and will do just about anything I can think of. So we did the combination and nailed it on the first try (almost, he tried to do a little extra, which is why you'll see him stutter a little bit on a transition) and it was amazing.

Anyway, it is just a little short 30 second video, and I wanted to share it with you, partially because I don't really have any acro videos (but we will, we have something like 20 members, and a lot of them are getting really good, so we'll start rehearsing soon), and partially because I want to brag on how awesome this is.

Many more videos and updates to come!
Oh, and how do you guys like the new blog format? I think it is kinda boring compared to my oh so colorful design I had before, but it just means I have to post more pictures and videos to keep things interesting!