Learning to Fly

Remember all those bruises I showed you? They are all by-products of the talents and skills I'm trying to develop as part of my New Years resolutions. I have taken up Aerial Acrobatics! This is me - sitting in a hoop, and on the silks doing a move called Straddleback: There is this wonderful gym/studio/whatever-you-want-to-call-it/building that I drive by every morning on the way to work, and one day while waiting to turn at a stoplight it caught my eye. So after I finished work that week I dropped in to check it out and instantly fell in love! The first time I remember seeing aerial acrobatics like this was at a concert (thank you, Cher!), and I was amazed. I never thought it was something I'd seek out to do. I first signed up for the silks (fabric) class and started attending weekly. A few weeks in however, without my knowledge, the studio switched up their schedule and added a few more classes, including hoop. When I showed up for what I thought was my silks class that week I discovered they were really setting up for hoop. I wasn't so sure about it, but one of the employees encouraged me to try it out (you can try one class of each type for free), and then attend my normal class the hour afterward. I stayed...and have never been able to give it up! I take back to back classes every Tuesday night - hoop followed by silks - and while it can be exhausting I see myself improving every week, and have really come a long way in the few months I've been taking classes. I got a couple of the studio assistants to take pictures for me during hoop, but they take the silks class with me, so I don't have any more pictures of that class for now. Here are some things I was working on this week in hoop (excuse the blurriness - it's not the type of activity where one holds still very long!); I actuallly do more moves than these few, there's just not time to do everything in one class! Single knee hangs

Splits and Bananas (these need work...)

Straddle-ups (yay pointy toes!!)

Mermaids

Amazons

These next two were from a new move I was learning this week but couldn't quite get the hang of (no pun intended)... the bruise on my right hip is a lovely shade of eggplant because of it though!

Okay. Now that you've suffered through the blurriness I'll leave you with one photo that actually turned out well - it's a bonus that it was on a move that actually requires some skill, and just looks stinkin' awesome!!