A brief lesson from the past summer's Zen Acrobatics course in Barcelona.
The idea is to use the circle of Sternum (in the coronal and transversal planes) as the base for the motion of the butterfly. The push of the floor needs to happen in the right moment so the jump and the swing don't change the trajectory of the motion. Doing it in this way can have a lot of potential for control over the forces that are applied on the body in this move.
My motivation behind this information is not technical efficiency and superiority.
It is also not increased freedom of one's movement and capacities even though all of those are possible consequences.
Acrobatics offer me the possibility to skillfully take risks and turn things that were scary and far to familiar and smooth.
The path is to never stop going out of my comfort zone and always expand my possibility to take risks that I haven't taken before. But also, to do it through reasonable failures and falls, ones that don't cause trauma or injury.
This move is not 'acrobatic' for me anymore - it has no risk whatsoever and therefore my mind is free to break down the physics and training that is required. But there are variations of this coordination that makes my heart beat faster and that I think twice or three times before even trying. If it wouldn't connect to something that is beyond my capacities it wouldn't be acrobatic at all.
I can make a lot of smoothness and flow in something that is very familiar for me and make it look very aesthetically pleasing. But for me it has very little importance.
What is important is the physical experience of going further than I have imagined I could. And that requires also moving in ways I've never moved before.
The life lesson is very clear and visible, embodying it can be a step towards applying it also in other contexts which might have more complicated consequences. Skillful risk taking goes hand in hand with the joy of discovery and achievement.
#zenacrobatics #movementarchery