Taking Care of Your Circus Body
Pinchy shoulders? Wish you had better splits? Still not enough strength? - If you are doing aerials, I’m sure you’ve encountered thoughts like these, especially if you started as an adult. Maybe they even keep you from taking aerial classes because you think your body is not ready.
That’s what happened to me 9 years ago, when my kids tried an aerial class and loved it enough to continue. Secretly, I was super excited about aerials myself, so I hung a piece of fabric over our swing set and tried to hold myself on it. (NOTE: In retrospect, as a current professional circus arts practitioner, I do not recommend self rigging as a beginner.) Well? It was a serious “sack of potatoes” experience and I concluded that I was nowhere near ready to take aerial classes and sent my kids by themselves. Big mistake. For years, I’ve felt that I would never catch up until I figured out that every body can develop their own style of circusing, and it can be beautiful.
I learned that a body is never quite ready and at the same time a body is always ready to do circus. A nice statement, but what does that mean, concretely?
Let me continue my own story as an example – After watching my kids love their aerial classes for a year and finally deciding that the gym was not enough fun, I jumped in. Okay, I waded in. With young children and no supporting family around, I was only able to take one class a week for some years. But, hey, this slow immersion developed into a full case of adult-onset circus! Now, with one offspring in full time circus school and another getting ready to tour with Circus Smirkus in the summer, I find myself in a 54 year old body burning to do more circus. I’ve also had joint issues since age 13 and tend toward the short-and-tight end of the flexibility spectrum. On top of that, my body is super sensitive, which is a euphemism for ‘something hurts most days.’ What to do?
Fortunately, I have a good amount of knowledge about bodies and how to change them so that they live and move with more comfort and efficiency. In fact, many years ago, my own ‘stuff’ was the reason for choosing my profession – I have been a Rolfer since 1998 and have worked with all sorts of people to improve their alignment, movement capacity and pain-free living. That should give me a good starting point, I thought, no? The pandemic (as annoying as it was) provided the bubble for me to educate myself more specifically in circus-related movement. I started training active flexibility on a daily basis. I took classes in the biomechanics of circus skills and a long course for healthcare professionals in ‘circus medicine,’ aka how to work with the typical injuries of circus artists. I have taken all that information and I am using it for the ‘front end’ – how to train in a way that minimizes the risk of injury AND how to train in a way that systematically pushes and expands the capacity of my body. And of course, I share what I have learned (and continue to learn) with people at RICS.
A body is never quite ready and at the same time a body is always ready to do circus.
Circus is about exploring, about doing unexpected things. It is about play. And it is a big enough playing field that we can always do something productive and fun, irrespective of what may be going on in our bodies or the rest of our lives. Yes, as aerialists we place quite unusual challenges on our bodies and it is a smart idea to take good care of your circus body so that you avoid injuries. However, you can also look at it the other way: doing circus is an awesome motivator to take care of your desk- job body. And it is both a lot more fun and a lot more effective than ‘exercising because you should.’ My new mantra, particularly for those days when I am tired, lacking motivation, or something hurts, is
“This is your day to train. How are you going to use it?”
- aerials? flexibility? experimenting with ground choreography? shoulder PT? rolling on the tennis balls? It’s all useful and SOMETHING is always possible. Planning my time to train and then training, without fail, but with a wide lens of all the things that qualify as circus and circus-body care, has been a game-changer. It has made me find time for expanding my body’s capacities in multiple ways and it has made my actual aerial work so much more satisfying!
So, come to take class regularly with one of our skilled teachers; hang out in the space; develop your circus-body care toolbox by signing up for my next workshop in the “understanding ...” series (the last one was “understanding shoulders,” the next one will be “understanding core stability”), or splurge on a circus-body consult for an individual structural/movement analysis and a tailor-made set of tools. But, most of all, keep moving, keep circusing and have fun!
To learn more about how your circus body moves and maximize your training plan for health and longevity, book a Circus Body Consultation with Simone Lukas-Jogl. Learn More..