Going Aerial

For my "creative project" in December I stepped a little bit outside of the box. Or actually, into the air? Ha. For a couple of years now I've been really inspired by a friend of mine who does pole dancing. I mean, it's pretty badass right? Those ladies are STRONG. No joke. Anyways, I've been trying to figure out how I can fit a pole class into my schedule and last month while searching around I came across an aerial arts instructor who teaches a silks class at the Miramar Theatre.

What is Aerial Silks? Well, the best way I can describe it is that it's similar to pole, but instead you do all the fancy tricks and flourishes on a couple of gigantic strips of fabric hanging from a high ceiling.

Wut. I know! It looks a little bit like this:

And this:

Except not me when I do it because... hard. This I looked like:

I should also note that instead of being way high in the sky in these photos, I am a mere couple of feet off the ground. In fact, I plopped back down to the floor on my butt with my feet all tangled up right after these photos were taken. But whoa was it fun!

I can't even put into words how much upper body strength this took. And watching the instructor climb up to the tippy top of and get all bendy and twisty in the air was chock full of crazy. My arms were literally shaking at points to where I had to take a break and just watch for a while. (Oh, and I hurt for three solid days afterward. Insanity.) Of course, I'm pretty much dying to go back. A new session of classes starts in February! I am so there.

Backtracking a bit to make sure I'm being honest, I almost bailed on going to this class at the last minute. I was kind of terrified. Not that I thought I would hurt myself, but I was a bit concerned that 1) I wouldn't be strong enough to do it and 2) I would be the "old" lady in the class. (Ok, so one of those things turned out to be true but this old lady can hang with the young 'uns.) I'm glad I pushed myself in the end to try something that scared me because if I bailed I would have missed out on something amazing and fun. And really, who cares if everyone was 10+ years younger than me? I need to get over that crap.


2014: The year of doing whatever the hell I want.