Evolution of Gymnastics in My Life

When my parents put me in gymnastics at a young age, I’m pretty sure a goal of theirs was for me to learn motor skills and body awareness. At the age of 3 and a ½, I believe the gym was a great environment in which I could safely learn to move my body and play. Then, as I got older and my skill level increased, I learned to perform for a judge to get a score. Looking back, club gymnastics felt very individualistic as it was just me on the beam or the floor fighting for the best score I could get – always wanting to qualify to the next level and the next competition. At that point, I had learned how to move my body and perform for a score.

Then came college gymnastics; what seemed to me to be an entirely new sport. I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to compete on the Stanford Women’s Gymnastics team for four years and that is exactly what it was – a team sport. No longer was it just me up on the beam, but I had the whole team right there backing me up. And it wasn’t just my teammates standing alongside the beam, but all the Stanford gymnasts who had come before. It was about legacy. I had all their energy supporting me and helping me to do my best, and I was performing for them and for all our fans in the stands. In college gymnastics, I started to learn about shared experiences and shared energy between the team and our fans and me. I pulled energy from my teammates and from the crowd to enhance my own performance while simultaneously giving energy back. I had learned to use the surrounding energy in order to move my body and to perform for a score for not only me, but for the team and for all of Stanford.

Today, as a professional acrobat, the sport of gymnastics continues to personally evolve for me. I continue to build on the skills I have learned throughout my career, learning to move within and around my environment in acrobatic and artistic ways and pulling energy from the audience to strengthen my performance in order to give them greater energy in return. Now, however, I’m performing five nights a week for strangers and there is no score. Now I know that performing means enjoying the moment, enjoying the energy I receive from the audience, and enjoying the energy I create for the audience in return.

I look back at my early gymnastics career and even my collegiate gymnastics career and wish I could go back and do it again. It is not that I did not enjoy it, but I just did not know how to enjoy the actual moment. I did not know how to just trust what I had trained to do and let the moment happen in competition. Of course, it is easy to say this now, but then again, perhaps I would not even be at this point now, if I had not gone through all the other steps to get here. Maybe, the fact that I do get to perform every night, instead of just a few times a year, I feel I can relax and enjoy the moments. Maybe I would not even know how to use the energy of the audience if I had not first learned to perform for myself to better myself. Maybe, I am still doing exactly what I did when I first started gymnastics – testing the body and its limits and finding new ways to move in my environment. Just imagine what I will be able to do in another 20 years!!

Facing Freedom

Throughout history, humanity has been faced with various challenges around the issues of freedom and liberty. However, these challenges and barriers can and have been overcome. We must continue to search for ways to train and condition our bodies and minds to create our environment. We can build new paths by demonstrating precise movement as a way to travel through life. We can escape and dodge barriers by using them as bridges, not blockades. We can bend limits, brave the shackles of conformity, and evolve the body to its limits by continuing to challenge the abilities of the mind and its body. Just as humans have been defining and evolving freedom on a global scale, our movements and our thoughts define our own personal freedoms.

How do we move on from the challenges humans have faced? How do we continue to grow and evolve as a species and as an individual? Are the restrictions and responsibilities of freedom similar to the responsibilities found in the art of free-running? Perhaps the lessons of physical and mental challenges learned from free-running can relate directly to global movement and the possibility of peace.

Moving through your Environment

This past weekend we started working on our newest project, a film on free-running. As we start exploring this form of urban athletics, we are intrigued by the art of this increasingly popular sport in which the participants explore and move through their environment in innovative and aesthetically pleasing ways. Free-runners often perform in urban settings, flying and leaping to and from buildings, railings, steps and any other object that most passersby will observe as an impossible prop in which to move from one location to another.

Despite the suggestion of the name, free-running requires the free-runner to have an acute awareness of his body and his environment. He cannot just run absent-mindedly from one position to another without being focused and making choices. Every time a free-runner jumps, he has choices to make; which direction will he go? How will he land? Where will he move to next? These choices must be made quickly, which means his thoughts need to be clear. We often have many thoughts competing for our attention, so it is vital for a free-runner to know what he wants and to follow through with his choice. Otherwise, he can end up being injured or causing destruction to the environment.

Just as all freedoms come with responsibility, so does the art of free-running. The free-runner has a responsibility to listen to and respect both his body and the environment. Whether he is jumping on rocks or buildings, communication must exist to prevent damage to either the body or the environment. If he does not respect the land, the rock can bite the free-runner. If the land does not respect the free-runner, the free-runner can destroy the rock. People shape the land by treading and jumping, but instead of working against the environment, the free-runner must run free with respect to it. He must land lightly to slowly mold his surroundings into a compatible environment without completely destroying or changing it. To achieve this compatible environment, listening must occur by both the free-runner and the environment. By listening, we can shape our bodies and our environment and then we can slowly mold and create an environment of a new light that respects the relationship between our bodies and the environment.

For the next couple months, we will continue to explore the world of urban athletics and free-running by filming and documenting members of the French troupe, Fils du Vide. Join us in this exploration of our environments by discovering your own new and creative ways in which to move through your surroundings while still respecting them.

-Becky, Soul Acrobat