Happy World Health Day!

Today, April 7th, is World Health Day. This year the theme is “international health security.” We live in a globalized world and people around the world are vulnerable to new and rapidly spreading health risks that know no boundaries. These health issues can greatly impact the collective security of people around the world.

I believe the easiest and most efficient way each person can contribute to reducing these global health risks is by simply taking care of his or her own personal health. When you are healthy and have a strong immune system, you are more likely to avoid getting sick, which in turn, keeps you from passing sickness on to others. To make our world a healthier place, you have to start with yourself.

So on this World Health Day, think about the ways to make your life healthier; add a few fruits and vegetables to your diet, drink more water, go for a walk after dinner. Maybe, today is the day to commit to quitting smoking or to sign up for the local 5k you have always wanted to do. Take a few moments to focus your energy on international health and then be thankful for your own health. Whatever it is, realize that when you improve your own health, you are helping improve the health of those around you and around the world.

- Becky

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

Waiting versus Patience

When I first participated in Silverman, a full distance triathlon, in November 2005, I was fortunate enough to have “perfect” conditions. By perfect conditions, I mean the sun was out, the temperature felt just right, and most importantly, there was absolutely no wind to battle on the swim, bike, or run.

This year, I participated in Silverman again and I was counting on these “perfect” conditions. During my training, I would think to myself how the race was over for me if there was going to be any wind, because with even the slightest breeze, I felt like I could barely move on the bike. I kept thinking of last year’s race and that “perfect” weather would be in store again. Every time I woke up to the wind howling outside my window, all I wanted to do was stay curled up in bed and wait for the perfect riding weather to arrive. Of course, I ultimately knew that race day weather was an unknown and in order to prepare for this unknown, I had to train hard through these cold, windy days. So, as much as I wanted to stay in bed these cool, gusty mornings, I took that first step out of bed and then onto my bike in order to tackle the wind. The wind was the obstacle I had to conquer in order to feel prepared for the unknown weather that could occur race day, and it took patience of both mind and body to train through the windy days. I wanted perfect conditions, but I knew I could not just wait for the windy days to pass during my training. I needed patience of both mind and body in order to be best prepared for the unknown weather for Silverman 2006.

The idea of having the patience to work through the unknowns of race day instead of just waiting for the perfect day to come relate directly to every day life. Challenges and obstacles constantly try to block us in the process of reaching our goals and we often find ourselves in situations and places we never expected to be. However, when these challenges do occur we must continue to explore the boundaries, delve through the barriers, and discover new paths to take. We must have patience with our mind and our body to explore and learn the way to break through the barriers and to work through the challenges before us. We cannot just wait for our perfect day or our perfect dream to come about; we must personally take the initiative to move through the process to get there. Conditions are not always perfect but this does not mean that you do not try and you do not perform.

Likewise, if you just wait for the end to come, you end up missing the process and the journey to get to your goal. By having patience of mind and body to work through challenges, when you finally do meet your goals and your dreams, you can fully appreciate the journey it took to achieve your goal. Silverman 2006 ended up being one the windiest days I had seen. The water was choppy on the swim and the bike had 50 miles of headwind. Yes, it was hard, but because I had had the patience to work through the windy days during my training, I was confidant on race day that I could handle the wind. And I did. With these “bad” weather conditions, I ended up beating my previous year’s time (which occurred during “perfect” conditions) by over an hour and twenty minutes. Patience with mind and body while tackling obstacles in my course enabled me to reach my goal of finishing my second full distance triathlon at a time much faster than my first. I am sure that had I just waited for the perfect days to come during my training, I would have done much more poorly. But I had not waited. I had patience and ended up enjoying the entire journey to finish the way I did.

So, why do people wait? Why do people wait for their goals and dreams to just happen. Is it because of fear? Fear of change? Fear of breaking away from comforts? Is it fear of the unknown? Perhaps these are valid fears, but I believe that having the courage to be patient during hard times can get you through the challenges. In the words of Rollo May, “courage is not the absence of despair, but rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair.” Don’t wait for an unknown tomorrow. Have the courage to make the unknowns possible by tackling them today with perseverance and patience.

-Becky Meldrum, Triathlete, Soul Acrobat

Finding Love in a World Where Hate Makes the Headlines

Watching the news and reading the newspaper, I often find that accounts of hate, abhorrence and/or crime seem to make the headlines while stories of love and unity are seldom the focal point of news-reporting media. It seems that prime time could be called crime time, and I question if it has become impossible for love to become more popular than the negative accounts that are so popularly reported. However, at this time of year, we also begin to get overwhelmed with images of hearts and chocolate and roses as Valentine’s Day is right around the corner. While many see February 14th as a bit of a Hallmark holiday, I believe it is still an important holiday because of the simple idea that it celebrates love, and perhaps, for just one day, love can take the limelight.

During this season of valentines and roses, I encourage you to help keep love in the spotlight by celebrating the many forms of love that exist. For example, celebrate the wonderful love for a significant other while also honoring the love you have for your mother. Take pleasure in doing what you love, whether it is painting or riding your bike. Associate yourself with objects you adore, such as dogs or flowers. Even though people can distinguish between these different forms of love, I like to think that they are simply all a form of positive energy that is felt from deep within the soul. When you do something you really enjoy or share a moment with someone for whom you care deeply, this energy is released and a union is experienced. Love then, as a union of energy felt between people or between people and objects or activities, can spread.

This February 14th, you can do your part to release love into this world by keeping it simple. Celebrate love by doing something that releases that warm glow of energy from deep within your soul and then share that experience with someone; read a book out loud with a person who shares your dreams, turn off your TV and dance to the music, give a rose (or even just a smile) to a stranger on the street. Share your love with someone else and in return, savor the love that someone shares with you. If we all release just a little bit of love into this world and openly receive love that is given to us, perhaps we will find that it is possible for love to become the center of our attention.

-Becky Meldrum, Soul Acrobat

Soul Acrobats

So what really is a Soul Acrobat? We know what an acrobat is – we think of somebody doing circus, doing flips. When I think of an acrobat I think of somebody with agility, skill, and coordination. When I think of soul, it’s about your essence, your spirit, your mind, it’s about all the intangible things that make us up, that make us human. When we put soul and acrobats together, it’s about the ability to manifest your essence, who you truly are. It’s about living your purpose by living on your edge, just like as acrobats we’re always pushing ourselves to try a new move.

- Alvin.

Every Step is Part of the Journey (even when you're just paying the bills)

Like many other dancer/acrobats, my life didn’t go straight from the gym to a paycheck. I was thinking of this today, just having recently fallen deeper into my 30’s, and was remembering some random jobs I have had. Remarkably, I’ve learned some great lessons along the way. Instead of writing a complete article this week, I present this set of nuggets. Everything is valid and nothing is wasted, and here is evidence to prove it!

1.) Scrubbing pots and pans at a Gymnastics Summer Camp:
Some stains are just never going to come out.
Sometimes you have to wear gloves to get the job done.
Half the time, you’ve just finished with breakfast when it’s time to eat
lunch.
People eat way too much.

2.) Waiting tables at Chili’s:
There’s always an opportunity for romance in the workplace.
Your boss is likely thinking the same thing.
If there’s not a rule, create one.
Most of the items on the menu are created by the staff who try to make
their “shift meals” less mundane.
People eat way too much.

3.) Intern at the Kentucky General Assembly (state house of representatives):
Mail is undeliverable to you if your house does not have a number on it.
If all of your family lives on the same street, it’s called a holler.
State reps make little to no money and work full time every other year.
In Kentucky, women where hats year-round: not just to the Derby.
People really do eat way too much. For lunch!!

4.) Intern in US Congress (I worked for Bernie Sanders, I-VT)
If you can’t get there above ground, there’s always an underground way.
The hardest working people often get no credit.
No matter what you do, your constituents will send you hate mail.

5.) Working for Diavolo Dance Theater, Cirque, and my life as an acrobat, dancer, choreographer:
Trust is stronger than love.
You can do the impossible, especially if you can get other people to do it
with you.
You must always have a sound business plan.
Don’t abuse yourself or your subordinates—it never works in the long run,
even if it might get you through some tough squeezes.
People need to have hope and will seek art that creates hope.
Physicality is boundless.
If you expect to fail, you will.
Art is necessary.
It’s important to make art accessible.
It’s important to forget about the money.
Even if you’re at the top of your game, still take class.
Because you’re at the top of your game, teach.
Small backstage rituals that connect you to each other are important (even
if they are completely ridiculous).
Just when you think it’s all about you, it’s not. Ever.
There will always be someone who hates your show—and tells everyone.
There will always be someone who was so moved by your show—and
doesn’t tell a soul.
And last but not least,
If you’re giving it all that you’ve got, you can eat as much of whatever
you damned well please.

Written by Laura Everling
☺

Behaviour & Movement Part 2

My responses were typical. I would stumble, and I would fall. I ran out of things to do, but the time kept counting. I wasn’t allowed to stop and give up. I would lose coordination. Mentally, I got pissed. I was embarrassed. What a stupid assignment! Why am I doing this? I can fly through the air in any position and here I am doing something stupid with everyone watching. I questioned why I was even in school. I decided that I was wasting student loan money and my teacher was an idiot who obviously had a vendetta against me and that all of this was a big waste of time.

Then, just like that, the gibberish in my head silenced. Having gotten through all of the useless questions in my brain, the real question remained. So I hated moving backwards. So what. Why? What am I scared of? My mind flooded. Scared of not seeing where I’m going. Scared of falling. Scared of moving away from what’s in front of me. I have a need to go forward towards what I see or want. I’m scared to look stupid. I’m scared of losing control.

Now I had a task. I needed to teach myself something: how to fall, how to have faith in where I was going, and how to let the things in front of me GO. So I made an entire dance that moved backwards and fell. When I was finished, it made me sick to my stomach, but I felt like a different person. I created movement that I never could have concocted in my head. I let my body do the “talking” and ended up finding new ways to cope with gravity and unpredictability.

Now, I can’t even remember how to be afraid of falling (at times, to a fault!) and my faith in the universe at times appears naïve to traditional task-oriented folk. But on the other hand, I now know one of my “triggers:” - control. Whenever I face into a situation and feel inner resistance, I look at my own control issues. Quite often, they are in there messing with the balance of things. So what do I do? I modify my behavior and my verbiage. I also go into the studio, move backwards, fall, let my body give into gravity and sure enough, my mind opens, solutions present themselves, and I’m back feeling more balanced.

Habits and patterns are safe, but they can also be self-limiting. As we investigate the internal and external sources of our fears, let’s not forget the lessons of the body. Just as a single strand of DNA reflects the larger whole of a person, so do the tiny movement patterns we build for ourselves reflect, for instance, - where we hold tension, what we choose to see, and how we choose to occupy space in this lifetime. We all know the saying, “you can’t see the forest for the trees.” But I also will attest—especially when dealing with fear—that we often can’t see the trees because we’re busy looking at the forest.

- Laura Everling

Behaviour & Movement Part 1

Habits. Patterns. Familiarity. One of the ways that I think we as people “deal” with our fear of the unknown is by conquering it with habits: behavioral patterns that we follow so often that they cease to become conscious. We all have our specific way that we drive to work, we have a certain order of events that we partake in when we get out of bed in the morning, we have certain ways and methodologies for developing relationships, making money, and essentially getting what we want. Psychology talks a lot about social and behavioral patterns and how those can be both facilitative and dangerous. But what about going to the smallest component of our daily life: movement? Consciously or subconsciously, we choose specific ways to move our bodies through space—up, down, quick, slow, forwards, backwards, small, big. What information can these tiny indicators unlock in our personal quests for self-awareness?

When I was in college for dance, I took a course in Movement Behavior which basically required us to look at the ways our bodies habitually moved in response to internal (psychological) and outside (physical) stimulus and to challenge those habits. The idea was to break out of your movement habits so as to break out of your point of reference and expand the place from which you see the world. In the same way that people draw references to entire towns based on their own neighborhoods (“Vegas is so racist,” “All the homes here are the same,” etc.) such do we base our judgments of ourselves and others from the way we position ourselves and our bodies through space.
The key to this investigation is that we typically are unaware of our own movement patterns—which necessitated that we work in pairs. Individually, we would improvise for 5-10 minutes with our classmates watching and taking notes. No music, no sound, no boundaries. Our partners would then remark on what we tended to do—and believe me, repetition was the norm. We each would then have to improvise using ONLY the things we did NOT do, and eventually create a larger piece from these foreign items.

I soon found out that I had a propensity towards direct movement that covered lots of space, was very upright, involved lots of straight lines, and NEVER went backward. Rhythmically, my work was even (never fast and never slow and NEVER completely stopping). Much of this makes sense, considering that as an acrobat (a gymnast and a diver), movement is linear, it always ENDS upright, and the only time you stop completely is when the routine is finished. But going backwards?

As an acrobat, I was great at back flips—so much that they were my specialty. But on deeper investigation, I realized that in flipping backwards, the action of the body is not exactly backward—it’s moving forward (eyes first) in a backward pathway that arches. I laughed as I realized why I had “cheated” for so many years on my back flips and could never quite set a flip straight up without looking back behind me first.

This much was charming. But then the real work came. I now had to do an entire 5-10 minute improv moving backwards.

To be continued...

Face Your Freedom Part 1

Face Your Freedom

Face your freedom. That's what my good friend Darren said to me the other day. It caught my attention because most of the time we are told to face our fears. It was his funny, casual way of flipping around the phrase that stuck to my mind, like gummy taffy on the roof of your mouth. I keep playing with it, rolling it around and trying to figure it out. Face your freedom. I've been thinking about it, and the real meaning - the rabbit hole - seems to get deeper the more I explore it.

What are we really scared about anyway? We are a society that spends an awful lot of time and energy focusing on the things that we fear. If it's not terrorists, it's pollution, if it's not pollution, it's the freaky neighbor with a pit bull. Fear seems to dog us, chase us, linger over us like the remnant stench of dirty socks. It clings, sticks, and attaches itself to our communal psyche. But is it really the "bad things" that scare us or is it something else?

I've been an acrobat for over 10 years. One thing that people constantly ask me is, "is your job scary?" I say, "sure!" There's an explanation to my quirky enthusiasm - fear pushes me to my edge, fear keeps me in a state of unwavering alertness, of heightened sensitivity. When it's appropriate, these elevated states are great - beneficial for the soul, the way a sharp sword is forged from heat and repeated pressure. There is nothing not scary about being an acrobat; the whole point of throwing yourself into 360's is to taste the bitter shock of losing your balance, of teetering on the tip of temporary extinction. It's about throwing the bait to the lions just to see how fast you can run. In the end, you tempt fate to see if you can squeeze that extra half turn in. Not logical but definitely fun.

But I've been re-thinking fear and freedom. Darren is great for throwing twists - not only in the air, but also in linguistic gymnastics. What if I was afraid of my freedom? Am I? Then I began to think about the times that I threw myself into moves with hesitation. There are obvious explanations to doubt and resistance in acrobatics. Everyone knows that you can land on your head in a back flip. Everyone knows that you can fall 20 feet, 40 feet, or 100 feet to your death climbing a rope or doing high-flying aerial acrobatics. You could be embarrassed by fudging your choreography and fear the sting of a mocking audience. These are all worthy things to be scared of, and no artist has truly crossed the threshold of professional performance without being subject to them. But is this what I really fear?

“Certainly the grace, or given quality of any experience is in direct proportion to how much one participates in it.”

Daimonic

Daimonic

Day-mon-ic –
“Eros is a Daimonic” Plato
Any natural functions that has the power to take over the whole person.
Can be either creative or destructive and is usually both. Rollo May – Love and Will.
(If you don’t know what Eros is- please look it up. Not just in a dictionary but in life itself; you’ll be glad you did.)

Daimonic -It’s a word that co-created itself in my life, bringing me to a reading that seemed to stand out, like a unique memory that constantly evolves you; evolves whenever you decide to think about it, or whether it whispers to you in the mists of life. You relate to it, you constantly redefine and try to understand it. It might be one of those things that, understanding might never come, but it’s the journey through experience that explains itself somewhere along the line. I believe the way a culture, a society, or country move through any period of time is in direct proportion to the mentality (or daimonic) of the individual’s in that culture, and or timeframe.
The Daimonic is the urge in every being to grow, to affirm itself, assert itself, perpetuate itself, and increase itself. It is like the inborn gene to grow, to get bigger, we do it whether we choose to or not. It starts in the form of size; we start as infants (small) and in the start we are added to, (in terms of experience, food, knowledge, all the stimulus that are put to us, evolve us as individuals); then there is a turning point where we can decide our information; when that happens, life can be drastically, or differently imagined for everyone. I’m sure at this point, if we are aware of it, we can become in partnership with our daimonic and a chosen destiny. If we choose an intention or direction we can move and balance with it. OR we can let ourselves be dictated through it, or by it.

Darren

My very first Blog

I guess for my very first Blog, not to mention the first time I’ve published something on the Internet, as well as, going to co-author a soon to follow self published book; I would like to introduce myself. I am, I am being, and I would like to become - Darren Dos Santos!
I have been working (maybe try not use the word “working”), thinking, acting and co- creating with Alvin (the creator of this site), Christian, and Marylene to get Soul Acrobatics established. Over the previous four months together, we have been collecting, rationalizing and filtering the experiences, perceptions, people, decisions, directions and time so that we may define what it means to be a “Soul Acrobat”. Trying to collect our truth and how we view the world; I guess “our world”. We would like to share it, and build on it.
(Side note on the chosen word “filtering” – filter all the abundance of time, experience, words, needs, wants, good, bad, indifference, ect…. , so that we can build our ideas and metaphors for Soul Acrobatics)
I’ll try introduce my writing, which is an extension of my fingers, my hands, my arms, all the way up to my brain, then my thoughts, then even further to my mind, and then from there I get a bit lost (but always questioning). So in essence my writing is my thoughts, so we can assume; so is most other things? (Although my knowledge of writing, and words I feel in general are limited to be able get some points across). I seem to write with a lot of questions. Almost conversational - within myself, within the writing itself (the words) and you the reader (the co-creator of these words).
My purpose – well lots – but firstly, to simply -- think – (you included)
(The paradox in that; simply – to think – Hmm??)
I would like you the co-creator to try and read in the first person, meaning to ask yourself the questions, try and answer them, right them down, ask someone else, save the question(s), (see how answers differ or if they’re the same).
Chances are, more times than not, your going to say that’s impossible, or there’s no way, or it doesn’t exist, or that’s bulls*!t, (trying not to offend anyone). If you say any of those words, - it becomes truth – your truth! – it’s identifying your truth with others that seems to be the tricky part. For instance --- I can do a trick (acrobatically) it might seem impossible at the time to the person I’m teaching! So the question is; how is it translated in time, experience, understanding, knowledge and feeling, so in those moments we rationalize, we experience, we know, we feel? Will it then be possible?
I will try to be grammatically correct, spelling and such, but sometimes I can’t seem to get my point across using the boundaries that are set forth. Sometimes it might be difficult to decipher the codes, the extreme levels that I sometimes talk or write in. So I will need feedback, or if misunderstood please ask, please enlightening me. However, I do my very best, as in life, to be very aware, or better yet conscious of what I write, the words, and the spelling I use (however, there are glitches, and I’m not the best speller, hence the reason for writing things like this and our book. (Always trying to acquire more knowledge and wisdom). There is always purpose, and reasoning in what ever we do! (Remember to read in first person – “we” – meaning you too).

Darren

Motorcycles and Heroes

I am on my way to a cafe, on my preferred mode of transportation, my red 1991 Kawasaki motorcycle. I am weaving through some residential side streets when I pass a couple kids playing on the sidewalk. One of the boys looks up at me with a devilish grin, pretends to grip handlebars, and revs his imaginary engine, probably a two-cylinder monster Harley low-rider. I cruise past, smiling at him, lifting a hand high enough to christen him with a peace sign. He smiles back, a knowing look, the kind of unsaid admiration that at the same time pays respect and tells me one day he'll be the guy on the bike.

I don't know how many times that moment has repeated itself over the 8 years I've driven my bike. It is almost as if little boys have genes programmed to detect loud, exhaust-spewing, two-wheeled cruisers; they'll spot it from anywhere, craning their necks to grasp one more look at my bike as they're pulled away by their parents, or whisked away in a car. There is something deep and meaningful in those looks that signify much more than a casual interest, a transitory whim. There is a desire to become greater, better, stronger, to ride faster than the wind, and to rise above all mundane constraints.

It makes me think of how all little boys and girls need heroes. They need them like they need jam with their peanut butter sandwich or Kool-Aid with their snack. It is as palpable as the sensations of thirst, hunger, or sleep. I remember how I spent the better part of my childhood in an imaginary world where secret agents, raging dinosaurs, and evil sidekicks lurked around every corner, hidden in the deep recesses of my basement, probably somewhere between the furnace and my dad's toolbox. But no matter who the bad guy was that day, I was the hero, wielding sticks for swords, towels for capes, and boldly leaping into the heat of action. I was invincible.

I wonder how much my fascination with superheroes lead me to become a circus artist today. By almost every definition of a superhero, I am one. I wear tights (don't get the wrong idea), don a secret identity (my parents can't even find me onstage), and execute beyond-human feats of acrobatic prowess. And, just like superheroes, acrobats fall down, get hurt, suffer the sting of hubris, and learn to gather strength to try again.

After 12 years of the circus life however, I am convinced that being a hero is much more than proving how high you can jump or how many flips you can do. That initial fascination with pushing human boundaries has metamorphosed into a desire to pushing the limits within, to stretch the impossible that shackles the soul, the heart. The same constraints that prevent an acrobat from executing some crazy maneuver - things like gravity, power, and physics - also lock down the acrobat inside. I have a part of my soul that seeks to see things from different perspectives, be it the way I construct my company or how I deal with a long distance relationship, and the gravity of the situation is as real as the 9.81m/s2 that sucks my body to the floor when I miss a flip.

Acrobatics is about developing awareness, a finely tuned third eye that knows when your right big toe is not pointed, when your arm is extended at 93 degrees and not at a right angle, or when you're about to under-rotate, so you better crank that last spin and open quick enough to land on your feet. So it is too, I believe, with the evolution of the soul. We create larger and deeper receivers to hear the subtle nuances and messages the universe is trying to send us. There is no easy path to awareness, inner or outer, only practice, honest self-critique, and a willingness to do it again and again.

I am past the kid on the sidewalk, whom I will probably never see again. It is a fleeting moment in time, but the knowing glance he gave me tells me that he is a superhero in his own right. He has a path, a mission, and the imagination to get there. I secretly wish him well, and send him a silent warning of the challenges and bridges to cross on his way to slay the dragons. The only difference is, the day he crosses that bridge, it will probably be on a Harley.

-Alvin.

The Sound of Silence Part III

There is something very awful about having to extend your number when you've already been on stage for two-and-half minutes. It's like telling a sprinter at the finish line to run another 400 feet. It's like finishing school and then coming back for summer classes. There is an endless, monotonous, sinking quality about dragging your body through more of what you didn't expect. Seconds stand still, minutes turn into hours. Time really is relative.

I go through the motions, and complete my choreography. The music signals that I have another two minutes to kill on stage, with not a shred of planned routine left in me. That's when I go into "artist overdrive" which is to say my autonomic nervous system takes over and I spontaneously begin to flail in all sorts of interesting shapes. This is improvising without a clue of what to do.

I run forward, arms wide open. I wave, spin, jump. The audience is watching every move. Sixty seconds left - what else to do? I throw a flip, another one. Fifty seconds. I smile a knowing smile without knowing that I am about to throw my most dangerous move.

In an astonishing burst of speed, I sprint towards the pole and begin climbing. My forearms burn with thick lava coursing through burgeoned arteries. I am tired. I am dizzy. But I keep climbing.

At the top I pause long enough to ask myself, "what the hell am I doing here?" and then my awareness snaps back to the building crescendo of the music. Almost over! I knew that I had to deliver - this was the punch, the climax, the grand celebration of my marathon number, and I still had an audience to impress. I had one last move in my bag of tricks and this was the moment to scour my weary body for its last ounce of courage.

It was a move that I had only done in practice - once. I do a shoulder plank at the top of the pole, throw myself into a 3/4 back flip, freefall twenty feet down, and squeeze the pole with my legs and arms to stop at the very last minute. It worked - once.

I ready myself and extend my body into the plank, arms shaking, shoulder aching, muscles screaming. But I am in a zen moment. A funny state takes me over, the kind of calmness and confidence that rises from deep within when you know something big is on the line. There is no audience, there is no music, there is no you. There is only the action at hand, and your total immersion within the moment.

I cast myself backwards, feeling the pull of gravity already tugging me with her tentacles, sucking me rapidly to the hard stage. The music is on its last notes. I am moments from hitting the bottom. Legs tighten, arms straighten, muscles engage. Three feet, two feet, one foot. I stop with six inches between me and the floor. The final note bursts out of the loudspeakers with climactic flair. I am done. I made it. I survived.

I learn two things that day. One: never restart your music from the beginning. And two: I have deeper resources within than I ever thought possible.

- Alvin.

The Sound of Silence Part II

My good friend Darren likes to quote Einstein alot, he's says, "Time is relative." He's right - both of them. There is nothing that can better describe eternity than being on top of a 20-foot pole, sweaty and fatigued, listening to the faint hiss of speakers that should normally be blasting "Carmen". I am dumbfounded. I feel the audience's expectant eyes rivet on me, tracing my outline, guessing at my next move. Even the spotlight seems to grow brighter. Damn pressure, the show must go on, and so I do. I go on.

I slide back down, I climb back up. I do everything I would do if there was music. It's like a funny pantomime - this nervous performer parading and gesticulating, pretending that all is in order, but really the world has just collapsed. It's the moment when you ask a girl for her number, and she hesitates. It's the moment when you see the swerving car, and you step on the brakes. It's the moment you have two thousand people watching you, and you can hear the lady in row ZZ, second balcony, clear her throat. I go on because I have to. I go on because I don't know what else to do.

Then, as if God himself had descended and handed me heaven itself, my music comes boldly rushing back through the speakers. It's like the saying, "you don't know what you have until it's gone". Whereas a moment before, this music sounded like heavy machinery excavating a coal mine, it was now the voice of angels, a thousand harps playing to lift me from my silent sentence. I am saved and overjoyed.

Until I realize that they started my music from the very beginning.

... to be continued...

The Sound of Silence Part I

It's been three months since I started the tour. I'm exhausted. I've seen countless hotels, buses, airports. The troupe is starting to get on my nerves - I'm probably getting on theirs'. The days blur past, time stands still. Here I am again, pulling the last reserve of flashy smile before an audience in Some Town, Some State. I'm leaning against a 20-foot vertical pole, just me in the spotlight, the rest of the troupe sparsely decorated at the edges feigning interest. A tinny classical piece is blaring, the annoying kind that grates across ear drums with repetitive harshness. That's the music for my choreography.

My cue is up, I start climbing up the pole, and wave at the top. The first minute passes in an unconscious haze, the aches in my body speaking louder than the pattered applause. I invert myself and drop in a rapid slide. A few "ooohs" and "aaahs" cut through the jarring cacophony of the music; I keep on truckin'. My body reflexively jerks this way and that, conditioned to the countless routines it's executed. Hand over hand, I find myself back at the top, ready for my next trick, a horizontal shoulder plank. I wait for the musical cue.

It never comes.

...to be continued...

The Innate Ways of Nature

Epiphanies can come from anywhere, nature being one of the best sources. A ladybug landed on my hand while I was walking to the store yesterday. What was interesting was that no matter which way I tilted my hand, the ladybug always changed direction and crawled towards the top. When it got to the tip of my finger, it spread its wings and flew off.

This little insect's behavior made me think of how all nature strives upwards. Trees break through the forest canopy, flowers open to the sun, and vines crawl up a wall. It made me realize that human beings do the same thing too - aim for the top.

Deep down, even if it's not always apparent, I believe that we constantly strive for our best and look for challenge. Sometimes it is asked, how do I continue to grow? I wonder if that really is the question because inside we are naturally wired to evolve, without any deliberate decision to make it so. Just like breathing or digestion happens on its own, there is an innate impulse to seek growth in all areas of our lives; physically, emotionally, and spiritually. The deception arises when things don't move forward in our lives and we blame our inadequacy or lack of drive for the undesirable circumstances surrounding us.

We might look instead at the things that block our innate flow of growth. Rather than ask the question, "Why am I so apathetic and unmotivated?", we should ask, "What are the blocks to my natural impulse for growth?" At first, it seems like both questions lead to the same answer, but for one difference. The second question presumes that the desire to grow already exists and instead focuses your task on accepting or removing blocks to that evolution.

This is why I do not necessarily believe that people need to be motivated. Given the right direction and tools to undo the obstacles to arrive at a goal, people naturally become very enthusiastic and excited to apply themselves. One definition of application is "The act of putting something to a special use or purpose." Therefore, when you have a purpose, tools to get there, and a way to undo or accept blocks as you progress, motivation naturally springs upwards from a deep and inexhaustible well.

- Alvin

Outside In

We are often told that our inside determines the outside - that thoughts create our actions, our actions create our reality. I believe this is true but the other half of the equation is also missing. The outside - our physiology - can shape our inside as well.

The body is like a fine musical instrument and we have the pleasure of playing anything we want through it - any style, be it rock, classical or thrash. Our created reality is the style we choose, our unique signature, our essential imprint on the world. What's interesting though is that if your instrument (you) is not in tune or is bent out of shape, the fullness of your expression will be distorted and diffused.

Our bodies are able to shape themselves into the form we want them to. It's like having a magical musical instrument that can emulate a guitar, piano, flute or violin at will. Similarly our physiology transforms to allow us to communicate happiness, sadness, anger, love.

The role of an acrobat is just that - to adapt, transmute and create forms that allow the greatest expression of the moment via this organic instrument. So even if you are not executing triple twists, you are still acrobatic as you discover ways to express your present elan, or impulse. This is the essence of Soul Acrobatics.

What is curious is that we can shape our bodies to change how we feel and think inside. The street is two-way; the lifting of the chest, the relaxing of the shoulders, the straightening of the spine all influence our thoughts, just as thoughts determine our outward physiology. So the next time you feel afraid, or lack confidence, remember to not only drive your thoughts into your body, but to push your body into your thoughts.

Be aware to not fake your physical presence however and confuse it with genuine solidity. Only by focusing your attention on your physicality as you change it will bring about a deep conviction and sincere state of mind. "Thinking" of how tough you are as you puff out your chest is a sure road to self-trickery and constant disillusion.

So allow the traffic to run both ways on the road. Harness the power of choice by making conscious thought a seed for your desired reality. At the same time, master the body's ability to transform itself to inspire the thoughts and emotions that create the state of mind you want. Either way, the purpose is to express yourself whether you play the instrument or the instrument plays you.

- Alvin