Up and over

| life

The raw skin under my ripped blister glistens next to the red and
tingling mounds on my palm, where calluses are beginning to form.
Despite the lingering sensitivity, I’m glad I went to trapeze class
this evening, and I can’t wait to go back as soon as the blister
heals.

I’m not there for the pain—who, me? I’m there for the thrill I get
when I set myself a challenge and make progress towards it. I’m there
because I love seeing the other two students try, fail, try again,
learn, and perform, and I want to be able to that too. I’m there
because the things I imagine myself doing once I have more experience
(and thicker calluses!) make it easier for me to get through my daily
exercise routines. I’m there because trapeze scares me, but in a way
that I can overcome that fear.

Today I managed to get my knees over the bar entirely on my own. It
took me one and a half sessions to learn how to do that with plenty of
help from Mark, the ever-so-patient instructor. I learned to swing my
knees up, contract my abdomen, and extend my knees. I learned to
engage my shoulders by tensing them, but not too much. I learned how
to trust myself to hang on while I allowed my legs to swing back,
pendulum-like, around my center. I learned how to bend into the swing
on the way forward, pulling my legs as high as they could go. I
learned to flex my toes in order to clear the bar. And I learned to
stop thinking so much and just do it… <laugh>

I know I’m probably going to forget many of these things and re-learn
them during the next lesson and the next lessons after that, but
that’s okay—learning is part of the fun of it all.

Random Emacs symbol: mm-default-file-encoding – Function: Return a default encoding for FILE.

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