Liar, Liar Pants on Fire

I have started to think that my friends and fellow nursing students don't really believe this whole circus shtick of mine. Frankly, since nursing school started I don't really believe it anymore either. Well, there's photographic evidence. (I know, I know -- I'm faceless. But there is HIPAA to contend with here, so enough already.)

The Confidence Factor

I'm in a bit of a funk right now over circus. I've been active with the center for going on two years; I am not -- and have no interest in becoming -- a professional. (After all, I'm a mom, an ____ologist, researcher, and I'm about to become a nurse!). Granted, I am not the most self-confident person on the planet. And while I like to think of this as humility, I am fundamentally aware that it oftentimes manifests as self- consciousness and self-doubt. So, there's that. But the thing that's getting to me is what any good teacher knows well: the best way to help a student to learn is to be encouraging and to help to build confidence. I am not always getting this feedback at my place of practice. I should say here that I am not shabby, in general, at the art of circus. (Though, I don't hold a candle to The Kid.)

I trained for a couple of hours this morning on my own, just strength-building exercises, but I had the constant sense of judgment from a particular instructor, (and students who felt either obliged or merited to participate in the evil eying) which just kills confidence. Without confidence, exacting a skill is going to be impossible. Feeling watched and judged makes even hanging from the trapeze like threading yarn through the eye of a needle. Impossible! As a "recreational user" (a term I love because of the apparent lack of awareness of its contemporary, urban connotation) there is always a degree of displacement, but one would think that circus folk, for love of their art, community (and livelihood) would be inclined to encourage outsiders' interest in their trade. Well, on that front, at least the clowns are always very welcoming.

My take-home message on this one is that we need to believe in others; if we don't, we'll never be able to believe in ourselves. That, or we just need to surround ourselves with clowns.

Tomorrow, partner and I have a wieny roast at The Kid's school to attend to, but Sunday, I'll be back at the circus center, back on the trapeze, heart tucked tidily inside sleeve.

Muscle Memory

My tissu teacher (who is great, by the way) has been trying to get me to keep a notebook so that I will remember the different wraps and drops. My take on this is that for chronicling what we've done week to week, this is a fine exercise, but for learning, it is an exercise in futility. As a former dancer I have pretty decent body awareness. I am aware that my body learns through repetition. The trouble is that at the circus center, other than during class, there is no way to practice because the silks are not hanging. I maintain that without this repetition, I will make slow gains and will, likely, need to be reminded of where my feet, hands, butt should go. But this argument was putting me at odds with my instructor, so I conceded and whipped out the handy dandy moleskine, with a mental note to check up on this one. I recalled a piece I had seen in the NYT last year about a professional dancer who had a very detailed explanation of learning by watching and repeating movement, something which is quite natural for me - and imperative - in physical activity, even though I am much more of an auditory learner, generally.

After class I looked into muscle memory, aka neuromuscular facilitation, a very real phenomenon. The way it works is that through repetition, training movement of the body will stimulate neurological adaptation processes. The outcome will eventually induce physiological changes resulting in increased levels of accuracy in movement. Both fine and gross motor skills are involved in muscle memory. As we reinforce specific movements through repetition, the neural system learns those fine and gross motor skills so that we no longer have to think through the action. We merely react and perform. As you can imagine, anyone learning a new activity has a significant amount of brain activity occurring. Since muscles grow accustomed to certain types of repetitive movement, (walking, brushing your teeth, driving a vehicle) the best way to insure correct and adequate unconscious performance is repetition. Practice. Ask any musician or athlete.

So while doubting its efficacy, I will write down the drops and wraps until there is a tissu up on which to practice, at which point I guarantee marked improvement (and decrease in trainer frustration over having to shout out, "no, behind! no, left leg up! no, turn to the right!"). Which brings us to the confidence factor, another documented phenomenon in which a person's sense of being unable to perform affects muscle memory. But that's a different problem for another day.

A Brief Circus History

After training since the summer of 2006, off and on, in acrobatics and on the static trapeze - and since December on the tissu - I decided that today I would try out a new circus apparatus, the single point trapeze.

Like all circus endeavors: humbling.