Aerial silks for middle aged women? The good, the bad, and the beautiful

What is aerial silks?

Aerial silks is a circus arts discipline in which artists perform aerial acrobatics while hanging from paired fabrics. Performers use the fabric to wrap, suspend, drop, swing, and spiral their bodies into and out of various acrobatic positions.

AND WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?

THE GOOD

Because you build overall body strength, especially upper body strength.
You use muscles you probably don’t even know you have because instead of pushing against gravity, you are mostly pulling against it.
One of the first things you learn is to climb to the ceiling on a piece of fabric! How cool is that 😁!!!
You become more agile.
Every time you show up you get a chance to surpass yourself.
You increase confidence.
You get to hang upside down and stretch your spine, like nowhere else.
You get to hang with your new friends, like nowhere else.
Little by little you find yourself doing things that seemed impossible at first.
After a while you will even be able to get out of these positions you put yourself in, all by yourself!
It’s super rewarding when you finally get a new trick.
Eventually, once you figure it out, your newly acquired skills don’t hurt anymore.
Compared to physical therapy which is boring and hard, this is super fun and way harder!
Yes, it’s really hard 🥵 at times! And you get to make it look effortless 😬😁 !
You get free circus shows just watching everyone practice around you every time you show up in class.
You get to put your ego aside since there are mainly kids doing this and they will progress much faster than you 🤷‍♀️! But that will happen sooner or later anyways (and if you don’t go, it will happen even faster!), so you might as well just get used to it and show up!
You could train side by side with your kids instead of spending half of your mamahood driving them to their practice while you sit around.
You have to do it now because later you probably won’t.
It is addictive! But there are way worse addictions than that!
Eventually, when your body gets used to it, you will be able to lift your arms, put on clothes, brush your teeth and hair, wash your face, lift pots and pans, pain free again.

THE BAD

You can’t take a long break otherwise you will struggle putting on your clothes and doing all these other things again for a while.
Some days that ceiling is way higher than others, I swear!!!
You can’t eat too close to class time because, I promise, inversions are no fun if you do that!
Spinning…😬🥴🤢, is never fun!!! Even if it looks cool, and the kids think it’s super fun, adults don’t agree with it!
You might have to skip class once a month. Being upside down is not a great idea during that time of the month!
Some tricks look way cooler than they feel!
Some tricks feel way better than they look! Record yourself every once in a while. Because if something feels right, it doesn’t necessarily mean it looks good!

THE BEAUTIFUL

The colorful silks hanging from the ceiling are just 🤩 .
The choreographies are amazing.
The hard working kids around you are incredible and so motivating.
You are dancing in the air.
The friendships you build while hanging in the air are unique.
You get to do some shows where you won’t be perfect but you are doing it with your friends, and you never would have if they hadn’t pushed you.
Just one of these things when you look back later in life and you think: “I can’t believe I did that 🙃!”

Try it! If not this, try something else that looks impossible, and make it possible for you, just because it’s fun and amazing, and because you can!