Late one evening, I was playing “look-what-I-can-do” with a darling gentleman friend of mine. It consisted of headstand to side-crow, balancing on one hand, and other strange yoga/break-dancing tricks on the floor of my front room. We stood up, planning our next feat of strength, when Justin asked me if I had ever played Trust games before.
“Here. Just fall back into me, and I’ll catch you,” he said. Then he knelt on the ground five feet behind me, looking up at me expectantly. I turned to look him square in the face and laughed.
Justin stood up and took my shoulders in his hands, turning me so that my back was square to him. ”Now, fall back. Just trust me. Do you trust me?”
I tried. I stood there and thought about it, thought about how I knew he was more than strong enough to catch me, knew he liked me enough to not let me fall straight back onto my wood floors. But I was frozen. It was like anytime I’ve ever stood at the edge of a pool and peered into the depths of the water below. The rational side of my head was all for the fall, but it was the side of my brain that holds on to habitual distrust that kept me frozen.
In my early years at college, I had a difficult time with panic attacks. Without controlled reminders to breathe in and out on a regular basis, I feared my breath would simply leave me. As I fell asleep at night, I would wake up each time I felt my body sink into sweet slumber, afraid I had felt my heart stop beating. I couldn’t even sit and read a book quietly, because the act of relaxing would spring my mind into a state of anxiety. I wasn’t trusting enough of my own breath and beating heart for fear that it wouldn’t know what it was doing without my guidance.
Control/Trust issues, much??
I hated taking Xanax, but it was the only thing that would halt me from spiraling into a disastrous mess of panic. I would take them and let them dissolve under my tongue, experiencing the disgusting bitterness as a punishment for not being able to control my own thoughts and fears in my mind. It was terrifying, humiliating, disorienting, and annoying. Slowly, my mind became stronger than the terrors, and I was able to talk myself off the ledge of jumping into another episode.
Since then, I have learned to trust that my breath will come back to me. I can put myself into new, awkward and uncomfortable situations and breathe through them (thank you, yoga). But sometimes, I still experience incredible fear of trust.
And so, it was time to do something about it. I signed up for Aerial Circus Summer Camp.
For five straight days, I would spend three hours every morning learning the basics of the likes of Tissu, Aerial Net, Low-Flying Trapeze, Hoop, and Spanish Web. We’re talking Cirque de Soleil all up in the place.
The first day, I made friends with Kelly, the only camper not fifteen years younger than me. We played and hung from the sky, never more than a couple feet off of the crash pads beneath us. She had flexibility and strength, and I joked with her as she fell awkwardly off of the trapeze that I was going to call her “Grace.” Kelly laughed and said, “What a pair. Grace and Faith, over here.”
I did things I never knew I had in me. I did splits between two pieces of silks, somersaults in the net, backbends suspended from the aerial hoops; all kinds of incredible things. Kelly would take pictures with my cell phone, and each time I would look back on the images, I was stunned at how graceful I appeared. Turns out, I’m most graceful when a tangled mess.
On day 3, our incredible instructor Josh began to set us up for our first drop from the silks. He climbed and tangled until he was held up in the sky with each thigh wrapped in a piece of silk.
“From here, it’s easy!” he said. ”Just fall forward, keep your arms out at your side, and trust that you’ll fall right where your legs are!” Then he stretched his arms out and gracefully tumbled forward towards the ground, catching himself with the silks under his armpits. ”You have to keep your arms out, because if you think you’re going to catch yourself by reaching with your hands, you’ll probably fall backwards instead.” He smiled and hopped down. ”Who wants to go first?”
My first time, I climbed up and immediately came back down. The second I felt how bound my legs were in the silks, I couldn’t trust that I wouldn’t end up in a boy-scout knot, asphyxiated and hanging from the ceiling.
But Kelly did it. And yes, she hurt herself and looked mildly terrified - but I was not to be outdone. ”Don’t be a weenie, Potter,” I said to myself.
I clambered up once more. Josh stood to the side with his hand on my leg. ”I promise I’ll be here the whole time. You’re going to be fine. Just climb up more with your hands.” I looked down at him and recognized my only two methods of dismount - fall forward and trust Josh when he said I wouldn’t die, or climb back down and look like a weenie. I put one arm out to the side, the other arm still with a death-grip on the other silk.
“That’s it, Elle! Promise you’re going to be fine. Just think, ‘I’m a STAR!!’ and fall forward!” I looked down at his beaming face.
“This is scary as hell, dude.”
“I know it is,” he smiled back at me. ”Just trust me.” Cue montage in my head of everyone in my life I have feared trusting. People I was afraid to fall for, afraid I wouldn’t be ok when I landed. People who promised to hold my hand or catch me before things got too rough - people who followed through on their promises, people I never even gave the chance, and even the people who ditched out last minute and left me to fall straight on my ass. I heard them all in Josh’s voice beneath me, and they got louder and louder as I fought to maintain my composure.
It began to be too much. I felt myself start to tear up. ”I mean this is seriously scary. I can’t believe you’re looking at me like I’m actually going to do this.”
He smiled up at me. ”I’m not going anywhere, Elle.”
I sucked it up. I was determined not to be the grown-up hanging from the ceiling, crying from pure terror.
I pulled the other arm forward and out. I closed my eyes tighter than my favorite stretchy pants after a big meal. And I squeeeeeealed like a stuck pig. I may have even cursed, I can’t be sure. I felt my legs come unwrapped and my body tumble freely through the air. Then, like at the end of a rollercoaster, I came to a sudden stop, arms cradled by the silks around me and feet dangling above the ground. My eyes popped open to the smiling face of Josh.
“Oh. Well, that wasn’t so bad at all! Why did you make that seem like such a big deal?!” I demanded. But really, I was so proud of myself for taking the plunge that I wanted to call everyone I knew. Josh laughed and we all high-fived. I had done it. And he hadn’t left my side through the entire thing. But really, he hadn’t needed to be there at all; I was already woven into the web of my own support.
It’s okay to be scared. I know that. It’s okay to be skeptical. I understand that. But why live in a cave of fear and distrust that you dig deeper and deeper into the more you disbelieve?
I have the battlewounds from my week at Aerial Circus Summer Camp - bruises under my armpits from the drop, rope burns, silk burns, trapeze bruises, sore muscles in places I didn’t know I had muscles - and I’ve been displaying them proudly. ”Guess what I did! Look what it did to me in the process! And I was so scared at first, but I DID IT!” I say. We all have battlewounds from the things that have made us stronger. We don’t always feel it’s necessary to show them, and sometimes we’re embarrassed at how much it hurt us, but it’s all made us stronger in some way or another. The scars we hide and the scars we proudly display are both memorabilia to the times in our lives when we didn’t think we’d make it through. When we thought the pain and fear and terror were all we would ever know. When the sensation of falling seemed like it would never end. But we have to trust that it’s going to get better and stronger from there.
You have to trust your heart will still beat, for at least a little while longer.
Trust that your exhale will be followed by an inhale. At least for now.
Let go of the silks. Let go of the control.
Trust me.
If I can make it out of Aerial Circus Summer Camp alive, there’s hope for us all! And I have a TON of pictures to prove what I did, thanks to Grace - I mean, Kelly.
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If you’re interested in playing with Faith and Trust, come play AcroYoga with us at om time!
BOULDER, Sunday 6/21, 12-3pm - AcroYoga workshop with YogaSlackers.
DENVER, Tuesday 6/23, 6-7:30pm- Prana Flow with Shannon followed by AcroYoga Jam with YogaSlackers.
DENVER, Sat & Sun July 4-5 - AcroYoga workshop with Adi Carter
And if you’re interested in Aerial Circus Summer Camp, check out Aerial Dance Over Denver - and tell them Elle referred you!! (: