Mercury in Retrograde

It's been a bizarre time lately, which part of me, that needs some sort of cosmic explanation, would like to attribute to Mercury being in retrograde.

Last week was a week of down and ups and downs again, and this week, well, my emotions seem to change at a heartbeat. But on Monday, I've discovered Rescue Remedy Pastilles, which are a lot more convenient for me than the drops, and now I'm downright jovial!

I decided to chew one before taking the GRE's yesterday, then another during the break, and they managed to calm me down and focus me enough so that I didn't do my typical standardized test panic, and was able to leave with fairly respectable scores. (Oh, the relief! - that moment when I say to myself "Are you crazy? What were you thinking - going back to school at this point in your life?!?" has been pushed off until the next milestone!)

But anyway, that's enough of a tangent, I suppose, and so, back to trapeze!

I've decided that my skill set has been sorely lacking in that I haven't committed to learning the layout, so decided to go at it again last night. I figured, that I'd split up the tricks I'm working on by class, so that I know, for example, that Tuesday (and maybe Thursday?) is Layout day, Saturday is mod day, etc. (I might need a fourth and maybe fifth day, though, to revisit the flexus and play with the Blender!) Because there's just so much that I want to work on, and if I don't get organized about it, I'll never make progress.

Anyway, this is one of my better layout attempts:


Still a lot of work to do, obviously, to get it from merely potentially catchable, to lofty and gorgeous, but fun to work on, especially since my hands needed a bit of a break from the ups and downs (going into an uprise then coming down a few times -- a new record for me set on Saturday -- three!!)

The highlight of the night, though, was taking the splits for a round trip flight. I've done it off of the planche a couple of times now, but decided that the splits were a nice way to mix it up a bit. Also discovered (or Manny did, actually) that I do my best returns when I don't get much catcher assistance - completely in keeping with my independent streak, I suppose.

I also really enjoyed doing yoga with the last class of the night. The pose of the moment was firefly. It's always fun to see what Lydia will pull out of the hat to challenge us! It's also great to see how cohesive the last class is. Last night they were all working on their turn-arounds, with Lydia and Max doing them for their first times.

Oh, and finally, I received an email from a guy I kind of know that started off as follows:
"i watched your flying vids. you need more strength in your abdominals. my not so humble opinion." Ouch! But he's probably right. So my ab strengthener of the week is this:
yoga headstand (not tripod, thought that would probably work too) - get into it with straight legs, then pike legs down, and straighten (slowly!) - as many times as you can, without falling over. Great for keeping tight overall, and the core. I'd be interested to see if other people try it, and how it affects their flying!

And video thanks and credit goes to Alex. Ab exercise credit goes to Fran. Thank you both!