DIGITAL DOWNLOAD: Mindful Movement Reflective Worksheet

Moody Street Circus’ Prompts for Reflection on Foundational Aerial Movement Skills - DIGITAL DOWNLOAD/ PRINTABLE GUIDE!

Mindful Observation of Mindless Movement

In practice oftentimes the full extension or through fulness of movements can be neglected for the end product of the wraps: a drop, a split, a pose.

Practicing circus arts as a performance art can mean taking a moment in your practice to think about how your movements translate to the audience. Do they see your stress about a wrap tangling around you? Do they see the micro bend that appears in your leg when you’re focused on harnessing the strength you need to invert? Sometimes these things happen just because... you’re defying gravity! There is so much to focus on. It is important to take the time in your practice to slow down, develop your skills, strengths and lines.

We created these prompts to help aerial students pause, reflect and integrate the habits - good, bad and neutral - that they see in their movements to their practice in the air. It is possible for you to develop a reason behind every grip you make on your apparatus. Discovering and developing the reasons behind your movements in the air can help create an aerialist with clean lines, a confident movement style, and personal technique.

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Take a closer look at your pathways into:

• Eggbeater/ Dancer’s Foot-Locks

• Single Foot-lock (on 1 pole)

• Diaper Wrap (from inversion to SSKH)

• Hipkey from air

• Windmill/ Wheel-down Rotations

For each of these skills there are around 25 questions to help guide you in analyzing form or execution of the skills. On the following page there is space for you to include notes on your answers - as well as things you would like to try and change in your movements while performing the skill.

Also included in this digital booklet...

• 7 Things to look for in your training videos

• 10 ways to review a sequence

• Safe practice guidelines

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HOW IT WORKS:

The Moody Street Circus Mindful Observation of Mindless Movement workbook offers aerialist’s a chance to reflect on pathways that may have become “habit.” Through the reconsideration of a pathway/ skill with the help of videoing and the mindful movement questions, we hope aerialists can unlock more methods of movement and transitioning to open new strengths, pathways and possibilities of wrapping!

This workbook is both a great tool for independent training (looking at your practice through a new lens!) as well as for coaches seeking to think through the various ways of coaching foundational skills.

Assessing the execution of a skill or sequence with an eye to clarity can help “clean” a skill to appear more polished, clear and purposeful in terms of transition moments, extensions/ styles and poses. These introspective practice questions will give aerial students, artists and coaches help to refine their ways of practicing, integrating or teaching foundational skills.