Amber, Matilda and Jack from our Sydney Dream Team organised a 2h acro yoga beginner workshop focused on inversions last Sunday.
The team had an amazing time with students exploring the countless benefits of inversions! But like everything in Acro, this is inversion with a twist! A fun twist though! Doing the inversion on a partner!
Getting out of our comfort zone, sometime event up close and personal on each other, breaking down our barriers and just having lots of fun exploring together.
Not everyone that stepped into the class was comfortable doing an inversion, it can be quite frightening and challenging! But with this atmosphere of trust and encouragement that everyone brought to the room, all students felt like they could challenge their fear and try it. They all did an amazing job!
Some confessed that they came to base and never thought they would be able to fly, even less flying upside down! And yet they did it, succeeded and enjoyed it.
It is important to remember that it is all about technique. With the right technique, and surrounded by the right team (meaning a supportive base and attentive spotter) everyone can fly.
Similarly, with the right bone stacking / alignment technique from the base and a flyer holding their shape perfectly, engaging all the muscles in their body, almost anyone can base almost anyone.
The whole class was to build up confidence with inversions, muscle memory and stamina to achieve the Star pose which is a shoulder stand on the feet of the base (And maybe hand- free Star balance) by the end of the class! (Photo 3)
So we started introducing inversions from warm up stages, with partner back lifts exiting into a cartwheel (Photo 4) and solo shoulder-stands with leg variations.
This was to start creating trust with partners upside down and also generate body awareness upside down.
We then moved to having a shoulder-stand on the knees of the base whilst in table top position. (Photos 1 & 2)
Next we flipped that shoulder-stand to have it done on a base in "cat post" (rounded back on all fours). (Photo 5)
The students where so good that we introduced a variation with a moving base.
And finally we taught the technique to get to a safe "Star" pose. (Photos 3 &7)
But the students requested an "Encore"! So we added a bonus track and got them to jump into a shoulder-stand stacked on the arms of the base, pressing up from the base knees. (Photo 6)
It was a beautiful practice and all the photos can be found on our Facebook Page!
Thanks so much to everyone who came to play!
We have the last 4 bedrooms available at our upcoming retreat in Sri Lanka - And we would love to have you join! All details on our packages here.