This is an important single piece of advice that I want to give today.
It's something that has absolutely no place within acroyoga, and I think should be clearly stated either to remind or inform if you aren't already aware of it.
So the thing to never do in acro is...
Risk someone else's safety for your own benefit.
This may sound obvious, but you'd be suprised how often this happens in acroyoga.
I'll tell you a true story to demonstrate what I mean and why...
I vividly remember seeing someone fall vertically down from a star position (inversion on feet) and land right on their head.
On a hard wooden floor *eeeek*.
It made a sickening thud as they hit the floor.
It was super not okay, luckily the girl had no severe injuries, but a painful lump and a very scary and bad experience for sure!
This was like 1.5 years ago at one of the jams in Bali.
The worst thing about all of this though, was that I remember over hearing some of this pairings conversation before they went into the move.
The flyer asked "have you done this before" to the base.
He said "yes".
She also asked "should we use a spotter".
He said "no it's not necessary".
This isn't word for word, but I remember the conversation going somewhat along those lines, and the base was sounding extra confident and like it was no big deal.
The reality is, he didn't know what he was doing.
He just said yes and said they shouldn't use a spotter probably because he was trying to impress his flyer, or because he wanted to try and thought he was good enough.
This is exactly what I mean by risking someone else's safety for your own benefit.
Prioritising the fact that you want to do this trick, or you want to show off that you're able to do it, always leads to issues and injuries.
Instead consider the other person's perspective first...
Do they seem scared or hesitant?
What is the risk(s) here?
How would you/they feel if something went wrong?
That last question is a good one, especially in the case of the story above.
The base wanted to impress his flyer, show off or something...
The end result was actually that she didn't trust him, was super unimpressed, and honestly didn't even really want to talk or play acro with him ever again (and rightly so).
I'll also add that this works both ways for flyers and bases.
If you are trying to fly something where you don't know what you're doing you are risking your bases safety too!
Anyway I think that's enough to think on today, and hopefully a powerful point for you to takeaway.
Cheers,
Cas
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