When we talk about aerial arts, we’re usually talking about pulling techniques – our body, our weight, maybe our hair out (hopefully only during competition season and not all the time!). But that doesn’t make out bodies happy, our bodies crave balance. Over-training our bodies in any one way makes it more prone to injury. But have no fear, handstands are here!
Handstands and handbalance training is primarily composed of pushing, thus providing the added balance to your workout regime. While considering the longevity of you career (or passion in most of our cases), in addition to the the over-all well being of our body, we can experience the benefits from finding a balance (pun totally implied) between the pushing and pulling techniques in the training of handstands. Other benefits to inverting is that over the years of just life our body has adapted to our imbalances and we find little ways to make up for them, if we are body conscious at all, if we’re not, then we slouch and further the misalignment of our body.
However, when we invert, many of our body imbalances become more pronounced. Once this happens, we are better able to work on improved postural alignment and special awareness of our entire body, which are all things that will be more aware of when walking upright, and greatly improve your non-inverted posture. Essentially, training head and handstands achieve many of the same results of going to the chiropractor, just cheaper and more fun. Once you learn to overcome your fears and play with what you “thought” you were capable of, getting over limiting thoughts is another rewarding part of training and good for life in general.
Above is a TED talk about the impact of non-verbal communication (ie. body language, with posture being a huge one) and how people perceive us by this non-verbal communication. The way you walk, sit, etc., is an immediate giveaway about how confident you’re feeling, your comfort level with whomever it is you’re talking to, and impact the judgments that will be made about you. We all do this same assessing of other people based on what they do say and don’t say, and what they communicate with their bodies. Knowing that we all participate in this snap judgement of body language, while also knowing how to make a stronger presence when you walk into an audition, school, or even work, is priceless.
