On the wire, the best walkers have an invisible line that extends the spine up into the sky and down into the earth. Their posture is beyond straight, almost a miracle.” ~Gwenda Bond, from Girl on a Wire
Writing about a favorite storybook two months ago brought my inner bibliophile—or perhaps more accurately inner bibliovore—to the surface in full strength, and I found myself checking the offerings on Amazon. Not too long ago, in my post A Hobby Hijacked, I griped about how most books with tightwire or highwire in the title aren’t about funambulism at all. Perhaps the little elves running the Amazon search machine read my blog and thoughtfully refined the search results—because much to my surprise and delight, I hit upon not one but four books I had never seen before. Then as another bonus, Amazon emailed me when a newly released novel—Girl on a Wire—was free for a limited time on Kindle. Good job, little elves.
I’m still working my way slowly through the non-fiction acquisitions. The novel though I devoured in two days—I absolutely loved Girl on a Wire. How could I not when the main character’s hero is Bird Millman? I loved the book, but since I posted so recently about a book and I don’t want to get in too deep of a literary rut, I’ll compromise: I highly recommend the Girl on a Wire, it’s worth purchasing or borrowing in my opinion. For this post however I’ll focus on the quote and concept from the book I began this post with:
It wasn’t until quite a bit later, when I stumbled across the Tight Wire and Slack Rope Training Manual produced by the European Federation of Professional Circus Schools, that I learned the appropriate straight back posture. There I was taught to tighten my core and reduce the curve of my lower back. I learned to match my posture to the line of my weigh that I had imagined earlier.
Duncan Wall, in his book An Ordinary Acrobat, (though technically describing handstand position specifically) describes the carefully straight posture of an acrobat and the reason for it:
For all my training and awareness of the importance of posture, that straight line I envisioned didn’t extend a millimeter beyond myself. It started at the tip of my head and ended where my feet pressed into the line. Perhaps it sounds silly, but there was something marvelously, mind-blowingly enlightening reading Girl on Wire and projecting that line far beyond my own physical limits.
With the magnificent image provided in the book, I began thinking about the reasons behind an acrobat’s posture. When I find that straight line posture, that pillar of strength, gravity’s relentless tug only pulls me securely into the safety of my narrow wire. Security and stability come from aligning myself with the unseen force of earth’s gravity.
It’s a strong force, that thread of gravity that reaches up from the core of the earth to grasp and pull us down. Maybe you wish you could fly away, break the chain. That is understandable, but there is security in being rooted, and it provides a foundation that enables greater things. We climb mountains by planting each foot firmly onto the earth; men cross chasms by harnessing gravity to keep them firmly on their slender strands of wire.
When I thought about that invisible line and what it represents for me in my life, what came to mind was a scene from the movie Rise of the Guardians where North talks to Jack about finding his “center.” For North it was wonder, for Jack it was fun. What things seemed to be at the core of who you are? What tugs at your heart? For me, as you all know, it’s balance. Remember, the highwire artist’s straight posture—that precise and almost miraculous alignment—keeps his center (of gravity) steady so that gravity pulls him securely down onto the wire allowing him to progress along his precarious and exacting path. When we align our lives with our centers, our passions, the forces of life will pull us to security and even enable us to reach our goals rather than toppling us over.
What we can create with our lives aligned with our our centers—the truest passions of our hearts—extends beyond our physical limitations. The lines of our lives point up into the vastness of amazing possibilities.
I’m still working my way slowly through the non-fiction acquisitions. The novel though I devoured in two days—I absolutely loved Girl on a Wire. How could I not when the main character’s hero is Bird Millman? I loved the book, but since I posted so recently about a book and I don’t want to get in too deep of a literary rut, I’ll compromise: I highly recommend the Girl on a Wire, it’s worth purchasing or borrowing in my opinion. For this post however I’ll focus on the quote and concept from the book I began this post with:
“On the wire, the best walkers have an invisible line that extends the spine up into the sky and down into the earth. Their posture is beyond straight, almost a miracle.”I began discovering that line myself when I first started slacklining. My local climbing gym had a slackline off in one corner, and I kept going back to it even though I wasn’t very good—at all. One of my very first “aha” moments came when I started envisioning my weight pressing straight down into the soles of my feet and onto the line. I was still atrocious, but for nanoseconds at least I could feel my body balancing instead of flailing.
It wasn’t until quite a bit later, when I stumbled across the Tight Wire and Slack Rope Training Manual produced by the European Federation of Professional Circus Schools, that I learned the appropriate straight back posture. There I was taught to tighten my core and reduce the curve of my lower back. I learned to match my posture to the line of my weigh that I had imagined earlier.
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| Source: Mackay Entertainment: January Performer Spotlight - Jade Kindar Martin - Sky Walker |
“It looks like a tower of muscles, or as another instructor of mine said, ‘a human bar.’… By bolting your body over a single point, you eliminate all the ‘searching’ for balance, all the tips and sways.”Finding and maintaining that bar in myself is a large part of my focus in training. In workouts I focus on strengthening my core in every direction. In balancing I try to use my arms and my legs rather than breaking form by bending and twisting at the waist. I actually felt pleased rather than dismayed when a chiropractor told me that my back was a little too straight.
For all my training and awareness of the importance of posture, that straight line I envisioned didn’t extend a millimeter beyond myself. It started at the tip of my head and ended where my feet pressed into the line. Perhaps it sounds silly, but there was something marvelously, mind-blowingly enlightening reading Girl on Wire and projecting that line far beyond my own physical limits.
With the magnificent image provided in the book, I began thinking about the reasons behind an acrobat’s posture. When I find that straight line posture, that pillar of strength, gravity’s relentless tug only pulls me securely into the safety of my narrow wire. Security and stability come from aligning myself with the unseen force of earth’s gravity.
It’s a strong force, that thread of gravity that reaches up from the core of the earth to grasp and pull us down. Maybe you wish you could fly away, break the chain. That is understandable, but there is security in being rooted, and it provides a foundation that enables greater things. We climb mountains by planting each foot firmly onto the earth; men cross chasms by harnessing gravity to keep them firmly on their slender strands of wire.
When I thought about that invisible line and what it represents for me in my life, what came to mind was a scene from the movie Rise of the Guardians where North talks to Jack about finding his “center.” For North it was wonder, for Jack it was fun. What things seemed to be at the core of who you are? What tugs at your heart? For me, as you all know, it’s balance. Remember, the highwire artist’s straight posture—that precise and almost miraculous alignment—keeps his center (of gravity) steady so that gravity pulls him securely down onto the wire allowing him to progress along his precarious and exacting path. When we align our lives with our centers, our passions, the forces of life will pull us to security and even enable us to reach our goals rather than toppling us over.
What we can create with our lives aligned with our our centers—the truest passions of our hearts—extends beyond our physical limitations. The lines of our lives point up into the vastness of amazing possibilities.
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