How Aerial Helped Me Reconnect with Myself
ALT Student Emma Reflects on how Aerial helps her connect with her body when a high stress lifestyle leaves her feeling disconnected.
Like so many of the wonderful people who come to ALT, I do a really serious job; we’re talking high stakes – life and death decision-making. Added to this, I often have a bit of a stressful home life. So coming to ALT is like a breath of fresh air. Not only does it remind me to laugh and be present, but it also, most importantly, reminds me to not take myself too seriously.
Like many chronically stressed people, I have a propensity to disassociate from my body. To separate my thoughts from my body so that I can function and keep going and cope with the stresses that life throws at me. It's a safety mechanism that has served me well over the years; protecting me when I was really vulnerable. The problem was it became my default. I didn’t know how to feel anything. I didn’t have control of when I became the “robot” and when I didn’t. I just was a robot 24/7. It led to a decline in my mental health. I got to a point where I no longer recognised myself.
Over the past few years, I’ve been doing a lot of intense therapy, and learning that while dissociation has served me – I do it for a reason – I also need to learn that I am safe in my body: Aerial is teaching me that.
Coming to aerial classes has really transformed my relationship with my body and my emotions. I can trust my body. I can feel safe in it. The days where I am really stressed out and dissociated, you can see it in whatever I am trying to do: my clumsiness is off the scale! But ALT is the safe space that I need to not be good at something all the time, but to enjoy the challenge (and bodily bamboozlement) along the way.
In a way, I look forward to those days now; where I know that I’m not present in my body any more. Where I feel completely separate from everything around me; where I feel alien and empty.
I go to aerial class and it forces me to be in my body. There’s nowhere else you can be. Your head has to be there or you fall. I have to feel where the apparatus is; I have to know where my hands are and where they are going. And because of this, it forces me to feel the emotions that I’m feeling. It helps me to process the feelings. I am reminded that I can move through it and know that I can survive it.
Aerial brings me a lot of joy. ALT is a safe place to be me, and to come as I am; I feel accepted and supported. I love the challenge it brings to my life both physically and mentally; the more physically challenging the better. The worse I am at the thing, the more I laugh; the more I laugh, the more I realise that I am safe. I love my classmates. We’re all in it together – cheering each other on, laughing together, trying.
It's taken me decades, but thanks to aerial and a lot of therapy, I'm finally getting there. I'm finding myself again. As Caitlin says: practice really does make improvement!
