The Flying Spark

Went on a sweet little adventure with the acro family a few weeks ago. I love these humans so damn much!

Forearm balances and backbends!

Just hanging from off a bicep. I don't think I've EVER used my adductors as hard as I did in the taking of this picture!

📸 creds: Jessica Laporte.

We had fun at jam the other day. I love making shapes with these humans!

Thanks Monica and Chris for the spots and to Tat, Alec, Michaela and Chris for shape making with me! Isaac for the cool shots!

Right now, I am working through a knee injury. I think I have some sort of patellar tendonitis that makes it painful to extend my leg. This has significantly impacted my movement practice for the past 2 weeks - as in I have done little to nothing movement wise in an attempt to rest it. And this has been freaking HARD.

I have ALWAYS been praised for my physical abilities. As a kid, I was a “good” dancer and a “good” cheerleader. I was always “good” at things with my body, and people always paid attention to me because of it. People were so proud of me and excited for me for all the cool things I could do. I was the “athlete” kid, the “dancer” kid, the “talented” one. And that validation felt (feels) NICE. It made (makes) me feel warm and squishy and excited and special.

As an adult, I have built a lot of relationships based off of movement practices; I have a LOT of connections with people based on what we can do together in acro and how we can play with parkour, handstands or stretching/contortion together. These are things I am stoked about, so these relationships feel really good and inspiring to me!

But sometimes you get injured. And you realize that you are not able to do all (or any) of the things you have learned to base your worth off of for your ENTIRE LIFE. Freaking then what?!?!? Identity crisis is what.

It’s only been 2 weeks, but the struggle is real. Injuries are HARD and FRUSTRATING for me (for anyone?). Not only is the injury itself painful and uncomfortable, but the mental aspect of not being able to move my body in the way I want to is SO difficult. I find myself feeling confused, lonely, frustrated, and sometimes, worried that I will be forgotten about or dismissed or somehow become less special or important to people.

I recognize this is a great opportunity for me to practice self-compassion, trust and slowness. To practice asking for help when I can’t carry heavy things or move in certain ways. To practice resilience, and to focus on the things I still CAN do with my body, rather than all the things I am NOT doing with my body right now. These are all things I benefit from practicing anyway, but rarely prioritize, as I pretty consistently just continue to hustle for my worthiness through movement (and other means).

Trying to honor my body and where it’s at. Trying to slow down and rest and tune in. Trying to find my worthiness in myself, as I am. Trying to remember people aren’t going to go away or forget about me just because I can’t do flips or acro or the splits right now.

Anyway, I wanted to talk about this in case anyone else has encountered this; I am sure I am not the only person, even though sometimes I forget this.

Because, F**K. This s**t is hard.

Last years summer adventure with these two cutie pies! Looking forward to embarking on another adventure with them next week.

Rocky mountain handstands!

Staring contest...

counter-balancer: Tatiana
📸 creds: Jessica Laporte

Throwback to some cool shots from FitFest a few years back!

bases: Cassie Peake and Adam Pike

This is Baby Erica, approx. 10 years ago, living my cheerleading days! I had no idea then how the introduction of flying and tumbling at that time would influence my life now, as an adult. Grateful for these days, these memories, and my sweet little high school cheer family!

My friends are strrrrrrrong. Also this was fun and scary. 💪🤪

One of the first few times I based this skill. I was SO excited about it! Now .yuen and I have got it locked in, and I've got to it a bunch with other people as well. I have based people my size and heavier! Super exciting, wheeeu!

Cool action shots in the park! Backflipping, levitating or plummeting to my death?

Some cool shots with my friend Aiden Flyguy from our shoot with Jessica Laporte!

I often think about how lucky I am that I can move my body, and feel so much gratitude for all the fun things my body is capable of doing.

Dancing.
Laughing.
Running.
Climbing.
Seeing.
Flipping.
Hugging.
Playing.

Then I think about all the people in my life that I feel so FREAKING grateful to have that I can share these things with. My friends are acrobats, parkour athletes, dancers, flow artists, aerialists, tumblers, jugglers, handbalancers; people who value movement and people who know how to play. How lucky I am to have found such a beautiful community!

This is one of the women I tend to laugh the hardest with when we acro. If you look closely, you might be able to see the tears that were pouring down our face with laughter in this moment! 🤣

Sometimes I take things for granted and forget how truly beautiful my life is. I am learning to slow down more, and to take it all in. Today, I am feeling HELLA grateful for my body, and for my community.

What are you most grateful for today?

badass base: Tatiana
📸 creds: Jessica Laporte

Underwater yoga asana poses are harder than one might think. Trying to reach around when I am freezing cold and dodge my scuba tank to grab my hind leg (which ended up just being my flipper) while trying to stay upright underwater was extremely cumbersome and awkward. But it made a cool photo!

📸 creds: Leah Stables

Matching sister arm balances in the sweet lands of Bali! 💪

I love working with people new to partner , and this is a scenario I've seen time and time again - new large human (usually a man) comes in to try , I fly on them. We laugh, have fun, sometimes we succeed, sometimes we don't. High fives are exchanged. I then ask the if they want to switch roles, if they want to fly on me. Their eyes widen, brows furrow. They then proceed to answer, with a look of utter confusion on their face "Seriously?!".

Contrary to popular belief, men are not "supposed" to be bases. Women are not "supposed" to exclusively . Believe it or not, ANY gender can play ANY role in partner acrobatics. Shocking, I know. If you are big, you CAN fly. If you are smaller, you CAN still . Of course we want to be safe and sometimes we might utilize our spotters more in these instances if that feels good to us. But any person can play any role, if the desire is there! Lets not limit ourselves based on what we think we are supposed to do; let us do what feels good and safe and right for us, as the beautiful individuals that we are!

Sweet, strong flyer: Aiden
Photo creds to the extremely talented: Jessica Laporte




**kgenderroles

play (/plā/): "an apparently purposeless activity that is fun to do and pleasurable" - Dr. Stuart Brown

I am SO grateful and SO fortunate to be surrounded by a community of humans that love to play. I think as adults, we get really caught up in, well, "adulting". We get really busy with our busy, important schedules, and our busy, important jobs and forget to slow down, laugh, be present and enjoy the moment, just because.

According to Dr. Brene Brown, “play” has three elements:
1) It’s time spent without purpose.
2) It’s something you don’t want to end.
3) It leads to a loss of self-consciousness.

In her research, Brene discovers that a lack of play is directly related to increased levels of depression and aggression. In fact, some studies have shown a direct correlation between violence and a lack of play. Not all the surprising to me, to be honest!

I sometimes struggle with presence, but one thing that CONSISTENTLY brings me into the moment is play. Always.

When is the last time you TRULY played? Move your body, have a belly laughed, play in the mud, make a craft, sing a song, make up a game, have a dance party in the rain. Whatever play means to you, just get out and play folks!

Working that split foot to hand game with my favorite flyer Stacey! Not having a lot of side to side balance was really interesting, but we worked it out eventually.

📸 creds: Isaac Elge

This was fun. Running into the middle of the street and having 30 seconds to huck a pose while people are crossing the road all around us was exciting; and having people honking and cheering for us was also adorable too!

Another shot from our shoot with the lovely Jessica Laporte.

Cuban handstands at sunset.

📸creds: Leah Stables

I seriously LOVE all the humans I get to relate to and interact with in my life. I am EXTREMELY blessed to have such an amazing community of people around me, that share the same passion for movement and play as I do!

But there is something EXCEPTIONALLY special about the women that I get to be close to and interact with. It's these moments that I generally feel the most seen and understood, and loved. The is REAL. Thanks to all the women in my life who have loved me, supported me and shaped who I am today. I love you!





📸 creds: Jessica Laporte
💪 amazing base: Tatiana

Beach tumbling is NOT as glorious and sexy as one might think. The amount of sand that goes flying EVERYWHERE immediately after takeoff is the most unpleasant, and the amount of power that is required to take off of sand in the first place is SO MUCH MORE. But at least it looks cool. 😁🤷‍♀️🤸‍♀️






!

📸creds: Leah Stables

My friends are cool and strong.

Base: the lovely

Some cool shots from our shoot with a few weeks ago!

One of my first acro partners, the extremely talented . Some cool photos we took at our favorite park!

📸 creds:

This is baby Erica, maybe 15 years old. My old cheer coaches would give me s**t for my arms and broken wrists in this photo, but this is me BLISSED OUT on a trampoline.

For those of you who don't know me, let me give you a quick background on where my passion for movement started.

When I was just a babe, I would walk around the house up on my very tippy-toes like a . I was privileged enough to have access to extracurricular activities as a kid, and so my parents decided to put in me in classes. I fell in love, and dedicated the next 12 years of my life to moving in jazz, ballet, contemporary, modern, lyrical, pointe, with smatterings of other dance styles in there.

During this time, my dad, who happened to be a in his youth, would throw me and my sisters around, in what I would recognize as today. He would lay on his back and hold all 3 of us in the air, on some combination of hands and feet, us all beaming and squealing. We would stand on his shoulders and jump off and he would catch us by our ankles and dangle us upside down (eventually, we got too tall to do it on the floor, so he started to get us to jump over the railing banister. No wonder I am such an now!).

I hit high school and discovered the only thing that I thought MIGHT be cooler than dance: . I got to dance AND AND be thrown around in the air? What a freaking DREAM! I learned how to do flips and how to fly through the air, and made a sweet little family of my cheer team. I also started to play around with at this time, and quickly became obsessed.

High school ended, and I didn't really know what to do with myself. So I decided to take a teacher training in Bali. For the following year or two, I explored a LOT of yoga asana; my practice really began to develop.

When I came back to Alberta after being in Bali, I moved to Edmonton and discovered acroyoga and it totally changed my life. Besides the endless possibilities for physical challenges available, the sense of community, play, laughter and connection it gave me was amazing; I was hooked! I have been doing it consistently ever since.

Last year, I started doing , , climbing and got back into dance and tumbling a little bit. That brings us to now; training all these different movement modalities and trying to balance that and the rest of my life!

has always been a huge part of my life, and I definitely have my parents to thank for that. I am grateful for every experience that has led me to where I am now, and look forward to all the exploration and things I will get to learn and play with in the future!

I always find myself reeeeeally wanting to balance on my hands in front of cool murals... is that weird? This one was super cool looking.

Also, I have created an Instagram page, if you're into that sort of thing, so check it out if you wanna! It's .flying.spark.1

Welcome loves!

You are here! This is too cool. Thanks for stopping by. I feel giddy and giggly and jittery and EXCITED about this!

I have created this page in dedication to the different movement modalities I enjoy pursuing - partner acrobatics, handbalancing, dance, parkour, tumbling, flexibility, pole, climbing, and more! I want to seriously channel some focus and energy into training HARD and seeing where this goes. I thought this would be a cool platform for me to showcase what I know and what I learn!

You can also expect some updates on new upcoming teaching and performing opportunities I have happening, so stay tuned if that interests you!

Again, thanks for showing up and being here, and thanks for your support! It means a WHOLE LOT to me 🥰

In the meantime, enjoy this photo with my babe Tatiana Laleh, photo creds to the lovely Jessica Laporte 📸

The Flying Spark updated their business hours.