Ouch

Third day in a row doing real training wish SB at the school. When I am on my own in LA I do try to push myself to the point where all I want to do is vomit, cry, then slip into a merciful coma, but it's just not the same.

There is no one to  stand on my oversplits until my butt lands gently on the floor like a diver touching down at 100 feet.

No one to say "You can't go home until you do a successful tuck-up" and then hold me to it as my arms shake and I continually knock my head against the wall when they give out.

In LA there are no other contortionists at the gym, so hanging out in pretzel with my feet on the floor is impressive to all the aerial students, and I get to feel like a bendy rock star. Even when I know I could push myself further, no one else does. So sometimes, just a little, I cheat. I only stack up two mats for oversplits, when I know that I should stack up a third since the mats are so squashed from years of pounding bodies that I can easily sit on the floor with only two. I don't always do my full pretzel routine, pushing my hands forward so that all of my weight is on my chin and neck, because it makes my breathing difficult and I get panicky. As a result, I am not pushing hard enough into those areas of my body where the fear is hiding.

I can point to the things that scare me:

• Wrapping my feet into my armpits to prepare for push-ups, when all of my weight is on my chin and I have to use my abs to push my butt forward, squeeze my knees in, and not fall over.
• Snake in pretzel with arms up, again with the weight on the chin, off balance, total compaction of the upper back
• Dangling my feet off the edge of the table in pretzel
• Catch ankles, just because some days my lower back will not go and I feel off balance, and because it hurts my lower back and shoulders like they are full of gravel
• And last, but certainly not least, those damned handstands

Training with SB makes me appreciate how much harder I need to push, so that when I am up here it doesn't feel like such a big stretch (no pun intended). Today, after four hours, I was a spot on the carpet. Still, I do hold out hope that I can train my hips to relax, my body to balance, and one day achieve some beautiful handstands and, the holy grail, mouthpiece. Yes, one day, mouthpiece.