Denver Slacro WorkShop

It was an 85 degree day in the middle of October when Colorado weather shined on us for the first ever combined Slackline/AcroYoga workshop in Denver, hosted by YogaSlacker Sam with support from AcroYoga teacher Jen Leisch. A longtime vision of Sams has been to combine slacklining, yoga, and AcroYoga into one experience, in order to fully explore the idea of body awareness and ones own internal energy. After some late night planning sessions as well as a full run-through in the park, Slacro Workshops were ready to be presented to the masses. The day was split into two: a morning session focused on kneeling, sitting, and standing, while the afternoon was arm balances, inversions, and backbends. With over a dozen students in attendance for each part and three slacklines set up, the park became Slacker haven for the day.



Students first experienced some asana to warm their bodies up, mimicking poses that train for or can be done on a line. From here, each element was supported by conditioning, AcroYoga partner and trio poses, and then finally, taken to the slackline, where Sam explained, demo-ed, and patiently oversaw the students. Afterwards, all enjoyed a demo of some slackline vinyasa by Sam, giving everyone something to work on. All in all, a successful day in the Slacro training labs, and the first time this infused workshop style has been presented! Stay tuned for the next installment of workshops coming to your neck of the woods!

The shift to Acrobatics and back again

Our lives are never boring...

After those days of training in Colorado, we drove straight back to Arizona in a 17 hour non-stop caffeine fueled daze and started teaching yoga the next day. We then taught a magnificent group of AcroYogis in weekend acrobatics intensive, which included 19 hours of serious Acro play in 50 hours... That means that for two days, participants were doing acrobatics for 40% of the time....wow. Here is part one of the workshop in video form.

Our incredible bodyworker/therapist Charlie keep telling us to take a rest, so the next day we did. Kinda. It was a Yogaslacker rest day anyway.
Charlie keeps telling me that my adrenal glands are overworked, empty, spent.....what does that mean???

3 Sexy Guys and 1 Burly Chick

This past week a few of us got together after the Estes Park Yoga Journal Conference to train... training day number #77 to be exact. It was complete with obnoxious outfits, breakfast burritos and an ancient old school video camera.
Most of the fixed gear that we found on the climb seemed to fit the 80's era as well. For a complete story and captivating video (you'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll get vertigo and be afraid) click here.

END-AR

Andy here:
I didn't want to wake up last sunday. I was exhausted. My face hurt from a mix of sun and wind burn. I had my worst headache in memory. And I didn't even do the race. As i lay there in bed, my chest about to be jumped on by my three year old, i kinda wished i had.

END-AR stands for Extreme North Dakota Adventre Race. during the inaugural event in 2007 (planned by, among others, my twin brother) i fielded a coed team of 3 and, as navigator (and the only experienced racer), led them to victory in our category.

Jason left North Dakota shortly after the race went off, promising to return the following year to host it again. Promises being what they are, this never happened (he got too busy). For a while, as 2009 dates were batted around and then rejected, it seemed like it never would. Then a friend who was involved in the planning the first time around said we should just organize the race with out jason (my brother) and asked if i could help.

3 months and somewhere around 200 hours later, on September 26th at 8am, 19 teams started the race. (here is an article in the local paper)

This was my first experience directing a race. It was far more involved and intense than i had imagined. It was always on my mind. The details and to-do lists kept me awake until at least 2 am every night the three weeks prior to the event. It was consuming. My workouts suffered. My family suffered. My schoolwork and research all but vanished. I was more continously stressed than i can ever remember being.

But it was awesome, and i'll probably do it (or at least some part of it) again. My favorite element was designing the course - using my experience and love of suffering and intimate knowledge (at least to some extent) of true human potential (ie what we can really do instead of what we think we can do) to put teams through hell and in touch with, many for the first time, their real capabilities. It was more than inspiring - it was captivating.

But much like the intense and consuming musical theater events of my highschool days - it is over too fast. My brother and I used to refer to the phenomenon as 'post play depression' - pretty much the same thing as what athletes refer to as post race depression. I'm no stranger to this, and know the greater the input the greater the effect (10 day adventure races take weeks to psychologically recover from). I just wasn't expecting it to be more pronounced behind the scenes than it would have been had i actually participated in the race - but now it seems obvious that this would be the case.

As for now, i'm looking very much forward to getting my life back together and taking the next four weeks to get 'back in shape' for a 60+ km trail 'run' of the Mantario trail in Manitoba, Canada, tentatively scheduled for the 24th of October.

Training Day

YogaSlackers Training Day Estes Park

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