Empathy is a very useful skill and tool to have in your acroyoga practice.
I fully admit that this is an area I am still working on and need to improve in.
Empathy is about understanding what the other person is feeling/experiencing.
In terms of acro this means both emotionally, but also physically what they are feeling.
As some of you probably already know the best way to gain empathy is to literally put yourself in the other persons position and experience.
So one thing that is often in encouraged in acro is to try the other role.
I.e. If you're basing a hand to hand and you don't understand what it's like for the flyer and can't fully empathise with what they are experiencing and feeling.
Then try flying a hand to hand yourself!
Or vice versa.
It's easy when we stick to our own role all the time to not fully understand the struggles or challenges for the other side.
So if you find this to be the case try taking the other role more often.
The other way you can improve your empathy in acro is to simply ask some of these great questions to your partner:
What are you feeling?
Is there anything you need from me?
How does this move/pose feel for you?
Then really tune in and pay attention to their answer.
Often by prompting with these questions your partners will share exactly what they are feeling and this alone can make empathy much easier as you're able to understand what they are feeling/experiencing.
It's also worth mentioning that you don't need to wait for these question prompts.
If your partner doesn't ask you questions like these but you are feeling certain things and you think it would be useful for your acro partner to understand.
Then you can simply tell them what you're feeling and experiencing.
Thereby you can help someone have more empathy towards you.
Just from a conceptual point of view...
If everybody understood exactly what each other was feeling and experiencing it would be really easy to work together and build teamwork and better partnerships.
This goes beyond acro as well, and into any areas of life where we interact with others, and especially friendships and romantic relationships too.
So start building your empathy today!
Cheers,
Cas
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