1 Day to China: 'Fear is the Mind Killer' (Patreon)

WATCHING PLAYBACK ON LFAUIT (La France a Un Incroyable Talent / France's Got Talent)

AHHHHHHH THEY JUST RELEASED THE TEASER TO THE SHOW WE DID BACK IN AUGUST!!!! SO EXCITING!

We look so fierce!

It went so good!

You can peep it here:

https://www.facebook.com/M6/videos/568434740572864/

Watching talent show edits of your performance is officially weird though: they add the music back in in post, which – if you watch the video you will see – doesn’t match up to what we were physically doing at all at certain points. I swear to you all, we were far, far more coordinated to our amazing composition by Greg Harrison than this teaser trailer would lead you to think. 

Jen Crane just reminded me that immediately preceding this opportunity I managed to sprain my wrist quite badly – and ended up performing injured.

I had been working as a stunt rigger for a rehearsal on Season 2 of The Boys. We were testing a ratchet, where two performers were being yanked backwards into a pile of mats. Myself and three other riggers were holding up two huge crash pits for the performers to smack into – and on the second or third go I was just far over enough to the left, and the performer had flown just a little bit more to one side, for the brunt of the impact to happen lopsidedly on my side. 

I heard and felt the wrist of the hand holding the top handle on the mat CRACK.

Instant bloom of pain.

Trying not to make any noise. 

Oh man . . . I can’t have just broken my wrist . . . I don’t have time for this.

A whole bunch of electrical tape around my wrist got me through the rest of that test day, and then it was off to the hospital for x-rays where the doctor on call informed me that it was just (“JUST”) very badly sprained. 

For those of you who have never had a 2nd or 3rd degree sprain, and instead broken a bone, you may not have had a doctor pityingly inform you that the break would have healed faster and cleaner. 

That being said, at least the sprain meant that my arm wouldn’t be put in a cast.

I was leaving for France in 3 days. 

I took a whole whack of anti-inflammatories and sat there cycling ice pack after ice pack onto my swollen wrist. 

And then . . . somehow . . . despite very limited flexion in that injured wrist . . . had that great performance with Troy. Like, I shouldn’t have been able to bend my wrist as far as it needs to bend to do a bridge (which is a shape we spend a lot of time in, in our duo).

Adrenaline is a wonderful thing, isn’t it? 

But this timely reminder of that injury is actually feeling really relevant to my attitude going into the International China Circus Festival. 

Amongst other things, one of my main anxieties going into this festival is the sheer hours of transit it requires to get there, and the (very) short lead time we have between arriving and performing our first show.  Other acrobats were able to travel and arrive between the 6th and 8th of November. This was offered to us, too, but Troy had a movie contract extend his shooting days and our departure date ended up pushed.

(Ironically, in the end, Troy ended up coming back to Toronto 3 days early, due to another last-minute production scheduling change . . . so I guess we could have left at a nice early date and had lots of time to acclimatize after all . . . womp womp!)

(In fact – that lead-time just shrank further. Initially we were going to have a few days to acclimatize and get our bodies back in order after sitting in airplane / car seats for something like 36 hours – but the organizers just e-mailed us this morning telling us that they’ve added a show in Zhuhai City on the 13th. As in – the day AFTER we arrive. Hoo boy.)

In other words, my main worry is getting injured.

Because I’ll have been sitting for so long my body will be cramped and horrible. 

And that I’ll have to jump right into performing and I won’t be physically ready to do that, but the show must go on, so I’ll push through and end up with an injury. 

Can you tell that my anxiety-brain likes to catastrophize yet? 

I had to sit down and give myself a reality check this morning. I have to trust that my body is strong and capable of bouncing back – even from less than ideal travel timelines. I have to trust that I’m a god damn adult and a gosh darn professional and I know that the jet lag, the travel, and the general stress around it all will mean that I need to do a much, much longer, and gentler, warm-up than I might normally be able to get away with. 

When I was 22 years old I was still a Muay Thai fighter. 

I was a Muay Thai fighter on my way to my first big competition.

I put so much work into being ready for those fights.

Physically, obviously. But mentally, too.

I did a lot of visualization exercises. 

I repeated positive mantras to myself that fit my competition goals over and over and over with every step of every 10km warm-up run we had to do.

And when I got to Des Moines, Iowa, I ran over every girl they put me against and earned a North American championship belt. 

There’s no way I could have gone into that experience thinking in the back of my mind, “oh man what if I gas out, what if I get knocked out, what if I can’t kick anymore, what if I break my knuckle agin, what if what if what if…”

I was mentally prepared enough that those thoughts literally didn’t cross my mind the entire time. 

Somewhere along that way between that Muay Thai career, a brain injury, and now this circus career, I managed to convince myself that that kind of attitude couldn’t possibly have been healthy: the ‘invincible’ mindset of the young, as my mother used to call it. By being more cautious, by being more tentative, I slowly edged myself into a place where I didn’t have a bulletproof mindset about what I can and cannot do. 

I’ve done myself a disservice by not approaching this experience in the same way, but it’s not too late. I believe that my body is strong. I believe that I know how to take care of myself. I believe that I’m tuned in to what I am physically and mentally experiencing enough that I can catch small issues before they turn into big ones. I have access to different healing modalities that I’ve taken the time to learn, to feel how the effect my body. 

It’s. Going. To. Be. Okay. 

No – actually – it’s going to be great. 

"Fear is the mind killer."

[Frank Herbert]