When Holly Nelson-Johnson clings to a trapeze that hangs 35 feet above the grassy field, she looks as if she is floating on air. Below, some 15 people, including her children Clare, 9, and Ian, 12, and her husband Terry-watch with amazement as she swings and flips on the thin rod, pulling her body upward, propelling her arms forward and leaping into the arms of a leotard-clad, pony-tailed man dangling upside down from a twin bar, his ankles locking him into place as he grabs her and flies across the net with her suspended from his wrists.
Seconds later, this man on the flying trapeze releases the Wilmette woman and in an almost ballerina-like spin, she propels herself back in the opposite direction and grabs onto the bar of the swing from where she started.
Mom? Wife? Tinkerbell? Tarzan’s Jane? Who is this daring woman on the flying trapeze? Observers-some strangers soon to become closely bonded friends from the experience-wonder, expressing their astonishment in a collective “Wow.” A round of applause pierces the air, as she slides down the steel pole off the net and hops on dry land.
“At first you feel as if you are kind of holding on for dear life,” says Nelson-Johnson. “Then, it becomes much bigger than that. It is all about moving through your fears. Facing them. It’s like being a connoisseur of my own fear.”
Forget bungee jumping. Forget skydiving. Welcome to the flying trapeze. Once a fantasy only in reach for aspiring circus performers, a growing number of adventurous souls like Nelson-Johnson are enjoying a unique experience, as flying-trapeze classes are popping up across the country and the globe. Their adventures underscore a path shared by a growing number of adventure seekers-mostly, experts say, women. Like this Wilmette mother of two, they are taking the archetype of personal development beyond running with the wolves to swinging like Tarzan.
These day, trapeze classes seem to be springing up everywhere, from Club Med locales to the foothills of Sodoma, Calif., to the Omega Institute for Holistic Health in Rhineback, N.Y., to the San Francisco School of Circus Arts.
“It has changed my whole outlook on life,” says Allyson Hoffman, a 50-year-old realtor from Deerfield. She and her husband, Mark, and college-aged son Adam “fell in love with the trapeze” on a Club Med vacation several years ago. Since then they have orchestrated many of their vacations around the trapeze, flying to Toronto frequently “to get our trapeze fix.”
“I was terrified and still am of heights,” says Hoffman. “But, I realized that if I could take this risk, none of the others in my life were so scary either. It’s changed the way I do business, made me much more physically fit and helped me approach life eagerly and willing to try any new opportunity.”
Though psychologists and other experts say we are all tempted by the dream of flying, the trapeze gives life to that fantasy, but taps into a deeper level:
From Icarus to the jumbo jet, human history is the story of the search for transcendence.
“The trapeze affords a unique and amazing opportunity to confront old fears, transcend old limits, taste a new freedom and experience the joy of doing things you never thought were possible,” says Peter Gold, one of the leading trapeze fliers in the world who has recently brought his classes to Banner Day Camp in Lake Forest. Owner of Trapeze Experience, based in Las Vegas, this 35-year-old native of Manhattan caught the trapeze bug while on a Club Med vacation after graduating from college. Since then, he has turned his avocation into a full-time vocation, traveling around the country with his trapeze rig and teaching thousands of people. He was the catcher for five trapeze acts and has toured in eight circuses, including Ringling Brothers, and has taught in a circus school in France and with Club Med.
Even though trapeze rigs still aren’t found at neighborhood health clubs, trapeze just may become “the corporate ropes course of the new century,” says Gold.
At Banner Day Camp, more than 1,000 children grades 1st through 8th and 400 adults spent the summer months exploring the trapeze, at $40 a session. A field just south of the main campgrounds provided room for a full-scale trapeze, complete with a net and safety lines. Gold and other instructors from his firm were on hand to help navigate their flights.
“We think it’s a great opportunity to encourage children to take a risk, to try new things even when they are afraid,” says Becky Thall, director of Banner Day Camp. “It’s not only lots of fun, it is a good feeling for a child to try something new and succeed.”
While trapeze classes teach the physical, the focus goes much further, says Gold, explaining that participants explore lessons learned from the trapeze about fear, trust, risk-taking, willpower, surrender, the leap of faith, falling, failing, trying, discouragement and joy, and apply these to their daily life and spiritual journey.
Increasingly, he says, a growing number of people are turning to the trapeze as “a spiritual opportunity to fly in body, mind and spirit.”
“We get people of all ages, from tiny children to a 67-year-old woman who recently took the classes as a way to navigate her way through cancer,” says Gold. “For some reason, women especially find this a profound and obvious way to create a physical metaphor for their lives and the stages of transformation they are in.”
At Trapeze Arts in Sonoma, Calif., classes in the flying trapeze are open to the public, but there are private sessions directed specifically for women who have been physically or emotionally abused. This is the home of dedicated flier Sam Keen, author of “Fire in the Belly,” (Bantam) and more recently, “Learning to Fly: Trapeze–Reflections on Fear, Trust and the Joy of Letting Go.”
The opportunity to explore personal development is what summoned Soraya Solitro, a 35-year-old single mother from Wilmette, to the Lake Forest classes. The bug bit, she says, during a vacation when she and her daughter saw the Cirque du Soleil.
“My daughter saw the circus and became convinced it was her calling,” says Solitro, who has filled most of her evenings–at least three times a week for the month of July–taking trapeze lessons alongside her 11-year-old daughter Simonne. The owner of Soraya Planning and Design in Chicago also scheduled a Sunday evening outing for her entire design team.
“Finding these classes was all about doing something for her,” says Solitro. “But, it turned out that after I tried it, I realized I am at a point in my life where I’ve fallen into this set pattern of working myself to death, taking care of my daughter and feeling that that is all life has in store for me. I could only see what was in front of me.
“But there was something transforming about climbing up that ladder. I was petrified and had this rush of fear. My heart was pounding so hard I thought it was going to jump out of my chest. I took that leap and I thought `here goes.’ I thought, if I can do this, I can do anything. It was the most liberating experience. It gave me a major boost of confidence. I was so excited and proud of myself. Immediately things started being different.
“People have been asking me, `What got into you?’ I feel silly, a grown women saying `I went trapezing.’ But it’s about facing fears,” says Solitro.
For their 18th wedding anniversary in July, Holly Nelson-Johnson and her husband, Terry, headed out for a week at the Omega Institute to take a class together. Terry, a Chicago-area motivational and spiritual speaker, is translating the metaphor of the trapeze into his talks this summer on relationships.
“The trapeze is like a rehearsal for life,” says Terry. “It’s so physical. You feel your heart pounding, but at some point you have to take that step. It gives you a language and experience to bring back to your real life.”
That is exactly what happened for Holly, as she moved through her first encounter with the trapeze. A family nurse practitioner for Cook County Hospital since 1981 and coordinator for the hospital’s body/mind fitness center, she took a sabbatical from her career recently to re-examine priorities in her life. Her path to the flying trapeze did not start with a leap, she says, but rather a series of small steps. It forced her to meet her fears.
“There is something very, very emotional about standing up there on the platform and taking off on that trapeze,” says Nelson-Johnson. “Right now I am asking all the questions about who am I without all the titles behind my name. All the issues of trust, risk, failing, falling, surrender. They all surface on the trapeze.”
Sound familiar?
Enthusiasts say trapeze is all about making soul-searching a fun thrill.
“You do it first for fear,” says Gary Estrella, one of the instructors who teaches the Upward Bound Camp at Omega and was recently in Lake Forest.
“Then, it is for fun.”
———
For more information, write to Gold at www.trapeze-experience.com.
