Tag Archives: circus therapy

Meet the new coaches of the Transformational Women’s Circus

As we close in on the new year, our social circus staff have been hard at work creating a new curriculum for the Transformational Women’s Circus! Transformational Women’s Circus (TWC) is an integrative social circus program which incorporates circus arts, drama therapy and therapeutic group process to support the personal growth of students who wish to explore their physical and mental health in a supportive, creative, safe group environment. Students in the TWC program will meet for 21 classes, once a week for three hours over a 24 week period and engage in trauma informed group work and circus arts training, with a creative culminating event at the end of the quarter. TWC is rooted in social circus and focuses on self awareness, self esteem building, creative expression, and exploring personal story.
 
For TWC 2019, creator and lead facilitator Amber Parker is working with new TWC staff to plan for creative, expressive, and fun new activities for the group, such as mask making, mixed media collage, clowning, and yoga flow. Please meet our TWC staff, all of whom are excited to start making magic in the new year!
 
Sarah Wells: Stage Manager, Arts Facilitator 

Sarah Wells-Ikeda is a creatrix, community-builder, and connecting force. Her passionate pursuit of life and learning has recently landed her in Seattle after a decade in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she was initially introduced to circus and clown during her years with the neo-vaudevillian trickster brigade Fou Fou Ha! Born into the world deeply connected to nature and spirit, Sarah has chased her dreams and passions to create an ever-unfolding life full of meaning and magic. She holds a M.A. from the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology focused on women’s connection to spirituality through the body, with a specialization in creative expression.

She is deeply excited to expand her life’s work and service through the social circus coaching role at SANCA, and as the production manager and creative co-facilitator of the Transformational Women’s Circus. She believes in the inherent power of women and girls, connected to source through our bodies, lived experiences and inner wisdom. She looks forward to supporting the TWC through forging meaningful connections, imbuing life with the sacred, facilitating play as spiritual practice, and leading a vast array of creative expression modalities, helping the participants to identify strengths, build community, and thrive.  

Emma Curtiss: Circus Coach, Body Worker 

Emma Curtis discovered Circus in 2009 after seeing a moving performance by two local trapeze artists. Inspired by their emotional performance, she felt compelled to explore the world of circus, despite the fact that she was not a physical person at the time. Over the next few years she discovered pieces of herself that had been hidden for most of her life and through constant physical and emotional challenges, emerged with the renewed purpose that performing and teaching Circus was her true calling. She has performed with various companies and developed her own performance troupe, IMPulse Circus Collective, where she was able to develop shows with like-minded artists who shared her passion for creation. Currently she is a coach at SANCA where she continues to groom new skills and projects for herself as well as her students. Her disciplines include Aerial Silks, Aerial Hoop, Cyr Wheel, Fan Juggling and a general enthusiasm for all things Circus.

Amber Parker: Lead Facilitator, Group Therapist 

Amber Parker is SANCA’s Social Circus Clinical Coordinator and the creator and lead facilitator for the Transformational Women’s Circus Project. Amber is a therapeutic circus coach and circus artist at The School of Acrobatics and New Circus Arts, a Master’s in Couple and Family Therapy Candidate and Master’s in Drama Therapy, and she is currently a clinician with the Child, Youth and Family program at Navos, a community mental health agency based in Southwest King County. Amber specializes in working with women and children in recovery from trauma and is currently adapting social circus as a trauma informed creative arts therapy for adults through the Transformational Women’s Circus Project. Amber has presented her work at the 2016 American Circus Educators Conference, at The Smithsonian’s 2017 Folk Life Festival, and has been published in American Circus Educators Magazine and Seattle Magazine. Amber has over 14 years of experience as a counselor, facilitator, and trauma worker, and she has advanced training and education in Motivational Interviewing, Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Child Centered Play Therapy, Drama Therapy, Psychodrama, and Clinical Psychotherapy.

“Running Away to Join the Circus” – and dealing with Parkinson’s

From http://www.parkinsonalliance.org/weblog by guest blogger John Cornicello, a Seattle-based portrait photographer Cornicello Photography and a person with Parkinson’s

It all started a few years ago. I was working for a well-known software company. My job had me at a computer, typing, most of the day. I started noticing some “issues.” My left hand was becoming less accurate — DOuble-caps, repeating letters, things like that. I also noticed that my left arm was pulling in towards my body when at rest and it didn’t move/swing as I walked. My piano playing had been actually getting better for a few years, then all of a sudden it started a dive, too.

My first thought was that I suffered some sort of mild stroke. I got a referral to a neurologist, had an MRI, and things looked good. He had me do some basic movements. Then, as he observed me, he suggested that I might have Parkinson’s. I had no tremors. Just the stiff left arm and some cogwheel type of movement in my left wrist.

I had already been taking Ropinerole for restless leg, so we didn’t change anything there. My diet has never been that great, so my wife and I tried to go radical (for me) for a few months with no sugar, carbs, or gluten. I did lose about 20 lbs very quickly. However, I was starting to get some tremors in my left hand. After three months, I went back to dairy and gluten but have managed to keep away from sugared soft drinks.

Concurrently with all of this I had been photographing for a circus school here in Seattle. SANCA is the School of Acrobatics and New Circus Arts, one of the largest such schools in the world. I became friends with the owners and at the end of a benefit show in February 2015 I casually mentioned that I had Parkinson’s and asked Jo Montgomery if she had ever worked with Parkinson’s patients. She said she had not, but that I should stop in at the school next Monday. And I’ve been there just about every Monday, since.

I was 57 and pretty sedentary when I started this. Jo started me up slowly with stretching exercises. And then gradually started asking me to try more activities. My initial reaction to most of these has been, “You want me to do what? OK, I can bounce on a trampoline and do some jumping jack type of movements, But now you want me to do a seat drop? And then come back to a standing position?” I dreaded the trampoline for about 2 weeks.

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Then it clicked and has become a favorite part of our routine. Next came walking on a balance beam. About 3″ wide and 6″ off the ground. More difficult than expected, but not so bad. I could do that one. Until one day she suggested a tight wire instead. A steel cable about 1/2″ or so wide. Barefoot, Jo would be holding one wrist as I walked back and forth across the wire. I never measured it, but I’m guessing it is a 12 foot distance. Amazingly I did it. And I enjoyed it.

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All of this has built good core strength and improved my confidence.

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So next came juggling. I’ve never been able to juggle. Maybe it is from lack of discipline and practice.

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But I try. Balls, clubs, rings. On my own, I’m really bad. But I found that I can toss 2, 3, or even 5 rings with another person. I believe this routine is helping to make new brain connections that might help with Parkinson’s.
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Then back to stretching. When I first started I couldn’t move my left shoulder. I would hold my left arm out to the side and grab a bar and tell it to move up/down and forward/back. And nothing would happen. I could tell my right shoulder to make all sorts of movements and it would. But the left shoulder would just sit there, completely ignoring my commands. I don’t know if is the medications (I started seeing a movement specialist in June 2015, and started Carbo/Leva in September), or all the other exercises, or a combination, but my left shoulder is finally starting to follow instructions and move around in circles when I want it to.

We also do some strength training by doing pull-ups on a trapeze bar and an exercise where I grab a bar above my head against a wall and pull my knees up to my chest 20 times.

Outside of circus school I have set up my home “triathlon” routine where I do a 30 minute routine that consists of a mile on a treadmill, then spin at 80-90 pedal rpm on a stationary bicycle for the balance of the 30 minutes. Then I take a shower.

All of this has helped me maintain a healthy and positive attitude. I consider myself lucky that my tremors are mostly mild and confined to my left hand so they don’t affect my photography. Yes, I’ve started using a tripod more often, but not all the time. I do worry that my left hand tremor might be a distraction to my subjects if my hand starts banging against my tripod. But I do explain the situation if that happens and all seems good.

This past week I found out that one of the members of SANCA’s board of directors has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s and she has joined in on the Monday class. Our first try at juggling rings with each other went remarkably well.

Some days I wonder if I should be more concerned with my Parkinson’s. But so far I have managed to maintain a very upbeat attitude. I really look forward to both the SANCA and the home workouts. And I am somewhat amazed as I learn about more and more friends and colleagues who have some sort of tremors, be they essential tremors or Parkinson’s. This makes me have hope that more people will be learning about these issues leading to more research and the possibility of cures and even prevention. In the meantime, I am now starting to think about boxing lessons with a program like Rock Steady Boxing.

Thank you, John, for sharing your story with my assistant and blogging partner, Gloria Hansen. You are very creative and we applaud your unconventional approach to exercise, which we know is the best medicine for Parkinson’s. — Margaret Tuchman, President of  The Parkinson Alliance