Life Kit - How an aerialist uses trapeze to teach students about consent

Episode Date: March 25, 2023

How do we learn to trust what our bodies tell us and express it to others? Aerialist Adie Delaney speaks with TED Radio Hour host Manoush Zomorodi about how communication, trust and safety in trapeze can provide valuable lessons on consent.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, Marielle Segarra here. Today we have a special episode from our friends at TED Radio Hour. It's an interview with an aerialist, you know, one of those acrobatic performers who swings around high above the ground, about listening to your body's signals, something that's important whether you're flying through the air during a circus performance or you've got two feet planted firmly on the earth. It's part of a series called Mind, Body, Spirit. Here's the earth. It's part of a series called Mind, Body, Spirit. Here's the episode.

On the show today, ideas about the body. And for Australian trapeze artist Aidy Delaney, her body has always felt best in the air. Yeah, anything off the ground is where I shine. I'm one of three siblings, and I was the only one that was kept on a leash as a child. Literally? Were you like one of those kids who literally they had to harness them? Yes, a literal harness. I remember it. It was rainbow colored and stretchy because I had a penchant for running up to cliff edges

and looking over and, you know, when you go on those, like, I don't know, hikes and things and that you have bridges that take you over spaces. And if that bridge is made of metal grating, I would lie down on it so that my eyes could see through the metal grating and I could pretend that there was nothing between me and the ground. Did you want to fly? So badly. I wanted to fly so, so badly. So it only made sense that when Aidy got older, she joined the circus as a trapeze artist. Now you may be thinking, Barnum and Bailey, cannons, clowns, the whole bit. Well, that's not too far from my reality.

But for Aidy, when she performed high up in the top of the tent, it was quiet. When you train, you have the safety line, you have the harness, and it's running through pulleys. And when you take that off, it's quieter. There's not the click of the carabiners or anything. So that really highlights that moment when you let go of the catcher and you turn around and you're just there in space, weightless for a moment and going for it. And that sensation in my stomach of flight combined with adrenaline and disbelief and all of it at the same time. And then it's just magic. You often performed with a partner, right? That's right. Describe that relationship. Do you have eye contact with them? Do they have

their hands out? Are they catching you? Are they throwing you? Just tell me a little bit about how it works and how you communicate with each other. There's cues. So the catcher will be sitting up there and they know what order the tricks will go in. And so it could just be a look and then I'll wait for them to set their knees. So slide down into their knees and then I can start my swing. And I trust that they're going to get into position at the right time because we've started in that prepared position together. And learning to do that together is a journey. I mean, you must know each other really, really well. By the time you're trusting someone, you use the word trust. By the time you're trusting your life with someone,

there must be, I mean, the word is intimacy, right? Between each other. Definitely. Yeah. Intimacy is just anything that makes you feel close to someone else. And that is a very unique form of intimacy for sure. Was there ever a moment when you were like, nope, I'm not doing it. I'm not flying. I don't feel right about this. I don't know. Something's not right. Absolutely. There are hundreds of thousands of reasons why you might not be feeling it that day. And yeah, we check in and we cut tricks before the show. Sometimes we cut tricks during the show. Someone might get injured. Our tight wire walker got hit in the face and lost a tooth in the middle of a show once. And we had to do the rest of the show without her. But yeah, it's constant communication. And sometimes it's as simple as I'm not up for that today.

And people will just respect that. And they don't need justification or reason necessarily because we're talking about physical safety and our lives here. So it's okay to be like, I'm just not feeling it today. After years of performing with various circuses around the world, Aidy decided to return home to Australia and open her own circus school. I realized that I was feeling far more fulfilled through teaching circus than I was performing it. And then I opened the studio.

Where she taught trapeze, mostly to kids. How do you feel about it? Really good. Yeah, I feel like you could probably do it. Do you want to have a go? Okay. That's it. Yes.

So, Adie, how do you teach trapeze to your students? Because, you know, for some people, there can be this real disconnect between what our brain is telling us to do and how our bodies actually respond. I often make a joke when I first introduce people to aerial equipment and I say, just so you know, everybody's brain falls out as soon as their feet leave the floor. And I tell them it's a perfectly normal thing and we will learn to keep our brain in our head as we're up in the air. But that's what I'm talking about is exactly what you just relayed, which is that disconnection, which is a lizard brain, a primal brain, a fight, flight, freeze response, which one of the first things it does is it disconnects from

the logic and thinking part of our brain. So that's what's happening there. And that's the connection that I, we need to maintain if we're going to effectively learn to use our bodies in the air or otherwise. Just a minute, Howch Peas artist Aidy Delaney found a way to apply these same lessons to what can be a very difficult subject. On the show today, part two of our series, Mind, Body, Spirit. I'm Manoush Zomorodi, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. Stay with us. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Anoush Zomorodi.

Today on the show, how to feel good and safe in our bodies. We were just hearing from trapeze artist Aidy Delaney. In 2015, Aidy started her own circus school. And not long after that, she decided to take on another challenge too. So I found a job at the sexual assault support service in Hobart. Quick warning here, we'll be mentioning sexual assault, but no specific instances or descriptions. I work in the training department which means that I'm going out into schools where we are a primary prevention program so ideally we are in there before anything has happened. However if anyone knows anything about the state of sexual harm in the world, it's nigh on impossible. So we're going in with a view to showing young people what positive intimacy should look, feel and sound like.

And that is done for high schools, at least older kids, within a framework of if and when you want to have sexual experiences. When we're talking to younger kids, it's very much about instilling a sense of autonomy and letting them know that everybody is the authority on their own experience, including them. But Adie and her co-workers kept running into one problem. You cannot teach consent. It's something that has to be experienced. It has to be role modeled and it has to be embodied.

They wondered, was there a way to show and demonstrate consent in an everyday way? And there was definitely a day when I was like, that's what I'm doing every day after school. I'm already doing it. And the beauty of it is that it's not explicit. Kids aren't coming to my circus classes. I'm like, okay, we're going to learn about consent today because it's a practice skill. And I very often in my circus classes, while I don't talk about consent explicitly, one of my catchphrases is definitely your body, your choice. Was that your eureka moment? Absolutely. It was in realizing that not everybody understands or is able to listen to their body in the way that I had gut feelings like this doesn't feel right today or I just know this is going to go

wrong, that was my sympathetic nervous system. And that was me intuiting what that meant for me, which was I don't feel safe and listening to that and acting on that. So, Edie, how do you define consent when you're talking about it and modeling it for kids in your class? So a lot of the time, the definition of consent is cited as being permission, but I think they're very different. Permission is transactional and consent is an agreement where everybody has choice. So when we say things like, I got consent, I gave consent, I had consent, it makes it sound transactional and it makes it sound like an object that can be passed and then is done with and can be forgotten about.

When in reality, it's a verb, it's something that we're always doing, it's something that we're constantly reassessing. And so when I talk about consenting, I very often use that ING because it helps us reframe it in our heads. So things like, are you consenting? Was I consenting? Are we consenting? So yeah, it's really about time and choice. So people having a choice and then having time the cheat sheet I give young people when I'm talking explicitly about sexual experiences is if you're not sure if someone's consenting give them more time give them more choice and that applies to circus too. Yeah but the inside of your foot that's it yes nice how's that feel perfect good that's it I'm gonna put your How's that feel? Perfect. Perfect, good. That's it, I'm going to put my hand on your back. There you go.

I'm going to hold on to your leg, then I'm going to put my hand here. Now do you feel safe to put your hand on the bar? I got you. How's that for you, okay? Yeah. Look, I can stop you going forwards and backwards, see? Woohoo, I got you. So I'm around a lot of awkward I'm around a lot of awkward teenagers

by virtue of the fact that I'm a parent. And part of me thinks like, yeah, this is great. Like if kids get used to talking to each other like this is totally possible. But there's another part of me that is saying you are asking for a level of maturity and self-reflection that I am not sure any teenager is capable of. I agree entirely. And I think that's why one of the really strong messages I try to get across is how to be a little bit more self-aware and how to identify those safe places for ourselves and safe people for ourselves so that we can look after ourselves. And I definitely think that the generations below me, at least, are a lot more self-aware.

There's a lot more comfort in talking about things like anxiety and self-care and mental health breaks and all of those kind of things. I think there is a lot of hope. And I actually think that adults sometimes have a harder time getting their heads around this thing because it takes a little bit of vulnerability and sometimes it takes some radical honesty. I've definitely been on a bit of a journey myself with applying the things that I'm teaching because so much of how I was raised is not that. So things like learning to say no at all was really, really difficult, particularly for hugs. So I gave myself a challenge to start saying no, I didn't want to hug. And that was super, super hard for a long time,

but actually a lot more accepted than I thought it would be. You know, if you deliver it in a way that's like, oh, not today, people move on really, really quickly. It's not a big deal. And then applying that to my students as well. And because physically assisting people is necessary when teaching aerial a lot of the time, not all of the time. And so checking in with people if it's okay to help them is a big part of my job. And for people that are new to classes, the reaction is nearly always the same. I ask them if it's okay if I help them by putting a hand around their hips and they

just wait for me to do it. Like they're not expecting it to be a genuine question. That's a really amazing and empowering thing when someone realizes after a couple of seconds that I'm not just rushing in and putting my hands on them. It's like this little spark goes off in their brain. They don't quite know what to do with it. And that's the start of the journey.

That's the start of realizing, oh, yes, I am the one that gets to say what to do with my body, despite the fact that I've entered this space where I've paid money and I have signed up to this class where I am agreeing for you to teach me these things. It doesn't mean that I'm at your mercy. I mean, I love that because presumably once someone has that experience of someone really listening and responding to their wants, needs, desires, they get used to asking for it again. That's right. And then they start noticing where it's not happening. As I was getting ready to talk to you, I read a report that shows that U.S. teen girls, they call them in crisis. And one of the things they say is that almost 20 percent of girls reported experiencing sexual violence in the previous year, which is an increase over other years, other previous years. And I guess we should make clear that this is, we're talking about a serious societal problem that needs to be addressed.

Which is violence against women and girls. Yes. And anyone. Sexual harm can affect anyone and does. But yes, disproportionately women and girls. And it's a systemic thing and it will take years and decades to change, unfortunately. But we have to do it. We have to start role modelling these behaviours because the reality is, and it's very hard to hear, but the reality is if we are not normalising consent, we're normalising the opposite. We all have a right to exist happily, healthily and safely and everyone is entitled to their own bodies

and what they do with their bodies. If people are looking to have interactions that are fun and positive and pleasurable for themselves and wanting that for the other person as well, then we're already off to a better start than coming from a place of fear and shame. And we can do that for each other. That's Aidy Delaney. She's the founder of The Circus Studio and an educator at the Sexual Assault Support Service in Tasmania. You can see her full talk at TED.com. Thank you so much for listening to this segment from our body episode. The entire show is so fascinating, and so are the other two shows in the series.

So please join me and NPR's TED Radio Hour for our Mind, Body, Spirit special series. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.