Last day of Le Jeu at Gaulier.

I did something a bit stupid today.

Isn’t stupid a requirement for clowns?

Fine. Let’s say “ill advised” then.

As a result, I spent the end of one the morning lying on my back on the floor. And the afternoon class sitting at the back of the room in pain.

I’m fine though. It’s now 4 hours afterwards and I’ve “gotten away” with my fall – by which I mean, I think I haven’t injured myself badly. I’ve been testing my range of motion, going through yoga poses and stretches, and I’m fairly confident that it’s just a bit of bruising.

What happened?

My outrageous flop is actually a quite good analogy for one of the dynamics of the teaching here at Gaulier.

See, I usually take things quite slow. I like to practice things little by little, testing out my ideas in safe spaces, building them up part by part. Though I continually put myself in situations that push out my comfort zone, I’m not that used to taking massive leaps forward.

And, actually, when I have taken a huge leap way beyond what I think I can achieve… I have often ended up injuring myself.

That could either be to injure physically (e.g. some years ago: “I’m bored of 5k runs. I’m going to jump straight to a 10k with hills and sprinting sections… oh look, I’ve pulled my ankle and now have to stop running for weeks until it fixes itself.”).

Or I injure myself in an emotional or energy sense (e.g. a couple of years ago “I’m going to go all-in on a difficult business growth strategy that drains all my emotional energy for 90 days… oh look, I’ve completely depleted myself and now have to put on the brakes on my business for over half a year until I start to recover the will to go on.”)

With most physical activity, I now take controlled baby steps. But many times I’ve started a completely new physical activity, it has began with an injury.

I am not clear on my own limits.

Part of the training here at Gaulier is about taking big risks and accepting the failure when you fail.

Unlike in other clowning approaches, though, the training doesn’t celebrate failure in the sense of making the failure feel like a good thing (e.g. doing a lap of honour and cheering whenever an idea falls on its face, as is common in some improv circles).

Here at Gaulier, you feel the full force of the failure. The teaching approach lets you know, in know uncertain terms, when the failure is a failure.

This, on balance, is useful. It is more realistic to what failure feels like “in the real world.” So, I think we are developing a stronger sense of when something is failing than we might otherwise.

But, I’m struggling with it.

In terms of both my comfort zone and knowing my limits.

Maybe I’m scared of taking enormous leaps because I have those experiences of hurting myself in the past.

I’m afraid of doing something massive on stage that fails completely.

But that is part of the training here. Take big risks.

So I am trying to take big risks.

Some days I manage. Others I don’t.

Today, it just so happened that I was presented with exactly the sort of challenge that hits my blindness to my own limits… particularly the limits of my own physical body.

It was the sort of challenge that I’m naturally drawn to and would really love to do well.

The challenge was to kick a hat off a stick.

Our entire group stood in a circle. The hat was hung on the stick and Norwegian music was playing.

A few people had gone before me. And then it was my turn.

Was I ready? No, obviously.

The way Researcher Alex would usually approach this type of challenge is to watch videos of people doing it online. To study the form and technique.

He would then set up practice situations, working from the hat lower down and building up the height little by little…

It would take weeks.

Like almost everything here at Gaulier, you only get one chance to get it right.

My first shot, I baulked.

I made silly joke of getting the guy controlling the hat to raise it to the highest point, then taking it with my hand and throwing it onto my foot.

But the voice of Big Leap Alex spoke up in my head.

“I really want to give this challenge everything! That was a boring cop-out. I’ll be disappointed if I do that as my only shot.”

So I went for a second shot.

I got the guy controlling the hat to raise it far too high.

I took a run at it…

… and jumped with a bizarre flying kick.

And fell…

… right on my back.

Later, I realised that I hadn’t prepared my “fall” or dismount at all.

I had made no mental note about how I was going to fall after my kick.

If Researcher Alex had approached this challenge, that’s the first thing he would have thought of. He would have said “Let’s practice falling after that type of kick first.” He would have done it dozens of times before trying the kick itself.

But, Researcher Alex is the part of me that doesn’t take those big leaps. The part of who would take weeks to work himself up to a kick like that.

So I crashed out.

And it hurt.

(Remember that I’m fine. So don’t worry. I did say that at the beginning.)

I feel bad because I scared everyone, especially our movement teachers. I know I would be extremely shook-up if that type of thing happened to a student in a workshop I was running. Landing on your back can be one of those “Shit! That could have been much worse.” falls.

But the experience also makes me see that dynamic in me…

That fear of “going big” because I have a tendency to jump to the point of failure. Because I don’t really know what I’m capable of and what I’m not capable of.

I’m not really sure how I will put this realization to use.

Clearly, it’s not just a case of “Go as big as possible”… but it’s hard to say, yet, what it does mean.