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June 15th, 2009
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March 14th, 2009
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June 16th, 2009
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June 16th, 2009
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March 15th, 2009
I’ve taught over 3000 people how to juggle, because I used to make juggling balls and sell them. Here are my secrets:
Secret One: See the Arc
See the arc, transcend looking at the ball; your hand knows where to go! (No need to “keep your eye on the ball.”) Prove it by throwing one ball from hand to hand, the height of your eyes, looking straight ahead, without looking at your hands or the ball going into your hands. Magic! (Remember to blink!)
Secret Two: Toss An Endless Figure Eight
The juggle easiest to learn goes in a sideways figure eight, not a circle.
For instance: with 2 balls in each hand, simultaneously toss them up to kiss each other at the top of a rainbow-shaped arc in the center. That’s the pathway balls will go, but at staggered times. So after a three times of that, stagger the timing of when you throw. Toss the second ball as the first toss rounds the arc top. Toss the next ball up the same way – not handing it across below! (That’s a much more difficult circle pattern to learn.) Count when the balls leave your hand so you mark the time of departure. Say the next number when the first ball in the air is getting close to its arc.
Secret Three: Juggling Takes Timing and Freedom, not Strength & “Trying”
The balls go wherever your fingers point as it leaves your hand. As in: Relax your hand, palm up, fingers curled, and your fingers will be pointing up by default. Leave your hand that way and put the ball in it & toss with a flexible, floppy wrist – that scoops from outside to inside.
Secret Four: Starting with Two Balls in One Hand
Hold one ball between your thumb & pinkie; hold the other on three fingers. Toss the ball resting on your fingers to the other hand. Then let go of the ball between your thumb and pinkie, allowing it to roll down to go into your waiting three fingers. Then toss that ball. Catch both balls in one hand, then repeat from the other hand.
Secret Four: Strategies for Doing What’s New
Throw easier, rather than catch wild things! Fool yourself into refusing to practice what you don’t want. Sit in meditation after a success for a minute, or backtrack to what was easier – or do a little dance of celebration!
Do this: When two staggered tosses are easy and you’ve practiced two balls in one hand a few times, start with the two in one hand. Count at the arc of throws, toss about the height of your eyes or head top. Say one two three four about the fast rhythm of of the Beatles tune, “When I Saw Her Standing There.” Get that third ball out of your fingers into the air in the rhythm – as the second throw rounds the arc. Drop all the balls, then pick them up. Later direct the direction of the toss in the air so it’s easy to catch. If one toss is weak, say that one number louder!
Make Success Happen Again
To make success stick in your mind – stop when you do it, even just a minute. If you want to attain further enlightenment, you can also surrender those limiting habitual anticipations of ever attaining any goal. Then – pay attention, describe what you want to do clearly, & toss again. Practice over a bed so you don’t have to reach and pick up so far if you get lazy.
If you still have troubles, here are other tips I’ve learned to deal with further problems some people have to deal with because they were taught to throw by a lousy thrower when first little kids. These tips are on my website:
http://franis.org/Alexander/Applied_principles_juggling.html
Well – what do you think?
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March 15th, 2009
Oh, these ideas that have been suggested work OK. But they are all under the heading of how to gracefully wash your hands of the distasteful homeless person who should go elsewhere for “professional help” and leave you alone.
There should be more ideas along this line – not just for my use, but as common knowledge for the use of many more people who are going to find themselves in this situation. No – I don’t plan on being a “victim.” I like to help out other people.
I’m sure others would also help others more personally if they had more templates about how this could be done more gracefully in a socially acceptable way. That’s why I see a need for it. I am just looking for more ideas of how people could effectively “sponsor” their disadvantaged friends in a constructive way rather than writing these people “off their list”.
So often, the “haves” tend to regard people who are unemployed as “too needy.” I’ve noticed there is an…ah…attitude problem that evolves when someone has made a differently lifestyle choice, even though the choice is temporary situation and is also a forced circumstance of “there but for fortune go you or I” sort of thing. People who are the “haves” get sort of…huffy…about continuing their relationship with people who have become disenfranchised into being the “have nots.” In a way, they are sort of, “envious” of the freedom of not having to pay rent, or something like that. Or suspicious about “those gypsies” or…something.
I’ve just had someone who makes three times the money I do get embarrassed and irritated at me because I did not want to shell out the bucks to buy food at a very, very expensive restaurant at a resort that we went to eat in a group of people. She said she was upset with me because I never have enough money to do those things, (and if I had money, I do not choose to spend it in this way) and so she felt I was obligating her to pay for me if she wanted me around as company in that situation. (Which I have not demanded, and I actually turned down the offer of a paid drink and a meal.) She complained later how she found herself not being comfortable with me declining to eat while she was eating, (although there was no requirement at the restaurant for each person to spend a certain amount and I offered a $3. tip at the end of the meal.) Although I offered the solution of me bowing out of accompanying her during such expensive activities in the future, I seem to have lost the friendship because of this, and I think this is quite unfortunate.
Does that answer your question?
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March 14th, 2009
Two interesting variations on solutions that have worked in the past for me, but I wanted to hear more: after the person gets a job, charge them rent for room&board weekly. Then without them knowing you are going to do it, on the sly, save it up. Give it back to them with their walking papers after it gets to be enough for first and last for a room for rent with the news that you just gave them a free place to live. “Here – now go rent a place to live with this money you gave me that I saved up for you.”
The other one was to make them go out and get food stamps and public assistance, (if they couldn’t get to a job) and do the same as above. Make them pay you while sleeping on your couch, then give it back to them when you boot them out. It worked pretty well.
The time that didn’t work so well was when the guy had screwed up his life so badly that he lost his license to a DUI. We were lovers; I lived in a place where you had to have a car to work. So we hatched a plan where he “ran point” by moving to another state where the expensive DUI classes were not required; I helped him get his license back (took a year!) by helping him mail the fines off monthly (he was incapable of dealing with bureaucracy.) He supported me for awhile after he helped me move to where he established himself by first living in a car – after he go an apt. So I got something out of it for helping him. He was a borderline diabetic & had been abused as a kid. He did learn a little how to budget but then he would stop eating whenever I traveled & then get suicidal, so it was too crazy for him as well as me.
By and large, these people are really trying, but many of them are just are clueless. The mental health system fails them. The world is just a different place for them.
Instead of life getting better, everything is a dead end or a repeating pattern; they have not a clue how they feed into it. Everyone this guy met would meet would take advantage of him, (even if they weren’t a manipulator to start with) because he had guilt written all over his face. Was weird to watch it happen. He found himself another “sugar mama” thankfully. He’s a little better off now that he has his driver’s license back.
Please – more ideas!! I know I’m going to be in this situation again because I do like to help people out…and this is going to be more common problem as people become homeless in droves.
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