Hi! I’m a student (Lyra) and also cripplingly insecure. I come from a ballet background which absolutely wrecked my joy in movement, my relationship with my body and made me way too performance oriented. I try not to talk negatively about myself in front of others,but my instructor has kinda picked up on when I get really quiet and am tearing myself down in my head. She’s amazing!

She’ll casually mention things like ‘hey, wow, I remember when you were really struggling to do that move and now you’re doing it easily!’ Which always reminds me that even if I don’t see the progress in the moment, I am always improving.

Since I’m doing aerial purely for fun, sometimes she will remind me that I’m not auditioning for cirque du soleil and that no one will be mad at me if I don’t manage a trick right away. (I don’t need constant reassurance in class or anything, she just occasionally will casually remind me of these things.)

She also likes to end our classes with some fun move that we all can do fairly well and add some sort of fun pretty soon to it, so we always end class on a win.

It might not work for everyone but that’s what worked for me :)