Why I Want To Become An AntiGravity® Fitness Instructor and How You Can Help

• As many of you know, for the past few years I've struggled with double vision, cognitive functioning, and sensory processing disorder (explained in fuller detail here and here). 

• A few months ago, at the end of my first semester as a PhD candidate at the University of Utah, Dr. Ericson at the Rehabilitation Center's Brain Injury Program said to me: "It's time you start seriously considering a viable Plan B, outside of academia." 

• Instead, I renewed my efforts in vision therapy, physical therapy, occupational therapy (including vestibular, proprioceptive, kinesthetic, sensorimotor, listening, and sensory integration and regulation therapies), craniosacral therapy, myofascial trigger point release therapy, and mental health therapy. 

• Then I found AntiGravity® Fitness, which changed my life. And now I want to become a certified instructor so I can help change others' lives. 

• I'm going to go into a lot more detail about all of this below, but right here I'd like to ask for your help: I NEED TO RAISE $7,000, which will go toward CERTIFICATION COSTS (outlined below, including indiegogo's and other 3rd party fees). If you are able to contribute in any way, please select from the THANK YOU PERKS donated by writers, artists, musicians, photographers, editors, and publishers from all over the country. (If you are in a position to contribute and would rather not receive a perk, every $50 or $100 donation will go a very long way toward this campaign.)

How AntiGravity® Fitness Has Changed My Life and How I Know It Can Help Others Like Me

• Read about my first real "breakthrough" here. 

• Since then, I have stopped going to all but vision therapy (I still check in with my occupational therapist, but only once a month now instead of weekly). AntiGravity® Fitness incorporates physical therapy and "heavy work," proprioceptive and vestibular stimulation and feedback, deep tissue trigger point massage, and, with the help of the hammock's tight, total body "squeeze" (which is like wearing a "hug vest") my central nervous system is calmed enough that I am better able to self-regulate prior to sensory overload or sensory meltdown caused by overstimulating environments (classrooms, grocery stores, movie theaters, etc.).

• I spend, on average, 3 hours a day, at least 3-4 days a week, in the AntiGravity® Fitness studio, and this practice has become a fundamental and essential part of my recovery -- allowing me to reclaim my old life as a reader, reviewer, writer, editor, publisher, scholar, and professor.

• This is my hope for future clientele: that with AntiGravity® Fitness they too will be able to better cope with their individual challenges and learn to manage the lives and futures they desire. 

As An AntiGravity® Fitness Instructor, I Hope To Serve Individuals Who Also Have Special Needs

• After a few months of casual discussion, Darlene Casanova, the owner of my local AntiGravity® Fitness studio, Imagination Place, asked if I wanted to interview for an instructor position. During that interview, she said: "How do you see yourself fitting in here with what we already do?" 

• I answered: "Once I'm trained in FUNdamentals, my primary goal is to help people discover just how able their bodies really are. Once I'm trained to teach Aerial and Suspension Fitness, I'd want to continue to help them realize their own strength and power. I'm happy to work with young, able-bodied clients, but I really want to get trained to teach Restorative, so that eventually I can focus on working with the disabled, autistic, sensory challenged, overweight, and recovering-from-surgery and brain trauma demographics. I'd also like to get certified to teach Kids, so I can help children with ADD/ADHD and other focusing and processing disorders and also teach parent & baby classes, hopefully with a focus on sensory integration and regulation for premature babies and infants."

When Does AntiGravity® Fitness Instructor Training Begin?

• I got the job! So . . . much sooner than I had anticipated: MAY 2014!  

What I Need to Get Certified As An AntiGravity® Fitness Instructor

• This will be my first (immediate) certification, with the others to follow over the next several months. 

• Cost of certification $1,200; renewal fee (every 12 months) $300

• Cost of certification $1,200

• Cost of certification $1,200

• Offers accessibility to students with physical limitations, and incorporates levitating meditations, zero-compression inversions, supported sun salutations, joint opening poses, and a floating sivasana. Working from different hammock heights allows for the gentle opening of hips and spine.

• Cost of certification $750

• Allows me to work with babies and children. 

• Cost of certification $1,750

Where AntiGravity® Fitness Meets Academia

• I feel the need to state clearly that I am not giving up on academia. 

• But I also want to say that, to be perfectly honest, being in this PhD program feels like a responsibility, a duty, something I am doing mostly because I owe it to the old me who had a very clear path laid out -- BA, MA, MFA, PhD, tenure-track University job.

• There is a part of me (the old me) that still wants that life -- so badly, in fact, that over the past three years whenever I've stumbled off the path I've found some way to clutch and claw my way back (usually with the help of some specialist. To date, I've spent over $12,000 of student loan money on medical bills). But I don't know if the new me -- a calmer, more peaceful, less career-manic, more present me -- wants to suffer intense visual strain (read: eye muscle pain) and the mental and physical fatigue of an academic's constant reading load for the rest of my professional life. 

• All I know is that right now I have an opportunity to incorporate a new kind of teaching into my life by becoming an AntiGravity® Fitness instructor. I want to explore this opportunity because it makes me feel better, because it makes me happy, and because maybe the old me owes it to the new me to just see where it takes us. And if it turns out that I can help facilitate a fraction of the relief I've experienced for even just a few clients a day, then not only will I have spent that day helping others while also helping myself but I'll then be able to go home and give more mental and physical energy to my future family.

• All this said, I believe that there will be a meeting of these two possible paths -- a middle ground that can support each in ways that I have yet to conceive or consider. And I believe, too, that somewhere between the old me and the new me there is a middle me, who will still be able to teach and read and write and edit and publish, and who will also find a way to teach and touch and help a lot of other people heal.