Ahni Radvanyi & Chris Filkins are Acro Love. Over the next few weeks we intend to share many of the machines which we have written. This particular one is called “Stupid”. The move came out of turning the bases first foot backwards upon mount. It seemed a stupid thing to do to turn your foot over like that – hence the name!

This machine was written back sometime in the late summer of 2012. It’s especially challenging sequence to make work with any type of flow. Bases who find it difficult to rotate their ankles beyond a certain point might find this very difficult but you can manage to do it if the flyer can manage to hold their shape while twisting at the hips. As in everything use a spotter if you are at all unstable. This should flow nicely and easy and should not require any feeling of being out of balance to make it work successfully.

Subsequently we discovered that Scott Cooper & Rachel Grey developed something very similar around the same time. You can see it published here, Whirlpool, on Acropedia. When I first saw Whirlpool I was quite confused because to me it’s clearly not the same set of sequences. The goofy foot flow through star is very key to the way the tempo in this machine works. When you look at the standard star in Scott & Rachel’s piece it clearly slows things down and creates a different tempo.

It turns out this was an important development for my evolution as someone who writes these types of sequences or, washing machines (as they are often called). Prior to learning about Whirlpool (and Nunchuk) I was quite ignorant that other people in the world did this practice in this way. I knew that Lux Sternstein wrote machines but I had no knowledge of anyone else doing this. It’s only been recently that I learned that Whirlpool was written by Scott Cooper who has since become a good friend of mine.

All of this was very useful to me in finding ways not to be attached to the idea of ownership or authorship of movements. Which has helped me grow tremendously as an individual, practitioner, and teacher.

Subsequently to writing this piece I have taught this to hundreds of people. Most of them have come to know this as Stupid as that is what I call it. Very rarely I come across someone who knows this as Whirlpool. None of it matters. Everyone can call it Whirlpool.

I teach classes, workshops, and privates in AcroYoga in Los Angeles and throughout the world. If you are interested in attending a class or getting a private lesson from me I would be more than happy to help.