The Manifesto 10#
I’m wondering what the first thing is you do when you feel a niggle or pain in your shoulder, knee or back? Do you get some ice on it straight away, panic a little, get curious and try and assess how bad it is and make an appointment with a physiotherapist or osteopath? This is the tried and true pathway most acrobats & crew have been taught by others, or learnt for ourselves. It’s self care and it’s a professional approach to a very real issue we face as physical performers and stage crew. Some of you may even avoid it for a little while and when it doesn’t go away you eventually seek some form of treatment. If we’re lucky, the cost of this self care is covered by the organisation we work for or workers compensation. We rarely question this pathway.
So now I ask, what do you do if anxiety, depression, addiction or burnout starts to creep in? Do you panic a little, get curious and try and assess how bad it is? Make some kind of appointment with a counsellor or GP? or make time to be vulnerable and ask a friend for help? Or do you avoid thinking about it and hope it goes away? Do you see your mental health as less important than your physical health? Does it impact your work?
I see many people in our community struggling to keep their busy and necessarily chaotic touring and creative lives in order. Sometimes we need help from outside our immediate friends or partners. Most importantly we need to normalise this talk about vulnerability, fear, stress, depression, addiction and be able to just be honest. We can learn from each other. I’m interested in how we can be developing as a community. Let’s create some new pathways. Let’s start by being kinder to ourselves and each other when life’s inevitable challenges begin to niggle in our heads, rather than wait till they are already overwhelming.
‘Love yourself first, and everything else falls in line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world’ – Lucille Ball
Kareena. x
Kareena Hodgson was a full-time professional international circus performer for 20 years, who is now an accredited Counsellor/life coach and The Manifesto is her professional consultancy. She is uniquely suited to working in the mental health space within the performing arts. She is also the Senior Editor, Executive Coach & Moral Backbone of Carnival Cinema.
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