Success Stories

Here are stories from people like you that have used the information found on this site to further pursue hand balancing and other skills. If you want to see your story added here send it in to info@lostartofhandbalancing.com. The more detailed the better. If it works I will add it to this section.

I’d like to share with you my story of how the art of handbalancing came into my life how it has evolved and shaped my life, how it guided me through storms and ultimately became my life passion and expression.

I'd always practiced martial arts since very young, the mixture of body control and awareness blended with a deep philosophy fascinated me. I immersed myself in training and the study of philosophy and spirituality. This led to many adventures and challenges including 3 years spent as Royal Marine and 1 year traveling and studying, performing and competing in martial arts. I always trained differently than most people, I trained more like a gymnast than anything else, enjoying most being upside down and balancing, little did I know then about the art history and spirit of handbalancing. I just knew I was happiest upside down.

The more I studied spirituality and the more I came to understand myself the more I realized what I loved most was mastery of my body and expression of something from inside of me. I began becoming greatly interested in the performance arts. I made the decision at that time to focus all of energy into the art of Parkour. At this time I also began writing for Brutal Training, a website and group dedicated to helping athletes and non athletes alike to evolve and find their own spirit through training. It was my dedication to the pursuit of experiencing my own true self, spirit and my own evolution that led me to writing for Brutal.

Practicing Parkour saw me training even more in gymnastic type movements and an even further growing interest in the performance arts. I began was amazed and inspired by circus performers, especially hand balancers and contortionists, I searched the internet and read as much as I could about these amazing athletes. Aside from the amazing physical abilities of the performers that inspired me, something else inspired me so much more, it was something subtle in the performance, a deep stillness, it was as if the athlete has ceased being themselves, something else had taken over, something very deep and beautiful, they had become an expression for spirit. Here I witnessed and was taken completely by the spirit of Handbalancing.

At this time in my personal life, there was a storm rising, all at once I faced my father walking out of our family home and the death of my beloved grandmother. They strength I had developed in spirit through relentless training and study guided me and let me also guide my family. I spent a lot of time at this point hand balancing, I found a silence and stillness when inverted, it had became my meditation.

The storm had not yet passed, I was faced with one of my hardest experiences, but one that has caused my to look deep within and evolve more than any other, the break up of a very deep and loving relationship between me and my girlfriend. In dealing with the painful emotions I found myself straight away finding that stillness and silence again whilst handbalancing, physically being up on my hands and finding the equilibrium allowed me to find equilibrium in my thoughts, my emotions and my spirit, there was only harmony, in handbalancing I disappeared.

A change on the surface of your life can cause you to look deep within, and look I did, what stared back at me was an absolute ‘knowing’ of what path I had to walk. I knew in an instant I had to dedicate my entirety to the study and expression of handbalancing. I began studying and training relentlessly, training and reading as much as possible about the art of hand balancing.

This was little over six months ago, and since then I have enrolled in an adult gymnastic class, and set an ultimate goal of becoming a performance artist with the Cirque Du Soleil. I have realized whether or not I reach this ultimate aim or not is not really important, although I have every confidence I will, what is important is the journey, it is spending my moments here on this earth doing exactly what I love, what I have so much passion for, what is my expression.

Finding info on training methods of hand balancers was never easy, I came across a few sites and articles that helped greatly however. Beast Skills provided and enormous resource for me, as did the original York Handbalancing courses. Then about 2 months ago I stumbled across The Lost Art of Hand Balancing, which I was very grateful to find and has proved exceedingly helpful. Some of the things that have helped me most are fighting for the balance, when I get up there I don’t come down until I absolutely must, I grip and snarl and squeeze, this alone has improved my handbalancing more in the last few months than anything ever has.

The other big thing for me has been repetition, just simply doing more handbalancing, I aim for at least 100 handstands a day, and that is on top of 2 hours of other conditioning, and 2 hours of flexibility training as its said,

"Thousands of repetitions and out of ones true self, perfection emerges" - Rotaishi

It is through constant and relentless practice we improve. Learning to develop total body tension especially in the core through the use of isometrics has also helped greatly, working a wide range of assistance exercises such as L-sits, elbow levers, frog stands, and planche progressions.

Over at Brutal training we now have set up a Parkour and Circus skills forum which I run with a very talented friend of mine whose main focus is Parkour. With my own growth and evolution in the circus arts we hope to spread the word and reveal to more the lost and beautiful art of hand balancing.

How big an impact can hand balancing have on your life? It can be life changing and deeply spiritual!

I don’t believe a life is something we have, I believe its something we are, and life has a multitude of different expressions. Handbalancing has let me express my own spirit, maybe it will let you express yours too.

-David Kelso
www.brutaltraining.com




 I recently started to get into hand balancing. Before I would just try to do handstands and other balances just for fun. Then one day a friend asked me how I managed to stay in a handstand position for so long and I showed him where his hands should have been placed, how to do the kick up, and holding it. (Basically the whole "Guide to Handstand") and helped him to get a handstand hold for about 20 seconds. I showed him sites like yours and www.beastskills.com. Ever since we've been practicing more and more. So I hope to expand my hand balancing skills and help others improve theirs too.

-Tony