Originally Posted: January 5, 2015
I had a friend visiting from out of town who had plans to go flyboarding.
Flyboarding: The act of strapping your feet into boots that are attached to a board that has water jets underneath…that has the capability to send you flying into the air, ostensibly, to eventually do tricks and have fun…to fly. For a world champion demonstration video, click here.
Flyboarding looked amazing, but also a bit freaky-scary and just a little beyond my level of comfort. However, my friend had conveniently left his driver’s license out of state and needed a ride to the lake. That gave me the push I needed to agree to this crazy experience.
He gave me good instructions beforehand and then the jet-ski driver gave me a bit more advice. She was the one I’d be connected to and the one who would determine how much power I would be experiencing under my feet…. Good gravy! I was getting nervous.
You start by standing up under water with your feet strapped into the ski-like boots above the water jets. You’re supposed to keep your body straight and let the jets push you up from underneath, straight up out of the water. Very unnatural. I was told that when I was in the air, if I tipped my feet forward, I’d dive back into the water, and if I tilted them up, I’d go backward and fall on my back. You could turn to the right and left too with some other easy adjustments. Simple enough.
So I stood straight under water and the jets started pushing me up. My feet broke the surface and it looked like I was standing on water. But the jets kept pushing me up! This was not “normal.” Alarm bells were going off in my head “Does not compute!” “Something’s wrong!” “Not normal” “Feet aren’t supposed to go above water!” “Ding! Ding! Ding!” And for probably about 5 minutes, every time my feet broke the surface, I couldn’t deal with the abnormality of it. I automatically reverted to tilting my feet forward and ending up back in the water with a splash…where I was used to being, where it felt safe and normal.
The jet-ski driver finally told me something I think she’d told me at the beginning, but I’d forgotten, “Look at the horizon, breathe, relax. Don’t look at your feet!” This time I listened…and my feet left the water. I was flying! After a while of doing this, I got used to the feeling, and soon flying felt a little more normal.
The lesson was driven home, sometimes we need to shift our focus off of the retreating safety of what we’ve previously thought of as normal and secure. Instead, we need to shift our eyes to the view around us; where we’re going and the beauty to come, the visions we hold in our heart. Instead of holding onto how we’ve felt safe previously and fears of the unknown or how we might fail or fall, we can forget about the limitations and focus instead on who we’re becoming, who we really are…and relax, and breathe. Suddenly, we’ll find ourselves flying.
FYI, after getting a bit more comfortable on the flyboard, I tried out the jetavator (pic above). THAT was fun. Video of an expert on a jetavator here. Pics above and to the right are me…flying!
How have you pushed the edges of your comfort levels recently? Where did you fly?