(NECN: Josh Brogadir, Boston, Mass.) - Think balance, timing, and exercise, trusting a partner to hold you up.
It's called gymcraftics and it's a movement that is building a sense of community in and around Boston.
Among the passing strollers, flying footballs, and airborne frisbees scattered about the Boston Common Sunday is a group of people doing the much less ordinary.
Having never seen the activity before, 11 year old Samantha Martens of North Andover, Massachusetts couldn't help but join the group.
"You kind of feel like you're on air," Martens said. "You don't feel stress at all. You're just like, there."
"It's called gymcraftics," said Jane Farrell of Sudbury, MA, who has been doing gymcraftics for about five years.
Gymcraftics.
- Think Cirque de Soleil-style balance.
- Gymnastics without the constant motion.
- The crafting or creating of form using your arms, legs, hips, and feet.
- Trusting the person below you to hold you up.
- You won't find the definition in Webster's, what you will find here is team building with cooperation.
"It relaxes you. It works out your muscles in a way that you don't notice that you're working out because you're just busy doing. And it also stretches, but in a very relaxed way. It has a wide range of movement. It's always varied. It's never repetitive. It doesn't break the body down," Farrell said.
Jeff Robbins, of Natick, is the leader, the coach, the facilitator,
the motivator, the innovator, the 70-something year old creator of gymcraftics.
That was back in Philly in 1968.
He now works with high school kids in the area, plus college students at Boston University.
"It's a way for people to integrate three things. One is the physical, obviously. The second is the emotional, that is, do they buy into what they're doing with a positive," Robbins said. "And the third is the intellectual. When they go away, what do they have inside them that they understand? And how will they share that understanding?"
Fiona Farquharson is a Senior soccer player at Boston English High School, one of the places Robbins has introduced gymcraftics to help as an alternative form of training for athletes, and a way to bring kids together.
"It's really a creative way of expressing yourself and it really pushes you to the limitof what you want to do, like, if you want to take that risk, or if you want to just step out of it," Farquharson said.
On this day, its viral effect is obvious, after not five minutes the half dozen or so who are participating multiplies exponentially.
Though some stand and stare, many others join the group and form human pyramids.
I even figured I'd give it a try, going what they call, "upside down."
It stretched my shoulders and back out, though I probably should have taken my tie off first.
I'd do gymcraftics again, and it's clear, these people will too.
For more information on gymcraftics, click here.
