Fitness is the adaptability of the mind and body. Norcal Aerial Arts works for quality of life throughout the lifespan. Using meditation with a focus on the breath through movement, utilizing zone 2 cardio, range of motion and strengthening exercises, fitness for the mind, body, and spirit for all ages can be achieved.
My name is Jennifer and my story is my why. I founded NorCal Aerial Arts from a background in dance, tumbling, skateboarding, snowboarding, and cross-training during the off-season. I established a firm foundation in yoga by taking countless hours of workshops in the styles of Ansura, vinyasa, and Iyengar, with the highlight of working and meeting Dharma Mittra. Yoga provided fluid and structural support while forming a delight in stretching and strengthening using mindful breathing. I started teaching yoga with barely enough yoga mats, eventually leading yoga workshops and paying particular attention to the needs of the students. I ultimately found a love of circus, specifically aerial fabric and contortion. The challenge of performing and the discipline to train started a new phase of physical learning. This led to performing and teaching all over Northern California, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington. In 2015 Norcal Aerial Arts started the aerial fabric program at California Dance Company. The students perform at various events all over Redding and occasionally the north coast.
After training, teaching, and performing, learning prehab and rehab to ensure the safety and health of my student-athletes, I became a certified Personal Trainer and Corrective exercise specialist. This enhanced my yoga classes and warm-ups for my students as I started to redefine how to warm up, I applied these exercises in my yoga classes with great success. A new way of ground-based movement was forming somewhere between yoga, functional range movement, and physical therapy techniques in an attempt to prevent repetitive injuries for the local gardener or my students.
A turning point came when my home life started to get turned upside down, and significant changes were on their way. I needed to attend to my spiritual, mental, and physical needs. I needed to repair my own body in some significant ways. In 2021 I had both my shoulders reconstructed, in 2023 my right hip was replaced, and currently, my left hip is scheduled to get replaced. I had to leave my mountain home, and during that time, my kids went off to college. I lost my home and my kids, and my body was broken. The impact was I lost faith in what I was teaching and why I teaching. I needed to redefine what matters in life.
I had to slow down, deal with constant pain, and struggle through exams in nursing school, which impressed upon me why learning fitness matters. Fitness is the flexibility to adapt, it is the key to longevity, it is a quality of life and it is more than lifting weights in a gym. Inspired by a holistic approach to keeping the mind, body and spirit flexible and balanced by using techniques to ease pain, release sticky places, and gain a sense of overall balance through the chaos that is life. This is my why, to guide the best version of you moving that you can imagine.
Check out the Norcalaerialarts YouTube channel for videos.
NorCal Aerial Arts 