WHAT IS FAMILY ACROYOGA

Family AcroYoga is the practice of AcroYoga with children and their parents (or an adult friend/family member). Yoga, acrobatics and thai massage come together to offer a world of possibilities for families to play, bond, connect with their bodies and take care of each other. Family AcroYoga creates bonding through movement, playfulness and joy. With the practice of these disciplines we aim to help develop confidence, trust in each other, and to teach communication skills that everyone can apply within their own family inside and outside of class.

1. ACROYOGA HISTORY

Acrobatics. Acrobatics can be traced back more than 7000 years. Images of acrobatics were found in stone cuttings and statues from ancient Egypt, Greece and China. From then on in every period acrobatics existed in many forms; from the formal sports during the Roman empire, to the medieval gypsies’ performances and the first official circus in the eighteenth century in the USA. In the first olympics in 1896 in Greece gymnastics was one of the seven official sports. Modern competitive acrobatics began in the 1930ies in Russia and spread widely and internationally in the 1970’s. Dutch acrobatics was developed and taught by the legendary Como brothers and the Osmani sisters in 1970. It was taught on a professional level but also as a hobby for the broader public. 

Nowadays gymnastics and acrobatics are popular sports and acrobatics festivals are organized worldwide. Circus schools are popping up in many places as well as acrobatics teacher trainings.

AcroYoga. There are now many schools of AcroYoga. The original two schools were AcroYoga Montreal and AcroYoga Inc. AcroYoga Montreal was founded by Jessie Goldberg and Eugene Poku in 1999 combining acrobatics, yoga and dance and is more focussed on performance. AcroYoga Inc. was founded by Jason Nemer and Jenny Sauer-Klein in 2003 in California USA. This practice blends acrobatics, yoga and healing arts, with the focus initially mainly on therapeutic flying and yoga. Jason and Jenny were the first to codify the AcroYoga practice in 2006. They trained and made practice manuals for the public, trained teachers and still travel the world sharing the practice. By literally writing the book of AcroYoga, they unified the language between acrobats and yogis in different communities around the world. AcroYoga Inc. certified around a thousand AcroYoga teachers worldwide. The focus of the practice has shifted more to the Solar – acrobatic – part of AcroYoga.

2. Family ACROYOGA HISTORY

In 2016 Esther, Tatjana, and Mireia founded Family AcroYoga. Their dedication throughout the years and the love for the practice brought them to create the first European Family AcroYoga teacher training for June 2017. In 2018 Cecilie, an experienced Family AcroYoga teacher and physiotherapist joined the teaching team to share her experience and knowledge and to further develop the teacher training content. Their diversity has been very valuable, realizing the more ways and styles they learn the richer the Family AcroYoga practice will be. By 2019 we have taught together three international teacher trainings and there are more than 40 certified Family Acroyoga teachers spread out over the world. For 2020 there are three more teacher trainings, several retreats and many workshops in the planning.
We are aware that family acrobatics, family circus, family gymnastics is a practice that naturally arises all over the world for many years already. Yanai Levor in Isreal has been teaching acrobatics for families for many years. Deven Sisler has created a AcroYoga Family training in the states.

Family AcroYoga is still a new practice developing all the time.