Elle Series: Walking the Walk - My OwnQi Gong
I discovered the Contact Staff (and Dragon Staff) just recently. It caught my attention because it struck a chord with my past. In high school I was on the twirling squad for 4 years and the captain in my senior year. During the Summer before senior year started, I had a dream that I was twirling a fire baton. So I decided to pursue that fantasy. I first went to my mother and asked her if I could. Her response was that if the principal said I could then it would be OK. I then went to the principal of the high school and asked him. He said that with my parent’s permission, it would be alright. So, as you might have guessed, I told both of them that the other had said Okay! Hence, my foray into the world of “fire juggling.”
But, of course, that was 55 years ago and my baton has sat for many years collecting dust in the closet. I don’t know exactly how the contact staff came up on my internet feed, but we all have had weird experiences with algorithms in the past…but this was REALLY in the past. Anyway, one day I just began seeing this art form in various contexts on the computer. Hmmmmm….that can’t be that hard, I said to myself. And the rest is history.
In short, Contact Staff is a form of object manipulation derived from contact juggling and traditional staff. It involves lots of moves done using your torso, rather than just your hands, to manipulate the staff. Contact staffs differ from regular staffs in their weight and handle type. From what I gather, the best contact staffs have solid cores, weighty ends, and sticky handles. It is much longer than your regular baton, extending about 55-60 inches. I have been using it as a form of gentle stretching and exercise. I spend up to an hour a day in the evenings practicing outside in my backyard, just as I did to learn the baton many years ago. It has a very meditative effect and I can create my own routines and choose my own music. It’s pretty sweet.