As you might have guessed from my photos and posts, I am curious like a cat with everything there is to learn and know about handstands. During my quest of gathering as many repetitions, information and hours spent on my hands I have come across many wonderful practitioners and incredibly talented performers and teachers. This is the fifth issue of my ALL ABOUT HANDSTANDS Interview series, which I have started to share the many beautiful souls out there who dedicate their time on one or two hands instead of their feet.

MAURICIO JARA

I have been admiring Mauricio on my Instagram feed for a while, which is why I was stoked when he said YES to the interview. This performer looks like he knows what he's doing on IG, especially when he is dancing on 2 hands or shaking 'what his momma gave him' on one arm with so much ease and finesse that I got curious on what his journey to get to where he is looked like. Let's find out more about Mau.

13 QUESTIONS

1. Tell me something about yourself: Who are you now, what did you do in the past and what are you passionate about?

My name is Mauricio Jara, and I’m a professional handbalancer from Costa Rica. I’m a circus performer but also a full time teacher of the handstand discipline, now living in Portugal and working at an international circus school. The love for being upsidown started as young as 7 years old, though at the beginning it was just a hobby I had, with no real knowledge about this art. My background was more in the way of floor movement and acrobatics, which I started training with two of my brothers, having them around to play was definitely the best motivation I had. I did one year of gymnastics but I never really liked the competition behind it, so I came back to my first passion and started training handstands as a main discipline when I was 20 years old. Being on stage as a performer and teaching are my greatest passions, as I could never decide to focus on only one of them.

2. How does a ‚normal' day in your life look like? How much time do you spend on your hands per day?

Nowadays, because I work full time in a circus school I don´t really think of a day as normal. And I definitely spend a lot of time in my hands, but in the past I usally traind one full long session, when now is more like divided in sessions of practice during the day. I can still do from 3 to 4 hours of handstand related practice 5 or 6 days a week.

I also get time to do some research in handstands when Im practicing, trying to find new ways of creating my balance or developing a character for a performance. I also recently started training hand to hand with a partner so I train at least 2 hours that normally in the evenings after classes. When I have energy left stay in school until 9pm training more handstands.

3. What is the ‚craziest‘ One Arm Handstand variation you can do and what is your favorite Handstand of all?

If we are speaking of a shape then I guess the hardest one to hold in terms of balance is also the simplest, so a full one arm handstand with the other hand attached to the body:

Full One Arm Variation (Also known as Svetchka)