How To Juggle

Because juggling requires dexterity and the use, most often, of both hands, it makes your left and right sides of your brain try to make better connections and work together.

Don't worry, if at first, your hands are clumsy. With some practice you'll improve your co-ordination.

Juggling is a SKILL, not a 'gift' that some people have and some people do not have. Almost anyone can learn to juggle - it's just a matter of taking the time to practice.

If you're brand new, it will probably feel very unnatural to be grasping with one hand and tossing with the other - then switching which hand will grasp and have the opposite hand toss.

This feeling with start to feel 'familiar' and less strange the more you attempt to juggle.

Juggling also connects your eyes with your brain. WATCHING juggling videos, alone, can improve your attempts to learn juggling. The more you see juggling, the more your brain will want to connect what you see (hopefully you're watching SUCCESSFUL, experienced jugglers) with how your hands work once you attempt the juggling activity.

Once you do have some success with juggling, you may notice improvements in other activities that require eye-hand co-ordination, speed, agility, and you may feel that your mind also is able to focus more clearly on certain subjects. There is a bonus here in the thinking process, which you may not have realized can improve while you're doing the physical activity of juggling.

Physical AND mental processes of the body are really connected, however, in our modern world, we don't often connect the two and realize that one benefits the other.

Fitness experts will tell you that just doing some exercises regularly to keep the body fit will also improve your ability to think more clearly, focus better when necessary, and experience less stress emotionally and mentally.

Don't try to spend long periods of time in trying to learn how to juggle when you first start out.

If you're making a lot of mistakes, dropping juggling items often, and are having little success with juggling, you can actually teach your body to keep copying mistakes if you force yourself to spend long stretches of time juggling.

Once you start to have some successful tosses, simply STOP - let the juggling items fall to the floor/ground and close your eyes. Try to remember what body feelings you had in your arms and fingers just a few seconds ago. Visualize how it looked to be juggling correctly and let the feelings and imagery 'imprint.'

Take a short break and try juggling again.

Feel free to stop again after a little while - at a time when you're feeling successful, co-ordinated and like you're getting the hang of it.

Close your eyes again, visualize and remember the feelings of your hands and arms doing the activity well. Try to remember what the juggling objects (balls, sticks, oranges) felt like in contact with your hands and then being released again from your hands.

Try to repeat 'successful' tosses and then pause. Do this about 3-5 times - then call it a completed 'session.'

Go do some other activity for a little while, unrelated to juggling, then try another session later when you're in a reasonably relaxed state.

Here's a link that shows the pathway that juggling balls should take in the air.

Learn To Juggle Webpage
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Here are some videos to help you out:

The Jim Show Webpage (juggling videos and instruction)
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If you really get 'stuck' and feel you're either never going to 'get the hang of it' or you're having some success with juggling activities but aren't improving to where you're 'almost flawless,' don't worry. WATCH some videos of successful jugglers and do this in an 'active' way.

Watch a video of a successful juggler, then use the 'meditative' or 'concentration' exercise mentioned above. While you're watching the video, go ahead and 'mirror' the movements (without the juggling balls, sticks, etc). Get the movements correct - the flying projectiles can come later, but you'll be imprinting the 'movement successes' that your body needs to be a successful juggler. If you are very good at 'imagining' then also pretend to feel the juggling balls while you 'mime' what you're watching on the video.

Immediately following the video, close your eyes and do some additional work before you ever attempt to practice with the juggling items you use. Visualize what you just saw on the video, but also imagine that it's YOUR body doing the work - that you are capable of exactly what you just saw on video. Imagine yourself in the place of whoever you just viewed on the video.

Your brain will not worry about the differences between the real you and who was on the video. Your brain doesn't make distinctions about what you're imagining in this pointed way. Later on, your brain will try to match up the 'experience' that you were 'thinking of' during the concentration/meditation. When you attempt the physical act of juggling again, your brain will draw on whatever 'experiences' you have previously placed there.

Your brain doesn't CARE exactly if you are imposing yourself in the place of the person you viewed on the video. Your mind will 'collect' any 'experiences' that you give it. If an 'experience' is a concentrated meditation, that works, too, so long as it's there!

If you NEVER meditate, visualize, concentrate in an active pointed way, you just give your brain less 'experience' to draw from. Then your juggling experiences and learning to juggle will all be physical effort, take longer, and be more frustrating for you.

All this imagining, meditation, active watching of videos and the like will not magically make you an instant success, but it sure can cut down the ephasis that people almost always put on 'failed attempts.'

Most people FULLY INGRAIN failed attempts by making a big deal over these and giving 'failure' a lot of attention. Later on, while the brain is trying to retrieve the 'experiences' for juggling, while you're attempting to learn - the brain will come across all the 'failure' attempts just as well as any other stuff you've experienced.

If there are more visualization experiences, meditative and active watching experiences for the mind to grab onto whenever you're learning (almost anything), then the brain can start to skip over the 'failures' and help move your body into correct alignment and activity when you're juggling.

Skip over the failed attempts and give them less power and presence. You brain will start to ignore these more often than not, too.

Feed your brain some success...don't minimize the visualization/meditation work. It can be a really powerful 'teacher' to your brain while you're in the learning stages.

I've been part of another 'content' community for a while now that is similar to Squidoo.

On my 'friends.fan' list over there is a woman whose content I love to read.

She's a writer, an archer, a poetess, gypsy, a juggler, fantastic story-teller, artist, painter, makes very cool home-made items and crafts, including dolls. She a mime, a bellydancer, can ride a unicycle, and even plays the DIDGERIDOO - Heck, she's a GODDESS to my way of thinking!

Use this page to visit MoonMaiden's Profile

And Two of Moonmaiden's Hubs about juggling:

The Merry Jongleur by Moonmaiden

World Juggline Day 2007 by Moonmaiden

The World Juggling Day 2007 hub has more resources for jugglers! More than I was familiar with, so have a look and see what you think.