What Can a Slack Liner Teach Kids About Balance

¶ … Liner: A Role Model for Kids

A slack liner is a person who has to have balance, poise, determination, and self-confidence as he walks across a slack line -- just like a tight-rope walker (Balcom, 2005). Such an individual embodies the qualities and characteristics that children and youths admire in older persons and why they themselves want to possess in a world that is constantly throwing them curve balls. In order to get used to the idea of facing obstacles and challenges in life, children and youths could learn a lot from watching a slack liner at work: they could learn about overcoming fears, keeping on proverbial "straight and narrow" in order to achieve one's goals and make it to the end. At the same time, slacklining can be a great way simply to exercise and stay in shape because it requires tremendous skill, concentration, focus and the ability to shift your body weight quickly and with precision (Lynn, 2014). Muscles are taught and calories are burned -- so this is another reason kids might look up to slack liners: they teach kids a great new way and reason to stay in shape and fight obesity, which has literally reached epidemic proportions in the United States (Frieden, Dietz, Collins, 2010). However, there are several other reasons that slack liners would make good role models for children and youths: for instance, there is a philosophical reason for kids to look up to a slack liner.

Take Jason Magness, for instance. Jason is a slack liner, who doesn't just use a slackline for staying in physical shape -- he also uses it for staying in mental shape as well. As Alter (2008) notes, slacklines can be a good way to meditate and increase one's transcendent abilities. This is what Magness does when he takes his slackline "into the wild" to sit atop it, Indian-style, in the posture of one absorbed in meditation. There, hovering above earth by a few feet and balanced on a thin slackline with arms out to either side, he can close his eyes, be away from all the sights and sounds, noise and traffic of modern society and meditate on a spiritual dimension that often is ignored in the rat-race of modern society (Alter, 2008).

Likewise, as Bolster (2007) reports, "Slacklining is really good for finding out where balance comes from." That is one reason yogis use it in their classes with students who want to learn the art of balance: it is not just a skill for walking or riding a bike -- it is also a mental skill that can teach people how to balance out their lives. And this is a lesson that young people especially can and want to learn: children can see from an early age how important it is to grow and develop into a capable adult. This is why they want to learn everything at such a young age -- why they are so curious about life and why they are so bold about walking up to strangers and watching without a single qualm about whether they are invading that person's space: kids have an innocence about them which makes their quest for knowledge and control all the greater. As Tough (2012) notes, "When kindergarten teachers are surveyed about their students, they say that the biggest problem they face is not children who don't know their letters and numbers; it is kids who don't know how to manage their tempers or calm themselves down after a provocation" (p. 17). A slack liner can be a terrific role model for kids because he represents the embodiment of self-control, balance, coordination, and management -- all things that children and youths want to have even if they do not know it.

Thus, philosophically speaking, a slack liner is one who demonstrates in a visual and physical way the importance keeping one's head on one's shoulders. Children have to learn what it means to maintain a mental order within themselves and the best way that children learn is through observation: they pick up what they see others do. Therefore, if they are in contact with a slack liner on a daily or weekly basis, they can learn the art of balance -- which is as much a mental skill as it is a physical one, and which is an essential characteristic of being able to meditate and block out all the distractions of the world. It would be akin to what Plato described as escaping the darkness and blindness of the Cave, where all men are chained by ignorance. Outside the Cave, the sun is shining from high above, attracting and leading the freed individual upward, up the mountain of Truth towards the light of Reason and Enlightenment. This is the essence of the philosophical journey that Plato wishes for everyman to take part in. Yet, if children do not learn how to possess themselves fully and with confidence at an early age, it will be harder for them to break free from the confines of ignorance and mental slavery in their adulthood, when curiosity and passion have dwindled under the weight of day jobs, responsibilities, commitments, and schooling. While they possess the qualities that prompt them to seek out knowledge as children, it would actually be highly beneficial for them to have a slack liner as a role model: they could learn firsthand what it means to overcome oneself and demonstrate the kind of poise and decisiveness needed to commit to that later philosophical journey recommended so long ago by Plato in order for men to arrive a truly a transcendental understanding of nature and of themselves.