Episode #54: How Circus Can Change the Brain with Lacy Alana

My guest today is Lacy Alana. Lacy is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and trauma therapist who blends expressive arts with therapeutic tenets to help those who have endured trauma or are neuro divergent. Those are a lot of big words, I know, and saddle up because this interview contains many more. But Lacy does an excellent job in this interview of explaining the big words and showing the connection between the brain and the rest of the body, and how teaching circus can be healing. She gives tips that any circus instructor can use, even those who teach the general population. For more in depth information about the topics we cover in this interview, I highly suggest you go check out her blog at yesandbrain.com Please won’t you be a Patreon?: http://www.patreon.com/theartistathlete This podcast is dedicated to CIRCUS. Aerialist, Shannon McKenna interviews guests from acrobats in Cirque du Soleil to circus therapists and everyone in between. Learn the backstage lives of those who flip, twist, sparkle, and shine under the big top. Shannon McKenna is an internationally recognized circus performer and coach. For the past decade, she has been a freelance artist: giving workshops and classes across 7 countries and working on and backstage for both traditional and contemporary circus shows in the US, Portugal, Germany, and Australia. She holds a BFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts with a concentration on post-modern physical theater (how’s that for a mouthful?). She founded The Artist Athlete in 2018 as a means to produce educational materials for aerial artists and a podcast in which she interviews experts in the circus industry about their careers. If you’re reading this, you’re probably listening to it. Thank you! She currently lives in Atlanta, GA USA, but gravitates towards whichever circus community is the warmest. Find her online: www.theartistathlete.com Facebook: The Artist Athlete Instagram: @the_artist_athlete