Chapter Four: Learning to Leap

That day in Brighton had cracked something open. The numbness was gone, replaced by a question: what if I could turn that one impossible moment into a muscle? That’s how an improbable dream became more than a stunt — it became a way to practice trust on purpose.

It started, as so many of my transformations have, with heartbreak. I’d worked so hard to build a life that looked stable: a new country, a good career, a home I bought on my own. It wasn’t perfect. I was lazy sometimes. I watched too much TV, spent too many nights gaming. My back often hurt from sitting all day, and all the way back when I was twenty-six, I’d already had surgery to fix it — which didn’t really fix it.

So when those words landed — I don’t find you attractive anymore — something inside me didn’t just hurt; it snapped. There are moments in life that split you open — the kind where a single sentence divides everything into before and after. A kind of sliding-door moment: you can step through, take the train to somewhere entirely new… or you can stay, and slowly dissolve into the background.

I’m nothing if not stubborn. And even though I was shattered, something fierce lit up in me — a fire I can still feel when I think back on it. In the days that followed, my friends rallied around me. I said yes to everything — dinner invitations, nights out, anything that would keep me moving, breathing, tethered. But inside, I was lost. Untethered in a way I’d never been before.

Then one night, a friend invited me to a variety show — a kind of modern circus with acrobatics, music, and dance. I went mostly to escape the silence of my empty house. But sitting there, in that London theatre, something unexpected happened. I watched people fly — literally. Bodies flipping, twisting, landing in perfect balance. They looked alive in a way I hadn’t felt in years.

And then, one performer — casually, effortlessly — did a backflip. Just stood there and flipped backward, as if gravity were a suggestion. It was ridiculous. And it lit something in me. In that instant, I decided: I want to learn how to do a backflip. Not only want — I will. I could feel it like a vow forming in my bones. When I decide something, that’s it. I wouldn’t bet against me for anything.

It was a ridiculous goal, considering my track record. As a kid, I was the opposite of sporty. Terrible hand-eye coordination. It took me six years to learn to ski. But still — I’d made up my mind.

The hardest part, honestly, was telling my friends. When I finally said it out loud — that I was going to learn to backflip — some of them laughed. Not cruelly, just incredulously. They thought I was joking. But I wasn’t. And when I didn’t laugh back, something shifted in the air between us. It was that kind of silence when people realized: Oh, you’re serious.

They probably thought I was a bit insane — and maybe I was. But that was the point. I needed something impossible to pull me out of heartbreak. Something that required every ounce of courage and control I thought I didn’t have. So I made a list — a tether list, I called it. And at the top of that list was one goal: Learn to Backflip.

I even posted it publicly — which, for me, was a big deal. I didn’t use social media much, but I wanted accountability. I wanted the world, or at least my small circle of fifty or so followers, to know I’d said it out loud. That way, I couldn’t quietly quit. I had even told my dream to Prince Charming that day back in Brighton, hoping to impress him, hoping he’d track my progress. I told him we would meet again in that park. And that right there, I would do a backflip in front of him — on grass.

At first, I focused on the basics — physics, gravity, and the kind of simple math that says: if you want to jump high enough to flip, it’ll help to weigh less. So I worked on my body. Diet. Movement. Core strength. Within a few months, I lost around fifteen to twenty kilograms. But the weight loss wasn’t the victory — it was the momentum.

Then came the real challenge: the flip itself. YouTube became my coach — and my nemesis. Half the videos were tutorials. The other half were compilation reels of backflip fails. It was terrifying.

So I started where it felt safe: a trampoline park in Stratford. When I was a kid, we had a trampoline in the backyard, and I used to spend hours out there — jumping, twisting, pretending I was weightless. I could already do a front flip, both on a trampoline and off a diving board. So I figured, how hard could a backflip be?

Turns out — harder than it looks. The human body doesn’t like moving in directions it can’t see. That’s the built-in safety mechanism. To flip backward, you have to override millions of years of evolution screaming don’t.

But I kept going. Three or four times a week, I made the forty-five-minute trip across the city. Each session, I’d film my attempts on my phone so I could study them later — not to judge, but to witness my own progress. About a month in, it happened. I remember standing on the trampoline, heart pounding. I’d watched a video where the instructor said something like: “To do a backflip, just jump as high as you can — and then lean back. Your body will do the rest.”

It sounded insane. But I decided to trust it. I took a few bounces to find my rhythm. Then counted — one, two, three — and let go. For a split second, everything vanished: the noise, the doubt, even the air. Then the world spun — and I landed on my feet. I’d done it.

I remember squealing — actually squealing — jumping up and down like a kid. I was so shocked it worked that I did a spontaneous front flip on the way to stop the camera. It was ridiculous, pure joy, unfiltered.

But of course, I wasn’t done yet. A trampoline wasn’t the goal. I wanted to do it on grass.

That next step was… less graceful. I moved my training to a foam pit. On one of my attempts, I under-rotated and smacked the back of my head on the edge of the foam pit. A few hours later, I was in the hospital getting it glued shut. It slowed me down for a few months — but it didn’t stop me. I rocked a hat look while my head healed, then got back to work.

Because by then, something deeper had shifted. The backflip wasn’t just a skill anymore — it was a symbol. A metaphor for everything I’d been too afraid to try.

That’s when I found Davide — a gymnastics coach who ran a studio in London dedicated to teaching adults how to reclaim the joy of movement called OverGravity. The school’s philosophy was simple: It’s never too late to learn how to play. When I told Davide my story — heartbreak, trampoline, the hospital — he didn’t laugh. He just nodded and said, “You can absolutely do this.” He taught me the drills, the physics, the shapes — how to translate the trampoline’s bounce into ground rotation.

And after three years of work, sweat, bruises, and doubt, the day came. Outside, on the grass, I took a breath, bent my knees, and jumped. And I did it. No mat, no coach spotting me — just me, the earth, and the air. I landed it clean. I screamed so loud people probably thought I’d won the lottery.

And in a way, I had. Because that was the moment — the exact heartbeat — when I learned something extraordinary: if I could do that, if I could teach my body to fly backward through fear, then I could do anything.

It wasn’t really about the backflip anymore. It was about trust — learning to leap when every instinct screamed to stay grounded. I stood there on that patch of grass, out of breath and laughing, and something inside me clicked. I realised I had just done something I once thought was impossible. And if I could do that, what else might be possible?

That question has followed me ever since. Because here’s the secret no YouTube video tells you: the hardest part of a backflip isn’t the technique — it’s the surrender. It’s that single instant between the takeoff and the rotation when you have no control, no footing, no guarantee of where you’ll land. You just have to trust your body. You have to trust that all the tiny, invisible lessons — the drills, the bruises, the micro-corrections — will come together in that one miraculous second when gravity lets you pass.

And that, I’ve come to realise, is the same trust life asks of us again and again. To leap into the unknown. To trust the momentum we’ve built. To believe that even if we can’t see where we’ll land, something in us already knows how to.

That backflip was more than movement — it was memory. It was every moment I’d ever played it safe suddenly inverting itself. Every “what if” turned into “watch me.” And when I landed, I felt something I’d never felt before: unconditional self-love. Not pride. Not ego. Just love — pure, simple, earned. I’d spent so many years chasing external validation: promotions, partners, praise. But nothing compared to that one quiet moment where I looked at myself and thought, You did it. You are enough.

It was the first time I could truly look in the mirror and mean it. I had transformed my body, yes. But what mattered was that I had transformed my belief in myself. Because the backflip taught me the real lesson: the leap itself is the point. The outcome is almost irrelevant. Landing clean is just a bonus. The victory is in trusting yourself enough to jump.

Every time I do it now — even years later — that same spark flares inside me. I bend my knees, exhale, and feel the whisper rise up: Lean back. Trust. You already know how to fly.

⸻

It’s funny how heartbreak became the doorway to everything that followed — the app that would become Aura, this book, the Shimmer, the leap into an entirely new life. If I hadn’t been told I wasn’t attractive, I might never have learned how beautiful it feels to move freely through fear. Sometimes, the hardest words we hear are the ones that finally set us free.

That day I landed my first backflip, I stopped living to avoid pain — and started living to feel alive. I’d leapt backward through fear and landed in self-trust. And once you know that feeling — that click of inner Alignment — it’s impossible to forget.

But knowing you can leap and believing you can shine are two different muscles. I’d learned to trust the unknown. Now the Shimmer wanted me to trust the light.