“We’re not just a disability, we are people. It’s important to remain a person, first, and neutral about disability … It’s all about attitudes, right?”
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Clinging serpentine, upside down, to a silver pole in a mirrored studio, Taylor Bauer embodies her 2023 New Year’s resolution “to get some more movement but also do something in the community and make friends.”
Today Bauer uses the fitness pole as the centre of a routine that challenges every part of her body — literally keeping her on her toes.
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“There’s a lot more tactile components to it, holding on to something. Also the way you can engage with all your different muscles and get stronger,” she said in an interview before class at The Dance Studio in Leduc.
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“I think it’s just a lot of fun.”
Tail a-wagging, her CNIB guide dog, Wallace, watches from the sidelines before giving up on being useful at the moment and snoozing, head on paws.
Being somewhere between legally blind and totally blind hasn’t kept Bauer from anything she put her mind to. So far, that list includes having a baking business and buying her first house with her partner at age 20.
She earned a psychology degree from Concordia University.
But when pole fitness instructor Shawn Raymond told her she could “invert” and go upside down while clinging to the pole, Bauer was skeptical — right down to his offer of, “I’ll catch you.”
“But now I can do it, and that was like a huge milestone of learning how to do something different,” she said.
It’s a learned resilience.
Bauer was born with a rare condition in which a key part of her eyes didn’t develop.
“I don’t know any different. It’s just this is what it’s like for me,” she said.
She grew up in a farm setting, helping take care of critters like chickens and ducks, as did her siblings.
“My mother was very much of the mentality that I was just like my siblings, so figure it out and get through it,” she said.
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“It really set me up to understand that I’m not different than other people. Yes, maybe I see things differently. Maybe I might need accommodation here or there, but I’m not different than anybody else.
“That’s the way I’ve come to see myself,” she said.
Three ways to look at it
Bauer sees different approaches from some people who are sighted.
There’s the pedestal of “inspirationalization.”
“Oh, you have sight loss, you’re blind and you’re doing pole fitness — that’s amazing. I can’t believe you’re doing that, because you’re blind.”
(She’s not amazing, she’s doing the sport, just like anybody else.)
Then there’s the protective approach.
“Oh, you’re blind. So you can’t do that.”
Um, yes, she can.
Some people assume she’s faking blindness because she can make “eye contact.”
As program lead for awareness and community outreach with CNIB, handling advocacy work for Alberta and the Northwest Territories it’s technically Bauer’s 9-to-5 job to help the world understand that individuals who are blind literally put their pants on one leg at a time, just like everyone else.
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“I think there’s a lot of misrepresentation and misunderstanding out there about what sight loss or blindness is.
“We’re not just a disability, we are people. It’s important to remain a person, first, and neutral about disability. It’s all about attitudes, right?” she said.
“Usually that’s from the media or your teachers and your parents and people’s experiences, but usually it’s not from the source. So it’s often a skewed perception.”
When asking to get closer to be shown something again, she was once told she should get glasses so she could see better.
“Wow, I wish I would have known that was the solution because I would have been cured so long ago,” she quipped.
“But in seriousness, it just a lack of understanding, right? They just didn’t understand how sight loss works and once we explained that, they got it,” Bauer said.
Language without limits
There are idioms that can be hurtful to people who are blind, she said.
“If you’re telling a story of how your power went out last night and you had to go to the kitchen for some water, and it was dark, ‘so I was stumbling around blindly,’” she said.
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“’Stumbling around blindly’ essentially says people who are blind stumble and aren’t capable of getting around.
“We should be inclusive in our language and be aware of what needs to change,” she said.
In pole fitness class, it took just a little communication with instructor Shawn Raymond to make the instruction work for everyone, including Bauer.
“Taylor came in and said, ‘I just physically can’t see everything you do, so can you just be more descriptive?’” Raymond recalled.
“It was the easiest transition for me to do and honestly it’s made me a better instructor. too.”
For Raymond, learning to say what to do instead of just “watch what I do” had big payoffs, particularly among the people who learn more by hearing than just by seeing.
In many ways, Bauer represents the stereotype of a pole fitness enthusiast — young, attractive, fit.
But pole fitness is for everyone, Raymond said.
“Everybody can do this. Everybody,” he said.
“So many people would benefit from this because it’s low impact. It’s a really good way to also get range of motion flexibility.”
Barriers keeping people from enjoying physical activity are lies we tell ourselves to keep in our comfort zone, he said.
Raymond does admire Bauer for committing to a New Year’s resolution and sticking with it.
“I’ve had clients with far more limiting mental barriers — barriers where they say ‘I can’t do it, I hurt my wrist 25 years ago,’” Raymond said.
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