I'm an amateur aerialist with 5ish years' total experience and started as a 100% beginner in my 20s. There's one aerials question friends ask the most: “so, how did you get started?” TL;DR: I found a studio in my area that welcomes total beginners of all ages and sizes, got WAY better at showing myself kindness about challenges and making mistakes, and leaned into everything that made me daydream-y and excited about challenging myself physically and creatively. (Note: do NOT try to teach yourself or train aerials on your own as a beginner! Huge safety issue and responsible instructors won't recommend it. It's why I don't include equipment or rig recs on this list; a studio should provide those to you.) The part about giving yourself kindness, well, that's all you! But this list—with studios, training and performance wear; learning aids; and performances to get you inspired—puts the kind of info I would’ve loved to have had immediately when I got started in one place. Since my training's focused almost exclusively on lyra/aerial hoop this list is slanted that direction, but there are good things here regardless of what apparatus you're into! Let's help you get in the air for the first time (and hopefully me, currently on a long hiatus due to work stress and injury, in a good mindset to for when I get back in the air too.)

Unfortunately, many of us are still in the Senderella phase. I'm hoping this will help narrow things down for you. But do know, shoes and feet come and tons of different shapes and sizes. Don't give up! For every shoe that doesn't work, at least you can cross that off your list of hopefuls. You can try things on in your gym, from REI (great return policy so you can try on a bunch), or shoe demos. Be patient. And last but certainly not least, COMFORT IS KING. Your shoes SHOULD NOT be painful!! Uncomfortable at first? perhaps. But not pain. You are, in fact, trying to get some climbing mileage and I don't think Janja is staring at this list so, be comfy plz. Last fun fact: Try gear trade sites or REI reuse website for shoe deals and resoling more expensive shoes is always a nice option, as well! Feel free to comment/message me if you want more info.