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.)