How to juggle

Start with one ball in your less dexterous hand. Hold the ball out in front of you with your elbow bent confortably at about 90 degrees.

Throw the ball to you other hand such that the ball reaches apogee at about eye-level. Catch the ball and throw it back to the first hand.

Do this a few times, back and forth, trying to keep your hands in roughly the same position. This sounds stupid, but just do it. Do you know how to juggle? Do you want to know how to juggle? Then do it.

Next start with a ball in each hand. With your less dexterous hand, throw a ball as before. When the ball reaches eye-level, throw the ball in your more dexterous hand. Try to catch both balls.

Do this for a while.

Now start with two balls in your less dexterous hand and one in the other. Throw two balls, just as before, then when the second ball you threw is at eye-level, throw the third ball. Don't panic and for goodness sake DON'T TRY TO CATCH THEM, just let them fall. They should hit the ground in a pleasing, even pattern:

plop - plop - plop
as opposed to
plopplop ... ... plop
or some other variation.

Do this until you get bored.

Now start trying to catch them. This is the tricky part just try to catch all three balls, don't re-throw them. When you can catch all three without running around too much, start re-throwing the balls as you catch them.

Juggling is just one of those things that your muscles and nerves learn, like riding a bike. This means that you will practice and not be able to juggle, and practice some more and not be able to juggle, then you will wake up one morning and suddenly you will be able to juggle.

There is absolutely no physical reason why any able bodied human shouldn't be able to juggle three balls with their two hands after reading the above write-up. What is really important is the psychological issue of how to convince your simple disbelieving human brain that it's possible and very easy indeed - and once you've studied the movements neccessary and start to practise you must :

Stop Thinking.

Deceivingly simple, your hands must become detached from your brain as soon as the very slow embryonic rhythm starts, you don't need to think how to catch a ball, or how to duck, or how to have sex in order to do it well (I hope!). You just do it.

So if you've tried many times at juggling and have always failed, try again, start slow as possible and then transfix your mind on a incident of deep thought, a past memory that makes you very angry is usually the best way to both concentrate the mind elsewhere and to get some adrenaline pumping - which should imperceptively speed up the rhythm without you noticing. Before you know it the movement of your hands will suddenly become somebody else's problem.

Thinking Only Makes Life Complicated.