Witold (Witek) Gawlik: The Engineer & The Slackliner

Choosing engineering as a career seems to be rational. I wanted to contribute to the low carbon future of our planet and especially the one of my motherland, Poland. By contrast, choosing to walk on the line as a hobby seems weirder, less sensible and maybe exclusive to some circus showmen. I didn’t plan it. I didn’t expect to like it at first. I just wanted to try it. Since my roomie got overexcited watching that on YouTube, he bought a simple slackline set and wanted to repeat the crazy balance magic that he had seen. The first time was tough. I couldn’t walk even 5 meters on the line, but the seed was planted. I loved the feeling of struggling for a balance and I’ve noticed that with time it requires less effort. I wanted more, soon I wanted longer and higher. I started to hang out with people that were also passionate about this sport that was unpopular at the time but slowly began to grow in the coming years. Natural progression leads to the will of doing it on elevation. I tried a midline, which is the line on not a very large elevation. (You must know that even being secured with a harness, a leash and doubled line for safety, your survival instinct pulls you back. The vastness of the space around, the narrowness of the line make your subconscious whisper, “you are about to die”. The fear is not that straight forward to overcome.) When you think you are a pretty badass in the park, then you bring it a few meters up and, unfortunately, you realize you must learn from scratch. I was taming that fear. I joined a few festivals, I practiced between the building in the town square of Lublin at the Urban Highline Meeting, I walked between the mountains of Italian Dolomites and at the French Riviera Highline Meeting. I overcame my fear of height on the short highlines to discover later that I am still afraid, even paralyzed on longer and higher highlines. I would love to come back to highlining, I consider it as an essence of slacklining and even a way to refine ourselves. 

I came back closer to the ground. I started to connect my yoga skills with slacklining. Holding yoga poses on the line is an amazing feeling. Yoga is my other passion. I also love outdoor activities, hiking, climbing and recently, endurance sports. This year, I ran my first two sprint triathlons (750m swimming, 20km cycling, 5km run). 

I would like to mention that besides my sports activities, I run a blog and a YouTube channel to help people with mental illness in Poland. I went through sufferings of schizoaffective disorder. I got sick when I was 17. Now, after over a decade, I have opened up to people about this disorder. I want to confront stigmatization of people with mental illness and also psychiatry itself. I try to give hope to ones with similar problems to mine and emphasize the significance of pharmaceutical therapy. I’m surprised with the positive feedback and appreciation from my viewers. I believe that in Poland this kind of education and awareness is very much needed since mental health is still a tremendous taboo.  

I believe that walking on slackline also improves my mental balance in addition to the physical one.