Music Makes the Difference

I've spent a lot of my hooping time practicing my movements without any music on. It's not so much that I intended for things to work out that way as it is that I was just concentrating so hard on getting the moves "right" that I didn't even remember to put the music on. And, if I looked way down deep inside, there was probably a bit of "I'm not a real dancer, so I shouldn't put on music" going on.

If that is you, let me invite you, with a big smile, to turn on the music and let yourself play.

Most of us are drawn to hooping because we want to dance. Dancing involves movement, sure, even precise movement. But it also involves music, and flow--both the physical and psychological kinds.

When I put on some music, it makes an enormous difference in my hooping. Instead of methodically practicing my waist and hip hooping and counting drops over and over, I start putting together movements, making up transitions as I go. Do I trip over myself sometimes? Sure. But the difference in how I feel while I'm doing it can't be denied.

One thing that's great about hooping is that it works equally well with slow or fast music, so whether you're a fan of dreamy new age tunes or bouncy hip hop or trippy electronica or just plain old pop, hooping will go with your groove. It's going to add passion, expression, and a vital ingredient for flow to your hooping sessions. Sometimes it might help to turn off the music to concentrate on getting specific moves down, just don't forget to turn it back on!

Some of my current favorites for getting my hoop on, in no particular order:

"A View to a Kill" Duran Duran
"Lights (Bass Nectar Remix)" Ellie Golding
"Artsy (EDit's Remix)" The Grouch
"Discipline" Nine Inch Nails
"Tear it Up" Young Wun Feat. DMX, Lil' Flip, & David Banner
"Too Close" Alex Clare
"Tigerlily" La Roux
"Derezzed" Daft Punk
"Make it Bun Dem" Skrillex and Damian "Jr Gong" Marley

If you have some awesome songs to hoop to, feel free to share them in the comments!
_________________________________________________________________________________

Drop Update: It's been awhile since I've updated, but I'm proud to say I've kept up with the hooping. There's been some inconsistency due to a hectic schedule, but my current drop count is a healthy 240! I've also hit two personal milestones. On the 9th, I hooped outdoors for the first time ever, which was a lot of fun. On the 19th, while making some tea, I started hooping. The water came to a boil and the kettle was shrieking, so I instinctively started walking to the kitchen--while still hooping! Now it's not physically possible for me to fit the hoop through the doorway to the kitchen, but for a few steps there, I was walking and hooping at the same time, a brand new skill for me! Hooray!

The Dreaded E Word

I don't like exercise.

No, let me correct that. I HATE exercise.

There's nothing that bothers me quite like expending my energy with no goal in sight. If I walk, I am walking to a place, or walking to see something. Not running around a track or on a treadmill like a hamster in a wheel. When I "lift weights", it's likely because I'm rearranging my household furniture...or my book collection.

Exercise is hard, exercise is boring, exercise is repetitive and monotonous. It makes you sweaty, it makes you sore, it makes your heart pound too hard and your sides hurt and your shins split. It makes you look like an idiot while passers-by gawk at you and laugh at your flabby, out-of-breath, red-faced self.

So let's not call hooping "exercise". Let's call it "dancing". Let's call it "meditation". Let's call it "flow art". Let's call it "play".

It's a lot easier to get past all those mental blocks to the dreaded e-word when there's a neat new trick I want to learn. Don't get me wrong: it doesn't mean that hooping isn't hard, or that it won't ever make me frustrated, out of breath, red-faced, and awkward looking. But maybe, just maybe, because it doesn't have any association with anything from my past, and all those negative experiences that me, the gym, and the big nasty E have had together...then maybe, it can be something new.

Maybe it can be fun.

Just remind me of that next time I whack myself upside the head with the hoop as I attempt to lift it off my body in a graceful spiral. Because it may not happen this time, and it may not happen next time, but somewhere in the midst of all those mis-timed grabs and painful drops is going to come that one beautiful moment when I take up the hoop just as I intended and make it describe a spiral around my body. Like magic.

I remember being in second grade, and having some time to myself at my desk. I had a stack of crayons next to me. I picked up my favorite, the purple crayon, and began trying to draw stars. Lots of people I knew could draw stars. I just couldn't seem to get the hang of it.

That day, something clicked. The stars aligned, literally. I made a star. And then another. And another. More and more, until I'd filled the front and the back of the sheet, so afraid that I would forget the intricate little pattern, so determined to remember. The motion of drawing a star actually takes your hand around in a tiny circle. If you do it over and over again, it's like hooping for your fingers.

Movements in hooping are like that. There will be so many times when you get it wrong, and everyone you see around you is getting it right. Why can all of them do it? Why can't you? Why won't it click? Yes, you know you're not supposed to judge yourself, you're not supposed to compare, you're supposed to relax and let it happen. Then suddenly, when you've forgotten about it, when you're not even paying attention, when you don't expect yourself to do that trick, your hand just reaches in at the right moment and picks up the hoop and suddenly it's finishing this gorgeous spiral right above your head, and you did it, and you didn't even smack yourself or knock over any furniture!

So let's not call hooping exercise. It's too magical for that.
_________________________________________________________________________________

Drop Update: My count is at 179, despite persistent crankiness, stress, and near-injuries. I learned not one, but two new tricks today--the other being the ability to roll the hoop out in front of me and make it come back as if pulled by an invisible string. Not bad for less than two weeks of hooping, eh?

The Hooping Manifesto: Hooping is Our Meditation

Out of all the tenets of the Hooping Manifesto, it's not surprising to me that I find myself wanting to examine this one first. I'm definitely one of those people who lives more in my head than in my body, and activities of the mind are my comfort zone. With a background in both ritual magic and Yoga (not at the same time, but that would be interesting!), I'm used to things like meditation, movement as a form of meditation, and sacred circles. I'm also a big fan of walking labyrinths as a meditation practice.

Something I've really become present to in the last few days of practice is that the hoop is my "sacred space". In ritual magic and certain religious practices, we designate sacred space as a place that is separate from our everyday concerns. In preparing it, we prepare ourselves for the working to be done, whether that is prayer and worship, self-improvement, healing, learning, or building up our spiritual community. Many see that space as a sacred circle, or sphere, encompassing us, providing protection, and delineating the boundary between the mundane world and the spiritual, magical world.

A Yoga mat is also its own type of sacred space. You bring your positive intentions to the mat, and you release your day to day concerns while you are on the mat. You learn to show up at the mat consistently as you create a daily Yoga practice that helps to sustain you.

A hoop is a very concrete way to represent sacred space. It's your own little boundary that surrounds you wherever you dance. You are its center and it contains only you (well, unless you're doing duo hooping, but that's another topic!).

Remember that bit in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back where Luke and Yoda are on Dagobah, and Luke is about to enter the cave in the forest as part of his training to become a Jedi Knight? Luke asks Yoda what is in the cave, and Yoda tells him "only what you take with you". Those were very wise words that are applicable to any kind of spiritual or meditative experience. What is inside the hoop? Only what you take with you.

I have discovered that I take lots of worries, judgments, and negative ideas about myself into the hoop. It's the sort of baggage we all carry from our pasts, where the unkind words of others stung too deeply, and taught us to hold on to the negative and worry about it coming to pass in one giant feedback loop of suffering.

Slowly, I have been working with the hoop to let go of these thoughts, at least for the span of time I'm hooping. I start by sitting down inside my hoop to do warm up stretches. As I stretch, and breathe, I remind myself of certain truths, inside my protected realm, my sacred circle, my hoop. You could call them affirmations, although I don't treat them quite so formally as that. Whenever worries, fears, judgments, or negative past experiences come up to bite me, I remind myself that they are not allowed inside my hoop. Sometimes I even visualize them bouncing off of its shiny sides. Boing! (It's easier to let go of nasty thoughts when you can laugh at them!) Usually by the time I'm warmed up and ready to dance, I have forgotten about all those negatives that were weighing me down. I'm free to find my flow. And that's what it's really all about.
_________________________________________________________________________________

Drop Update: Today I have dropped the hoop a total of 12 times so far, bringing my total to 148. I'm feeling less pain in my left hip, and doing a lot more stretching both before and after my hooping. I'm also taking my time with the stretching, really slowing down and letting it become part of my meditative hooping practice.

The Unexpected Physical Downsides of the Hooping Habit

This wouldn't be a blog about my journey if it didn't share both the good and the bad. I'm not a fitness instructor trying to sell anyone classes, DVDs, or hoops, and I'm not trying to evangelize for the Holy Path of the Hoop. There are negative aspects, and as I explore this path and share what I experience, these aspects belong here too. As I explore these negatives, though, I'm looking forward to progressing and finding solutions.

I've Got the Moves Like NASCAR: Ideally, you're supposed to practice hooping in both directions, or currents, as some like to call it--that is, pushing the hoop in a clockwise direction and also pushing it in a counterclockwise direction. After all, you'd be a pretty awkward dancer if you could only ever turn to one side. Unfortunately, I'm a NASCAR kind of hooper, and I can only turn in one direction, at least for any amount of time. When I push my hoop the other way, it only stays up for a few seconds before falling down to my feet. On the upside, this does get me closer to my 10,000 drops goal sooner! From everything I've heard, it's pretty common for a hooper to have a dominant current, and it just means that you need to do some extra work on the side that's harder for you until things even out.

Sore Hips: I'd heard rumors, complaints, and horror stories about bruising of various areas of the body due to hooping. Fortunately, I haven't experienced that yet. What I have acquired, though, is a terribly sore spot right where my left hip connects to my body. It's very tender when I hoop, and if I'm ever foolish enough to lay down on that side when I go to bed, then lord have mercy! Having a day here and there off of hooping doesn't seem to be helping either. Maybe if I could actually learn to hoop in the other direction, my other hip could bear some of the abuse...

Hoop Moving Unevenly: The thing all those lovely fitness instructors don't tell you in their videos is that if your hoop is not rotating around a relatively smooth and flat surface (aka a washboard stomach) then it's not going to move as smoothly as it does on your TV screen. If your surface (your stomach) is, shall we say, less than even, then your hoop rotation is also going to be...less than even. Hopefully this problem will work itself out as I continue towards my goal and shed unwanted pounds.

No Stamina: You may think that hooping is going to be so fun that you just won't be able to set it down. You may even love hooping so much that you don't want to set it down. But if you're out of shape and hoping that hooping will make exercise magically easy, I've got news for you: it doesn't. I always have to set down the hoop before I want to stop.

Nothing worth doing is ever going to be easy--at least not at first. But I have noticed something magical about those little numbers on my spreadsheet, the ones that record how many times I've dropped the hoop and gotten closer to my goal: they're always going up. Each day, I'm just a tiny bit more fit than I was before, and that is what will get me the stamina I need to hoop for as long as I want to. That is what will give me a more "even surface". That is what will reduce the soreness of my hip, or at least make both of them equally sore. And that is what will give me the moves like Jagger, instead of the moves like NASCAR!

P.S. If this entry has you down, you might want to go take a look at my earlier entry about the Unexpected Physical Benefits of Hooping--it has its perks too!
_________________________________________________________________________________

Drop Update: Today I've dropped the hoop 8 times so far, bringing my total to 136. I've added more stretching to my routine to try to help alleviate some of the problems listed in this entry. I'm also looking forward to adding more Yoga to my exercise routine, to give me more flexibility for my time in the hoop. More on all that later!

The Unexpected Physical Benefits of the Hooping Habit

Even this early into my hooping practice, I've found a lot of unexpected physical benefits to hooping. Of course hooping can help you tone up and lose weight, but that takes more than a few days. Have you ever seen that infographic illustrating the benefits smokers receive after putting down the cigarette for minutes, hours, days, weeks, and months? It's like that, except that these are benefits to creating a habit instead of kicking one! Now creating a habit takes time (some say 21 days). But after only a few days of hooping, I've already enjoyed these benefits:

Energy boost: I work from home and I spend my entire day sitting in front of the computer. Not only can this cause health problems, it can also just make you get really sluggish. I found myself feeling tired and having trouble concentrating several times a day. Now at the first hint of the midday Zs, I make myself pick up my hoop. A few minutes later, with my heart thumping and my body moving, I feel alert for hours afterwards.

Loosening up cramped muscles: All that sitting leads to cramped muscles, everything from my hips to my back, to my shoulders and neck. On especially tense days, I even get headaches from holding myself so stiffly. Getting up and moving every so often allows me to loosen up, relax, and give those muscles a rest while working out other ones.

Lower back massage: When your lower back is a little sore from sitting all day, the gentle motion of the hoop crossing your body can give a little massage to your lower back and hips. It's really nice, try it!

Dissipating stress: This is more than purely physical, but stress does have a lot of physical symptoms. Adrenaline of the anxiety-producing sort pools in your body in all sorts of nasty little ways. I notice it particularly in my hands, stomach, and jaw--it can feel like trembling or tension. Hooping alleviates this by giving you an outlet for all that fight-or-flight energy.

I'm sure there are many new benefits to come that I will discover as I continue my hooping journey. Even still, these positive outcomes alone would be worth it for me!
_________________________________________________________________________________

Drop Update: I missed my first two (non-consecutive) days due to some nasty food poisoning! (Unfortunately, alleviating a sour stomach doesn't seem to be among hooping's many benefits.) Despite that, I am up to 113 drops and still hooping strong.

Hooping on Pinterest

Pinterest is a great place if you're visually-oriented, like me. There are pictures and videos of just about anything you can imagine, and links to great stuff like tutorials, recipes, articles, and just plain awesome websites that people want to save for one reason or another. I love the way that Pinterest allows me to associate images with bookmarks. I can't tell you how many times I've looked at my bookmarks list wondering what the hell it was I saved 6 months ago. Pictures stick in my mind so much better.

Hooping is a great match for Pinterest since it creates such beautiful images. There are lots of videos shared of performances and tutorials, and there's also lots of posts from that Tumblr, Hooping Problems (Also includes hooping perks!). (My most relatable Hoop Problem? Explaining those scuff marks on your ceiling!)

I have a bunch of ideas for using Pinterest for all things hooping:

Use it to sort tutorials: Maybe a board for tutorials you've tried and tutorials you're planning to try, or a board for tutorials recommended to you by friends. You could also save them on a board to use as a kind of "playlist" for your practice sessions.

Costume Ideas: This doesn't have to be restricted to the outfits you've seen other hoopers wear. There's all kinds of fashion, style, and costume inspiration on Pinterest. You could save all your concepts to one board, or you could sort them by ideas for different outfits.

Motivation: There's no shortage of inspiring quotes, pictures, and videos on Pinterest. You can gather them all together in a board to inspire you when you're low, or keep you going when you're running strong.

Inspire Routines: There's a lot of ways Pinterest can help inspire your choreography, whether it's by saving videos of other great performances, music that you love, images of cool tricks, or even more abstract ideas, such as a collection of images that you personally associate with a particular emotion or piece of music.

I maintain a Hooping board over on Pinterest. You're welcome to come on over and follow, and I'll be happy to follow you back. Comment on this post to share your board so that I can add you!
_________________________________________________________________________________

Drop Update: This morning I've dropped the hoop 5 times, bringing my total to 41. I've started to notice some unexpected physical benefits from hooping--more on that in a future entry!

Hooping Goals

Drop Update: So far today, I have dropped the hoop 6 times. In exciting news, on my final drop, I kept the hoop going around my lower legs for just a few moments--a leg hooping first for me! Hooray!

_________________________________________________________________________________

The hooping journey has a lot of milestones. Some of them are visible to others, and some of them take place inside of you. This entry is like the itinerary for a vacation. It has the highlights that I know about, places I plan on visiting. What it can't contain is the surprises along the way, the discoveries I make, the turns I never expected to take that lead to someplace wonderful that I've never heard of.

Hoop in public: I live in a tiny apartment, and it can be difficult to hoop indoors, as the scuff marks on my ceiling can attest! But I've avoided hooping in the parking lot behind my building, in parks, etc, because I don't want anyone to watch me while I hoop. I hope that as I grow in skill and confidence, as well as acceptance of my body, to be able to hoop in public without worrying what anyone thinks of me.

Take hooping on a vacation with me: This is kind of an extension of hooping in public. I'd like to get a travel hoop (one that can be broken down and then reassembled) to take with me on a trip, and I'd like to hoop in some special and unique locations, ideally with a friend there to take my picture! From another perspective, I'd like for hooping to be such an integral part of my life that it's natural to take it with me wherever I go.

Record myself hooping: Just as I've been shy about hooping in public, I've been camera-shy too. But as SaFire says, "document, even if you don't ever plan to share". I want to record my progress so that I can look at it, so that I can go back and celebrate my personal victories, and yes, if I ever decide I want to, so that I can share with others.

Complete a 30 Day Hooping Challenge: This is a challenge hosted by Hooping.org where you commit to hoop for 30 minutes a day for 30 consecutive days, and to post about it on your blog after each session. You can also check in on the Hooping.org Facebook page for community support and sometimes even prizes. It's something I've always meant to do, and this journey is the perfect time to turn it into something I have done.

Make my own hoop: There's all kinds of hoops out there. Glittery, collapsible, folding, LED, fire. All different sizes and weights. I imagine that once I've been hooping for awhile I'll probably develop my own preferences, and it'll be a great time to create exactly the right hoop for me. Plus, who knows, I may decide hoop making is an awful lot of fun!

Get a special hooping outfit: This one is pure fun. Who doesn't love to play dress up? It also reflects the new person I'm becoming on my hooping journey.

Go to a hooping festival/retreat/jam: There's all kinds of great hooping related events out there, and I can't wait to go to some!

Make hooping friends: Hopefully this will be a result of the last one--meeting great new people who love to hoop too.

Hoop with fire: This is the big one, my dream for years now. I love fire, I love flow arts, and I can't wait to finally combine the two. When I've gained enough skill and confidence as a hooper, I'll finally be able to try it with fire.

Who knows what else I'll find along the way? I'll have to journey on to find out!