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!
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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!

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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!

Hooping Inspiration: The Hooping Manifesto

A lot of great hoopers have inspired me to go for this goal of mine, but probably the biggest influence is a hooper by the name of SaFire. She's a hooper from Canada who has turned her passion into a career, as well as into one of the best known online hooping communities, HoopCity. In her Hooping Manifesto she shares a lot of great ideals to aspire to, and also shows how hooping can inspire us in all areas of our lives. Whenever I'm down, or unmotivated, or need a boost, I love to watch her video, "Love the Process". It's a compilation of her hooping progress over the years, and the lessons she's learned from it.


The two things she shares that have inspired this blog the most are "we only learn if we  drop, drop, drop..." and to "document, even if you never intend to share". In that spirit, one of my hooping goals is to eventually record myself hooping--but more on that later!

I plan to focus on and internalize the messages of the Hooping Manifesto as I take this journey, exploring the ways that hooping can lead me to more than just physical well-being, but well-being on every level of my self. Future entries will discuss different aspects of the manifesto and the way I experience them personally.

As of this entry, I have dropped 18 times today, bringing my total to 28. The great thing so far about counting drops is that instead of getting mad at myself each time I drop the hoop, I feel a little thrill as my count goes up, and I make progress. That's the best thing about the hooping manifesto for me. Let's keep hooping!

My Mission: Hoop Till I Drop...and Drop...and Drop...

This blog is designed to chronicle my progress towards a simple goal: I want to hoop until I've dropped my hoop 10,000 times.

What is hooping? Essentially, dancing with a hula hoop. Allow my hooping hero, Brecken Rivara, to demonstrate.

Pretty amazing, huh? So am I saying I can do that? Hell no! I'm just a beginning hooper. Which leads me to why I'm doing this. I've been a beginning hooper, a wannabe hooper, a person-who-has-a-hoop-and-pulls-it-out-once-every-six-months kind of hooper, for longer than I'd care to admit. I've also been carrying around a lot of extra weight, with all the health problems that entails, for even longer than I've been a wannabe hooper.

It's time for all of that to change.

When I saw what people like Brecken are capable of, I was inspired. When I saw that you can combine fire (yes, live flames!) with hooping, I knew it was something I just had to learn to do. I bought myself a starter hoop and two instructional DVDs, and had every intention of having hooping become the form of exercise I was too excited about to put down.

The road to the couch is paved with good intentions. The road to physical fitness is paved with work--even if that work wears a shiny hoop and jams to your favorite music. And the road to mastering any artform, including hoopdance, is paved with lots and lots of practice.

Enter the 10,000 drops challenge. I am going to hoop until I drop the hoop, again, and again, and again. I'm going to track every drop until I've dropped the hoop 10,000 times. By the end of it all, I may not be a pro hooper or a physical trainer. But I'm willing to bet I'll be a good bit healthier, happier, and better at hooping than I am right now. I'm going to use this blog to document and share my journey, and inspire myself to keep going.

Here are my ground rules for this journey:

1) There is no quota. There's no daily hoop number I have to hit, and some days I may not hoop at all. That's allowed. All that matters is that no matter what, I pick up the hoop again, and keep hooping, until I've dropped 10,000 times.

2) Any hooping is progress, and will be celebrated as such. I'm embracing the positive and letting go of the negative.

 3) Hooping matters more than posting. As long as I'm recording drops for the day, I'm not going to stress myself out about posting entries. But I will use this blog as a source of inspiration, motivation, and encouragement.

So here I go! Since I began counting, at 7:00pm today, I have dropped the hoop 10 times. Only 9,990 to go!