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.
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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?