Finally last night I managed to get a second 1 hour practice in for the day... sweet! I danced to psytrance at first and found that it was really making me feel a bit bristled and tense, so I switched to an entirely different type of music I can only classify as a journey. Andreas Vollenweider's "Book of Roses". His music, which feature a modified electric harp, takes me on a journey to another place and time... literally, it is as if it is the soundtrack of a life you didn't know you had lived in another world and another time. It was very light and airy and bouncey and classical sounding at moments, with African chanting at other moments... with the sounds of the pages turning between tracks which were like chapters in a book. Suddenly my whole dance and body lightened up. I went naturally up onto my toes and began making long sweeping movements with my legs, dancing with my hoop more than in it. Suddenly my hoop was a basket of roses held at my hip and I imagined I was reaching in with the other hand and scattering rose petals everywhere... I couldn't help but smile and dance and I skipped around the room like a mad fool. The challenges from my day evaporated and I got so lost in the moment. My hoop became my true partner, and we danced together. Afterwards I took the longest candlelit bath and slept like a baby for 10 hours.
This morning I tried beginning my hour practice with the same music and it was too slow and ambient.. my body was aching for faster music. Because it was next to the soundsystem I put in Paul Oakenfold.... the repetative beats were an ok ride, not great but at least different. It was a challenge... I kept looking in at the clock to see the time. My mind kept movng to tasks for the day, but I stuck with ut for 55 minutes and worked up a little lather. Played with alternating floats with breaks in between, lasso and wildwest drills with breaks in strange repetative patterns, two hoops (unitl I knocked the orchid), a neat elbow hooping to the floor and transitioning up into Yoga warrior pose while the hoop still swung on my elbow (that was neat). Otherwise, I just encouraged myself to keep going by dancing through all my body's joints, imagining that my hands were birds flying, trying some pop and lock moves with the music and a few isolations.
While hooping, I realized how good it feels to have a regular practice you can count on and push through, no matter what your day is like or how you feel. It reminds me of how much nourishment I got from my daily meditation/visualization practice which I had done with such regularity some months back, but now have backburnered. I can't wait to have time to begin that again. While meditating, visualizing and praying daily, I remember realizing it was the singlemost important thing I could gift myself with.
There seem like there are only so many hours in the day! How to balance daily hoop practice, 8 hours of office work for HoopGirl, a relationship, healthy meal preparation, meditation practice, going ot the gym, reading, walking, having fun, cleaning and chilling! There is so much I want to experience in every day. For now, I am working on bending my perceptions of time to slowly make more space in my life to do all the precious things that really matter.
Hawaii was such medicine. For 2 weeks straight we had nothing really we had to do and a gorgeous environment to simply restore and enjoy. I think I am going to go ahead and book our (or at least my) next trip back to Kaui for fall sometime (www.cheapflights.com is awesome, btw). Until then, I need to bring paradise and nirvana into my everyday experience in urban life. Aho!
Off to begin the day!
Today's picture is also from a shoot a few months ago by www.webbery.com