Yesterday's hoop practice to some pumpin house music gave so many gems... warrior into isolations on each side, launching up on one foot with other toes pointed during reversals..top down and up style reversals, and more play with arm breaks using the space between arm and torso...these are still wobbly but feel like a sweet push. It felt so good to get back to it!

This morning I decided to combine my craving for metaphysical inspiration with an hour long hoop practice and I listened to a Kryon channeling from Mt. Shasta (www.kryon.com/cartprodima...asta06.html) while hooping. Interesting.. this was my first time actually listening to a channeling. I feel so clearly where my ego's edge's of rationality are pushed (like when he spoke of Pleaidians or Lemurians), but at the same time, something transmitting to me that feels profoundly opening. He lost me towards the end, but it didn't matter. Like any bit of information, I absorbed what nourished and let the rest go.

So I just kept breathing and focusing on the hoop. For the hour long hoop session, I learned about the 12 strands of human DNA and their interdimensional aspects. I've never really thought too deeply about the metaphysical aspects of DNA, at least not for a whole hour straight, so it was fantastic! It was actually a really fascinating combination to hoop in gyrokinetic spirals and listen to this information... I spent most of the session hooping in my outflow/second current on my legs or doing barrell rolls in my outflow. It felt really great. A fun experiment...

It was a good hour! I put on some strong music and immediately started dancing. I spent a lot of time in Snake, alternating drawing up one knee and then the other while letting my torso pulse to the music, reversing the direction of the hoop every now and then and trying to get the same fluid rhythm in my Outflow as in my Inflow. It was a sweet sort of hopping meditation while dancing around my little livingroom space. Did some one handed reversals as well, which I adore, while alternating the height of my body high then low. Also practiced alternate shoulder duck outs on each side, rotating the hoop around my shoulder blade. Also basically danced around, just feeling the beat and the music move me! I love that I am moving back towards daily practice again. Yum! So grateful.

For this morning's hour, I started my hoop practice with the primal tribal music of Tumbara, moved into trance-like sounds of Eric Prydz's "Call on me" and then ascended into "Celestial Music for Sitar". A very sweet practice. I have been enjoying a very simple repetative dance movement of hooping in Snake position, then alternating lifting one knee and then the other, reversing every now and then. It is quite enjoyable and I love how my breath deepens. I think I did this alone for over 30 minutes, sinking my awareness deeply into the micromovements of how high I lifted my knee, how I could expand my torso movements while hooping in my Outflow so it looked as effortless and dance-like as in my Inflow.

Then I played with the same drill from last Sunday which I enjoyed, with paddling/breaks which alternated with a sort of thigh sweep by each of my hands.. I had to take it easy on this one though. The reversals and paddling has been aching my arms, so I am trying to do it super gentle, as if the hoop was a delicate breakable object which has to be handled with extreme care. This will take time. My enthusiasm is ready to keep doing this move for hours.. my body asks for only 10 minutes or less per day, though.

Played for a moment with shoulder duck outs. I have been loving linking both shoulder duck outs together and alternating in each direction as well, but my sweet delicate house plants which were surrounding me asked me to hold off on this after the hoop fell on them the second time.

Then I just found myself transfixed in Snake in my Outflow direction. Usually I have to keep turning to allow the hoop to orbit on this side, but I planted my feet and was able to maintain orbit for a full 9 minutes with my small light hoop, and it felt great. It increased my awareness of where I can expand movement even more on my left arm.

Lovin it. Loving coming home to my own sweet practice time. These hours are by far the most important transformative hoop work that I do.

Wow, for whatever reason after about 40 minutes today I simply couldn't keep going... feeling so restless to get out into the sunshine! So I yielded. An interesting practice. The first whole 20 minutes were simply hooping on my legs in my outflow, non-stop. I tried adding shoulder shimmies and standing in one place instead of continually turning and that was a lot to master! Awareness im how I have been holding my spine, shoulders and arms... I never really thought about it much before today. While the hoop orbited my legs, I thought of extending my head high, opening my chest fully while taking deep breaths. i experimented with letting my arms dangle, versus actually holding them with poise along the sides of my body, versus touching my body, versus hands on the back of my sitz bones in fists so there were neat triangular shapes made by my arms. After that shoulder ducks outs on alternating shoulder blades in both the inflow and outflow.... one handed breaks and reversals with awareness on lifting opposite knees... off to the day!

It was a good hour and a half of hoop practice today. I have been working on one handed breaks while alternating my body height high and then squatting down low, and even launching into the air. It was awesome to be able to practice at Cell Space today, so I could really play with lots of tosses and alternating shoulder ducks outs without having to worry about my tender houseplants near my feet. Had some fun working with framing the catching of tosses, letting my body bend and arc around the hoop in neat shapes...

Lots of fun with forward leaps and realized that to pull this off from a toss, I need to grasp the hoop on the *outside* below side in order to have the right wrist angle to leap through. Also fun leaping with my less dominant hand holding the hoop, and alternating jumping in from both the right and left side. Had some neat challenges consistently trying to reverse every move I tried for a while, which led to a mysterious back and forth dance with the hoop which must have looked quite odd. Foot carries onto the body. Lots of eagle and chest rolls into jumps and jiffy pops. As usual, I played with Snake in both directions, punctuated by reversals and the hop-skip move to the beat of the music. Lots of fun breaks and reversals with the hand slithers down the side of my body. It adds a whole new element to the practice for me... a rhythm of sensation which is more complex -- Awareness on the fingers of my paddling hand pointing straight up at my heart while my left hand rubs my thigh, then comes up and pushes the hoop the opposite way while my right forearm pushes the hoop and my right hand darts down and rubs my right thigh, with my left hands fingers pointing straight up at my heart, then the sensation as my left forearm pushes the hoop while my right hand pushes the hoop the opposite way. Meanwhile, adding super low crouches with high jumps makes this this an exciting and sweaty poly-rhythmic experience! Lovin it! So grateful for daily practice.

I started off with Spunk in my outflow. Wearing shorts really is helping me learn to identify the exact point of contact in this other direction. My practice now consists of hooping as long as I can without turning... so theoretically I could be facing straight ahead indefinetely while hooping in either direction. When I first really started practicing this last July, I was consistently turning. Now I face in four directions for several beats of the hoop before turning and again standing still for a few more beats. Bringing lots of awareness to my posture. Head high, shoulders back and down, heart open. Arms consciously held in position with hands on my sitz bones or tight at my sides. I just keep adding extra rotations each time. When the hoop is about to fall, I catch it with my hands and just push it in the inflow direction. I get used the the sensation of effortlessness again, notice the economy of movement in my legs, then go back into my outflow. Did this for a while.

Then back to Snake for a long time with hopping between reversals and lifting the other leg, and just dancing around.

Played with Zest in my outflow direction and it was another adventure... I notice that the timing is slightly off to get into the pocket on the music. Barrel Roll with Snake with reversals and leg lifts is fun.

The interesting thing is that I can do drills in my outflow just fine, but then if I put on a bangin' piece of music and imagine I am performing entirely in my outflow, things have a wobble... a lack of predictableness and control which is challenging. It is a slight drag in response time which take more effort than my inflow. So I am determined to "perform" to at least one song in my outflow each practice time, to put all the elements of moves, expressiveness, precision and fun together.

I finally closed with vertical isolations, one and both handed in both directions. Then I remembered the UTube video about isolations and some moves Baxter did at our Burning Man camp, and found 4 primary ways I can "flip" the hoop during an isolation, before continuing to move it along it's track. With my hand gripped at the bottom, I can flip it so my hand is in the "up" position. I can do the opposite, and flip it from "up" to "down". I can also twist the hoop when my hand is at the top left or right. Finally, with my hand on the left or right side holding it very still, I can flip it in the other direction -- left or right. So much fun! There is a whole universe beckoning me in these hoop flipping isolations. It is very meditative for me.

Off to the day!

I wasn't sure how I could move my body to hoop this morning after the training this past weekend, but I watched a few Hoop Videos on tribe.net and managed to move the coffee table over and hop to it. It felt really good just to show up for myself, even though I had a story about being "tired". I did a lot of Ann's arm capture breaks, a few sets of floor touching breaks, lots of Outflow hooping in Snake position, just bumping and grooving to the music. It is interesting. I breathe deeply and try to get into my body but sometimes I just get so many creative ideas while hooping I have to pause and take notes! It is as if I just plug into a much bigger source of information. So I kept moving and feeling and enjoying brilliant thoughts when the visited, but mostly trying to come back to my body. I focused on dancing this morning, without needing to drill too much, do many moves or achieve anything. Showing up was enough.

This morning I got all revved up, went to the gym, sweated like crazy, lifted heavy weights, came home and watched some hoop videos, and took notes of what I wanted to work on. I felt so organized! Then my hoop started flying and all I could do was Spunk. I was fascinated by the sensation of the hoop going in my outflow direction on my legs, seeing how long I could stay facing the same direction while maintaining hoop spin, seeing how much I could shake and shimmy my shoulders. Then I would push it back in my inflow for a bit, then back to outflow again and again, until I realized I had been doing this one exercise alone for 32 minutes. Since my legs were quite flushed, I changed it up. I played with vertical isolations, rocking back and forth and flipping the hoop on different sides so it magically changed direction and flow. 17 minutes later, I felt done so I stopped. Such an interesting practice! I saved the notes for next time.

Today was not a "bad ass" day...

Whew! I started the day with 40 minutes on the Eliptical machine doing intervals at level 12! Not going to the gym for a while, I forget how intensely it pushes my edges. Honestly, taking walks in the morning or hikes or even casual hoop practice doesn't always take me to that place of "holding on for dear life" while my heart rate soars to 154. BUT, after working out in the gym for about a month I am able to crank up the volume on my hooping so it does take me there and I can sustain it.

It feels so good to just be so sweaty... breathing deeply and feeling all my muscles work makes me feel so strong and alive. After that I did lots of weights for my upper body (yesterday was lower body). Cruised home and hooped for 30 minutes, playing with hooping in my outflow in Spunk again. Also played with raising and lowering the hoop with one hand while turning and bringing my body close to the floor and then high, then switching hands and going the opposite direction. Played with some flip offs, zest with straight arms forward and to the sides in my outflow while standing in place, forward leaning shoulder breaks while lifting alternate legs and breaks with paddling in general, while reaching alternate hands down to touch my thigh. Fun! Got to get off to the office early today since I teach back to back classes on Wednesdays... So glad to be alive!

Off to the gym where I listed to the audiobook version of "Bringers of the Dawn" while working out. Wow! Such a sweet book. It is nice to sweat so much and feel my muscles working while listening to dialog about digging into the library of our cells to learn how to emit a higher frequency in every day life, helping ascend the human species to the next level of conscious awareness! Worked out legs...

Back home, I made 2 new hoops- something I rarely do now a days but I was way impatient to have someone else make them. Candice recently showed me a new hoop which was sweet. 5/8 diameter and super light. While I had asked for this material to be purchased, I actually was delivered the "wrong" material. 1/2 inch pipe which felt tiny and incredibly flimsy. I was wrapping them with some pre-judgement, thinking that I wouldn't like them. So on to 1/2 hour of practice afterwards and discovered some interesting things.

First of all, they have a strange wobble that makes them unappealing to me when used one a time... but using them both at once was a wonderful new physical sensation. They move very diferently from my current 3/4 inch 100psi 35inch diameter hoops. I had to break out of habitual movement patterns to keep them spinning. I particularly had fun with swinging both at once in Warrior and leaping through both sides, trying it again and again with both hands. Also had fun hooping on my legs and doing continual reversals. They are so light that they fly back and forth no problem. Interesting... I am not really sure how I feel about them overall.. so darn light and skinny! And not sure about the size. We will see... bright side... I tried something new! We will see how all unfolds.

Well those light thin hoops have been growing on me. ;) I've been whipping them both around my body so fast and it feels really nice. I discovered I can do an Eagle Roll with them both at the same time and Jiffy Pop them up into the air, catch them both and keep swinging. Sweet! Also spent a long time doing reversals with them both at the same time. Yummy body sensation to navigate both at once. I picked up my reegular hoop afterwards (which actually was a lighter hoop) and it felt heavy! At the rate that my personal hoops are shrinking, soon I'll just be using a plastic straw around my waist.

Today was interesting. I used the two smaller hoops which I made last week and rocked them. Not a super tricky day for me.. more energy invested in learning how to control these new hoops with grace. Hooped with both hoops on my legs in Spunk in my outflow for a *long* time, alternating with inflow and then back for a while in outflow. I was fascinated that I could keep them both spinning at the same rate for so long. One handed breaks with two hoops, step out reversals, and general flowing full body churning dance.

This morning's hour was spent twinning, using two hoops as one. It was sweet. For whatever reason, I rolled out of bed and slipped into some hot shorts and a bikini top and went for it in my livingroom. Something about practicing in hot shorts always gets me going! Inspired by Sharna Rose in the UK, I put on some bangin' psy-trance music and explored this wonderful world of twins, especially playing with one handed breaks while consistently standing tall and kicking up legs then reaching down and squatting and touch the floor with alternating hands. The rush of Burning Man came upon me as the music went faster and I had a blast using two hoops again in my outflow on my legs. Lots of step out reversals and returns to the body, as well as duck outs and flip offs, turning with the hoop and shifting it into a matrix formation while raising and lowering it over my whole body. Hooping in my inflow on one part of my body and breaks with the other hoop, or just using two hoops in alternating directions for a bit. Shoulder duck outs with both hoops which was sweet... I tried those wicked elbow to elbow breaks from Sharna's video but almost killed my plants from the hoop falling so much, so I think I need to save those moves for Bay Area Hoopers this weekend where there will be lots of space. Vertical isolations with reversals. The time seemed to go so fast, yet at the same time I had to reel in my attention which wanted to go ahead to my work day. Glad I stuck it out! Off and away...

In my January 2008 newsletter, I asked readers to stop and consider all they have achieved during the past year. To recognize and celebrate their brilliance. So I thought it would be a neat exercise to write a blog about how my own hoop practice has developed over the last year. To help take stock, I just went back and skimmed my entire blog for 2007.

WOW! I want to give myself a high five! I think 2007 was by far the most serious and satisfying year for me as a hoopdancer! I was pretty blown away realizing how much serious practice I did. So many drills, combinations, and advanced moves. This year had the *least* on-stage performance and the *most* personal practice than any year in my life! Many thanks for this is due to Ann and Baxter of the Hoop Path who have been my biggest mentors during the past year, even if only virtually.

I see I have been undergoing some big transformations which have overlapped my hoop practice records with raw food recipies, realizations and spiritual investigations too. Hard to know which one may have instigated the others or if they are just parallel developments. Either way, I am so grateful and it is interesting.

Huge breakthroughs for me included:
-Developing the discipline for a timed one hour personal practice session several days per week
-Gaining mastery of moves and hoopdance in my outflow
-Deepening my practice of Twinning
-Entering the world of "breakdancing" in the hoop
-More combinations work
-Developing much more control and bi-arm and directional power with isolations
-Re-connecting with my own dance muse

Overall, lots of time spent going inward, rebuilding my foundations, finding my own center. I'm so glad! I'm so grateful. Everything is in perfect order, unfolding at the perfect moment. New Year's blessings!

Thank you for the medicine of personal practice... it's funny that I always tell my students to make it feel good and sometimes I get so militant with my own personal practice... forcing myself to go for a full hour which feels soooo long... feeling the impulse to glance at the clock interrupt my flow. So today with a mini revelation I said to myself, "40 always feels like the perfect length, why not just set the timer for only 40 minutes!". The time flew by as I brought my breathe into the movements, counter balances, sighing into floating movements, jumping, whirling, playing, feeling the emotions I have been teaching with moves in Intermediate class... what a sweet way to start the morning. No expectations or intense drills, just cruising along the liquid journey...

All I've had for the last week has been excuses about why I haven't put in the private time, so this morning's 40 minutes were sweet! I had fun freestyling to the music, exploring Dolphin variations, all kinds of vertical twirls through the hoop in all directions, lots of outflow, some Swans. My buff was on my head and I impulsivly pulled it down over my eyes -- I never hoop in the buff at home since my practice space is about 4x5 with a big tv and other breakables on all sides... but suddenly I backed against the couch and realized that if I can just keep one leg against the couch at all times, there is no way I can bump into anything else breakable in the room! It was a huge revelation for me because I usually reserve sightless hooping for the studio... which takes away a lot of spontaneity around it. It felt really nice to get into a rhythm of playing the hoop back and forth and combining that with the sensation of stroking my pant leg in rhythm with the music between swings... almost a 3 dimensional sort of hoop experience.. those precious moments of feeling, breathing, connecting feed me so much now! The edge of "performing" has softened and now it is a sweet letting go to breathing and touching and all the happy potted plants surrounding me with green leaves.

Woke up at 5:15 and my mind was racing. An aftereffect of overwork... sometimes this happens when I haven't taken a day off in too long. Decided today to break the cycle, so I picked up my hoop and began quietly hooping the livingroom to silence. My long flannel jammies started to get quite hot after a bit... since my husband was asleep in the bedroom where most of my movement clothing was, grabbed some burning man bootie shorts and stuff from the hall closet. Fun! As the sky has been getting lighter and lighter, I've just going back to basics for an hour. Lots of Plays, leg lifts, balancing, slo motion Dolphins so my landings were quiet, and basically just dancing. When Kramer woke for the gym, I turned on some music and it carried me through the last 20 minutes. My ankle has been feeling tender, so I've been lessening the impact on that foot and holding off on pivoting for the moment.... Enjoying sensation! I am so grateful to have a body!