Hoop Dance Empowerment
Posted on 27 August 2011 | 1 response
The first weekend in August I attended the Hoop Girl Empowerment Retreat in Mill Valley, California. There were about 32 of us including the workshop instructors and Hoop Girl, herself, Christabel Zamor. This picture is from my friend, Julie Greicius’, (aka Aviatrix) workshop on a variety of cool ways to jump through the hoop to spice up one’s hoop dance. Julie was my first-ever hoop dance teacher, whose patience and warm-hearted encouragement made all of the difference for me when I was in the first weeks of training to be first a hoop dancer and then a hoop dance teacher.
The retreat went from late Friday afternoon until late afternoon on Sunday. My friend, Stephanie, and I drove over together not sure what the weekend would hold but excited about meeting the other women and learning some new things about ourselves and hoop dance.
Several of my friends who live out of the area were there, too, so it was a treat to reunite with these women that I have kept in touch with on Facebook or through email, and have time to hoop together, again, share a meal and catch up.
The retreat included a good variety of hoop workshops, a wonderful laughter yoga session, and a couple more non-hooping workshops. There was time for napping, hiking, and shopping at the Hoop Girl Boutique for hoop clothes, accessories and hoops. The food was great and the company was even better.
I’m not a big retreat-goer. In fact, I pretty much haven’t done retreats in my adult life until the Mermaid Retreat that Christabel put on in Kauai in November 2010. I knew I wanted to be at the first Hoop Girl Retreat, and it was great to have it so close to home. It was a real treat to be surrounded by women who share a love of hoop dance and have the time and space to really focus on hooping for an entire weekend. By the time we said our good-byes some of these strangers had become sisters. I left feeling more connected to myself as result of having communed and hoop danced in nature with these gorgeous goddesses.
In the weeks since then life has taken on a fevered pitch, complete with some pretty dramatic ups and downs. I haven’t had much time to think about anything that wasn’t happening in the moment I was in. I have experienced enough to realize, though, that integration takes place in the dark, below consciousness. It doesn’t need our mind telling it what it all means. So despite my busyness and preoccupation, the integration process has gone on. I know this is true because I’ve noticed that my hooping has changed. It is stronger and more inspired, now. It comes from a different place than it did before. Having experienced the teaching styles of my beautiful friends, I have a greater understanding of my own strengths as a teacher, and I am even more excited about what I have to offer my students who are ready to step into their own Goddessness by way of the sacred circle of the hoop. All in all, the Hoop Girl Empowerment Retreat was one of the high points in my summer. There’s no question that it was an enlightening and empowering event.
Have you been to a hoop retreat? If so, I’d love to hear which one you attended and how you liked it.
I hope you are taking advantage of the warm summer weather, so perfect for hooping. Enjoy!
Love,
Jodi
The Power of Hoop Dance
Posted on 12 August 2011 | 2 responses
I am writing this on my Two Year Hoopiversary. It was on August 10, 2009 that I bought my first hoop, a blue and sparkling purple portal to a whole new way of being and seeing and relating to the world. I had no idea of the transformative power of that seemingly simple circle of plastic, though it was the first time in my life that any inanimate object thrilled my soul every time I looked at it.
Once I got my hoop I was a different woman. The self-conscious, anxious Jodi I’d become over too many years of putting myself into situations that didn’t serve me, gave way to a truer expression of who I am that is naturally curious, courageous, grounded and happy. Happiness was something I’d lost track of along the way. I did experience it fleetingly, now and then, but regardless of what I did, the feeling of discontent would soon overtake it and I was back in that emotional hole once again. When I started hooping, though, I was automatically uplifted and felt more like myself than I had since I was a kid. I was content to turn on some music and roll the hoop around my waist for hours. I didn’t care how many times I dropped it or how many bruises I got those first weeks of hooping. The joy and passion I felt overrode everything else, the hoop worked its magic and before long everyone I knew was asking me what I was doing that I looked so good. 
Once I started hooping it I just couldn’t get enough. There is something about the hoop that moved me from moment I watched that first hoop dance video. My eyes saw something that my soul recognized. I had no context for what it meant or the power it wielded–as if it were an enchanted spinning machine that in hardly any time at all would spin the straw that was my life into rich, shiny gold.
Almost everything in my life has changed in these two years. My body loves hoop dance so it seemed effortless to get into shape and stay that way. Thanks to all the core hooping my posture is better than ever. My jeans always fit… even the skinny ones. After decades of obsessively weighing myself every morning, these days it is a rare occasion when I take the trouble to step foot on the scale. My clothes all fit and I feel comfortable in my skin, which was what I was really after, during all those years of bathroom scales and measuring tapes. (Compared to the way I lived most of my life, since puberty, this in itself is miraculous!) I am now part of a global community of hoop dancers–people I can relate to on so many levels and in so many ways, though it was our shared love of the hoop that brought us together. Hoop dance has connected me to my own core in a way that nothing else has. All of this happened so naturally that it was some time before I realized just how profound the changes were.
Looking back, I see a journey that I could never have imagined. I looked and searched and sought out countless avenues for transforming my life. I watched and waited for decades to be called by something that felt exactly right and expanded my experience. If someone had told me when I was 20 or even 30 that the answer to my questions and the answers to my prayers would be conveyed through a hoop I would have laughed in their face. Some things you just have to walk through and live before you can know.
I am awed by the grace that has entered my life by way of the hoop; the angels who have appeared on my path by way of the hoop; the miracles that have happened in all areas of my life by way of the hoop. I remember one day before I discovered the hoop going out for a run. It had felt like an effort to get dressed and stretched and ready to go and it felt like I had to spend so much time doing it in order to get any benefit. I thought, I want exercise that is integrated into my life and feels natural. I want it to be fun and look forward to doing it. Guess what? I got my wish. I’d rather hoop than almost anything else. It is such a part of my life that I haven’t thought of it as exercise ever, really.
I still have no words to explain how a simple hoop can be so life-changing, I just know from experience and observation of countless friends who have likewise been bitten by the hoop dance bug. The hoop is powerful medicine. If you are as fortunate as I, when it speaks to you and you answer the call your life will never be the same. And to all of you, I say, Hoop On!
Hoop Girl Empowerment Retreat This Weekend
Posted on 5 August 2011 | 1 response
I’m excited to share that I’ll be attending the Hoop Girl Empowerment Retreat this weekend, in Mill Valley, California, so there will be no class this Saturday, August 6th.
I’ll have much more to share about that next week.
In the mean time, happy hooping!
Hooping is the Balm
Posted on 15 July 2011 | 3 responses
There have been some crazy things going on in the world lately. I have heard some of the most shocking stories ever in the past few months. There’s no question that the world has changed. Still, I felt relatively untouched by most of it until recently when a couple of dear friends had their world turned upside down. This event was so surreal it shook me all the way to my bones.
It takes a lot to unsettle me these days. At this point I have enough life experience to be able to put most things in perspective. Even so, I found myself unable to sleep or stop thinking about this situation that dramatically changed the life of someone I love. I knew it wasn’t my issue. I knew I didn’t create the situation, nor is it mine to heal. And yet… I did what I knew to do to help but the tremors kept coming.
After a few days I finally put on some soulful music and grabbed my hoop. Gradually, one revolution at a time my body let go. The music washed over and through me. I moved without thinking, just feeling and hooping and allowing my body and brain to release the distress and find a place inside where there was room for me to breathe again, and spread my wings a bit and even dance.
Hooping is the balm. It’s true. This isn’t the first time I have brought my dis-ease to the hoop. Hooping found me a couple of years ago when I was at a low point with no sense of direction and feeling powerless over the way my body looked and felt. Within weeks it carried me swiftly to a place of clarity, contentment within my body, connection with my deeper self and with the greater hooping community that has opened my eyes, body and being to so much richness and joy. When life gets the better of me and I’ve lost my way, the hoop takes me exactly where I need to be. It lifts the toxic trappings of the world off my shoulders, spins the refuse out of my heart and delivers me back to the place I know as home… deep in the center of my body and life.
How has hooping been a balm in your life? Have you ever hooped your way through stressful times? I could write volumes on the subject but at the moment would rather hear about your experiences.
Birthday Hoop Dance
Posted on 11 June 2011 | 6 responses
This song is called Awe. It has haunted me from the first time I heard it and brings me to a different place inside myself and shifts my experience in the hoop whenever I hear it’s haunting melody. So when I decided to do a video on my birthday a couple of weeks ago, of course, the music had to be Awe.
I continue to be awed by the countless and most remarkable gifts of the hoop, both in my hooping life and far beyond.
Birthday Presence ~Gifts of the Hoop
Posted on 6 June 2011 | No responses
I celebrated my birthday recently. For as long as I can remember I have loved and joyfully anticipated my own special day. The past few years, though, I’ve found myself more inclined to want to forget it than celebrate. The numbers just keep getting bigger. This year I decided to quit counting and focus not on getting older but on living long and well. Hoop dance is helping to make that possibility a reality for me.
One’s birthday is their own personal New Year’s Day, when the sun once again crosses the point in the sky where it was when they took their first breath. I have found great value in taking some time around my birthday to contemplate what is and what might be. I review where I’ve been and clarify which of the things I’m doing and the themes I’m focusing on still feel valuable and inspiring. Hoop dance has expanded from being something I do to something that is an integral part of my life.
Since I started hooping in August 2009 so many things in my world have changed for the better. Stepping into the hoop, from the first, has opened my perceptions, helped me to become more grounded and centered in my body, mind and life, and expanded my reality in countless ways I would never have imagined possible.
I started hooping not because I had any expectations of what I thought I’d gain (or lose–like the excess flab I was carrying around my middle). I hooped because once I’d seen my first hooping video I couldn’t stop thinking about it. After finally breaking down and watching a few more, I was convinced I’d never be able to do what those young women could do. And then I encountered Christabel Zamor’s book Hooping and couldn’t resist buying it. It makes me laugh now, to remember how much I struggled with whether I should buy the book or not–it was a real turning point for me and I remember standing in Borders, spotting it, picking it up, putting it back and repeating several times before I finally took it to the check out counter–and that it felt a bit like a thrilling, yet shameful secret to me at the time. (It had been a long time since I’d had one of those…) Really! I was coloring waaaaaay outside the lines. It was another two weeks before I was able to lay my hands on a real grown-up hoop. And from that point on, a whole stinking pile of old definitions of who I thought I was and what I had previously believed possible for myself went right out the window. Can I get an ‘Amen, sister!’?
Once I started learning some basic hoop dance moves I was all in. Never mind that I dropped my hoop so many times I was proabaly getting more exercise from the bending to pick it up than from the actual hooping. For once in my life it didn’t matter and I didn’t feel inclined to judge myself as I have for other things that didn’t come easily. Hooping tapped me into my unconditional Joy and nothing was going to stop me. I wasn’t hooping for anyone but me and I just loved every moment of it. All of the bruises that I got in the process of learning new moves or pushing too hard and smacking myself with the hoop when I lost control didn’t deter me either. I wore those bruises like badges of honor–they were my personal rites of passage. I was in the process of being renewed and a few black and blue marks were a small price to pay.
I discovered something in myself that I’d always hoped was there but had never before been able to access. I found the me that is alive, awake, responsive and aware. The me that is sassy, silly, funky and sometimes sexy. The me that has rhythm and music surging through my veins. The me that lives in the moment, from my heart with a giant smile on my face.
This is just the start of a much, much longer story. For now, though, I’m going to leave it here.
I feel the greatest gift that hoop dance has given me is the fanning of the heart flame that was I beginning to lose hope would ever find expression. My heart light is on again and I am very much at home in my own skin. And that, my friends, is the gift of birthday presence.
Two for One and Then Some
Posted on 3 June 2011 | No responses
End of Spring Special ~Two for One and Then Some
As a special offering for the month of June: When you introduce a friend to a Goddess Hoop Dance Class pay the regular drop-in rate of just $20 total, for both of you and, as a thank you, you’ll receive a Class Credit redeemable for any upcoming class within one month. If you are both new to Goddess Hoop Dance, you’ll both receive a Class Credit.
You may reserve your spaces by emailing jodi “at” goddesshoopdance.com or register in-person with your friend before class on any Saturday in June.
I look forward to hooping with you and your friends before the end of June!
Haley-Inspired Hoop Dance in Bustle Pants
Posted on 25 May 2011 | 3 responses
I love American Idol. And this year was hooked on Haley Reinhart. What a fabulous talent. I don’t know who is going to be the official winner of Idol tonight, but Haley is my Idol.
I bought a few of her songs and have been using them for my daily hoop practice. Benny and the Jets is fun and funky by Haley in a way that it never was when Elton sang it. Love Elton, but Haley totally rocks it. And I can understand the words for the first time. And You and I runs through my head and always makes me smile.
If you are curious about my fancy pants, they are called Bustle Pants, from Hoop Clothes. I’ll soon be carrying them on my site. Come back soon to see these and more.
P. S. That’s Winston the Kitty making his cameo appearance in the beginning of the video.
The Thrill of the Drill
Posted on 23 May 2011 | No responses
A couple of months ago I discovered a video on YouTube that takes you through a series of circus-style hoop drills. I’ve never done formal drills of hoop moves, preferring to go where the spirit moves me while hooping. However, something about the structure of this appealed to me and I decided to give it a whirl. You can find the video here: Circus-Style Hoop Drills I played with it for a while and then tweaked it so that it worked for me. Instead of doing each move for one minute I decided instead to do 90 revolutions of each so I could use my own music and not have to watch the clock while hooping/drilling.
I have surprised myself by not only sticking to this new hooping regimen but enjoying and even looking forward to it. I find that I’m hooping more regularly and am seeing a big difference not only in my hooping but in my body, particularly in my shoulders and arms, which have been more resistant to change with the passage of time. As a result of all of this drilling I feel stronger, am visibly leaner and even more blissed out about my hoop practice than before.
I have modified the routine to address the places I wanted to focus my attention and stretch beyond my comfort zone by doing chest hooping and hooping on my ribs. When I was in the early weeks of rib hooping, Rob looked at me struggling to keep going and keep the hoop moving and said, “It looks like you are working awfully hard at that.” I laughed, dropped the hoop and said, “That’s because I am. Rib hooping is kicking my butt.”
Here’s the routine I do now:
90 revolutions each of:
Right Arm Overhead to the right
Left Arm Overhead to the left
Both hands in Prayer Position Overhead either right or left (I switch off directions day to day)
Right Arm Out Neck Hooping to the right
Left Arm Out Neck Hooping to the left
Shoulder Hooping to the right
Shoulder Hooping to the left
Right Arm out Shoulder Hooping to the right
Left Arm Out Shoulder Hooping to the right
Right Arm Out Shoulder Hooping to the left
Left Arm Out Shoulder Hooping to the left
Chest Hooping to the right
Chest Hooping to the left
Rib Hooping to the right
Rib Hooping to the left
Waist right
Waist left
Hips right
Hips left
Legs right
Legs left
Right Hand Swish (hand hooping) to the side going forward
Left Hand Swish (hand hooping) to the side going forward
Right Hand Swish in front of body going to the right
Left Hand Swish in front of body going to the left
Warrior/Weave Right Hand
Warrior/Weave Left Hand
Reverse Warrior/Weave Right Hand
Reverse Warrior/Weave Left Hand
And that’s it. I play music I love and usually do some free flow hooping and play with some other moves, too, but the drills have been the basis for my practice and have made a huge difference in my hooping. If this appeals to you at all, I encourage you to check out the video and then play with doing some drills of your own. I chose to do several moves that would incorporate arms and shoulders because those were areas I was looking to strengthen and sculpt. You can likewise customize the sequence to focus on the areas you wish to strengthen.
Lastly, I encourage you to switch up the music you listen to when doing drills, it keeps your mind feeling that you are doing something fresh and helps to stave off boredom. I must confess, I bore easily but these drills are working really well for me. I’d love to hear from you about your experience with drills or if you give these a whirl, how they work for you. Summer is right around the corner. The more you hoop the better you feel and the better those fun summer clothes are gonna look on you! Hoop on.
Working With Wonkiness
Posted on 6 May 2011 | 3 responses
Anyone who has ever hooped has experienced the hoop getting wonky. The otherwise smooth revolutions of the hoop around the body or hand suddenly get bumpy or dip to one side as the rhythm of the hoop and one’s own rhythm shift in and out of balance. If you don’t correct the wonk in time, the odds are good that the hoop will smack you in a tender spot before it crashes to the floor.
Sometimes life gets a little wonky, too. Things that were once easy or obvious lose energy for us or fall out of their normal rhythm and we are left feeling off balance. Clearly something needs to change. In the hoop, strategies for curing the wonk include turning with the hoop, adjusting one’s own rhythm to match that of the hoop or pushing a little harder so the hoop goes faster and comes back into rhythm.
I started teaching a Tuesday morning class mid-January. I was excited to have the opportunity to teach twice a week instead of only on Saturdays. Though there was a lot of enthusiasm from prospective students in the beginning, the classes didn’t really take off. So, I pushed a little harder, made some adjustments and finally had to admit that I needed to let go of what wasn’t working. I make it sound like it was no big deal but it wasn’t easy to come to the decision. I felt I had failed, that I should be able to make it work, that if only, if only, if only… I balk at letting go of anything or anyone I love. I have learned, though, that things change over time. What worked perfectly at one point doesn’t work at all at another. Sometimes it is just a matter of making an adjustment, other times it is time to scrap it and move on.
A lot of my students have, at some point, experienced the feeling of being defeated when their hoops don’t immediately do what they want them to do. Working with wonkiness is the only way to learn what works and what doesn’t, whether we are hooping or doing most anything else, for that matter. If it is important enough to you, it’s well worth working through those awkward stages. The rewards for doing so are countless.
If we view wonkiness not as an indication that we have failed but as a sign that it’s time to make some adjustments we can come into a more harmonious relationship not only with the hoop, but with Life in these fast-moving, rapidly changing times. Hoop on!