Hooped a little bit tonight. I had cut back on doing so the last couple days due to being so tired from stress, and some painful bruises from hooping this last weekend. I didn't do too bad tonight. Used my regular hoop once, and the rattan hoop a couple of times. I need to start concentrating on hooping in different directions. I could feel it with the rattan hoop as it rolled across my back. My lower back muscles have been a little bit sore tonight, and I could really feel it with the hoop. It also hurts to drop the rattan hoop on my feet when I'm barefoot, since it's so heavy, so I went and put my sneakers on to practice. I still feel as though my leg is out too far, but eventually I won't need it out like that. I'm still having some trouble with switching legs, and with taking steps as I hoop. In fact, it feels as if I'm getting worse at it. I'm beginning to feel a little frustrated that I'm not doing better, even though at the same time I still feel delighted at being able to keep the hoop up. I know I just need to push through and keep practicing. I'm determined to get really good at this, I know I can do it!

I really want to start incorporating yoga in my daily life. I also want to start eating alot more veggies and fruits too, as well as try out some vegetaraian recipes that I can cook up myself. I would like to get back into doing things more naturally, including making my own household cleaners and cosmetic products, growing and using my own herbs for stuff.

I've mentioned this before, but I never seem able to stick with it. I am hoping to do so this time around though. I will make it my goal for this summer.

Well, the areas by my hip bones are sore and bruised. Of course. I expected this, and am taking it as part of learning the hoop, and becoming adjusted to using it. I'm sure the heavier, rattan style hoop (from the papasan chair) contributed to the soreness and bruising, since it's so much heavier than my regular hoop. I've read that as your body adjusts to hooping, and you improve your technique, you'll bruise less until you no longer bruise at all. That will be nice. I hooped a little bit tonight anyway, though not for long.

I was reading through some of the posts on the Hoop Tribe today, and discovered that I had made myself what amounts to a sports hoop, since it's 100 psi. Apparently the 160 psi are easier to learn on, since they're heavier and so spin more slowly. As I noted in a previous post, I can certainly tell the difference in ease of waist hooping between my regular hoop (the one I made) and my rattan hoop. Apparently the sports hoops are better for certain tricks and for isolations, while the heavier ones are better for general waist hooping and whatnot.

Speaking of the rattan hoop, warclaw has been a real sweetheart and begun to wrap it up for me. He's using seagrass, and started by wrapping the weak point where the join is. Then he asked me where else on the hoop I would like him to wrap, and I request he do the three other points, so there are four wrappings each equidistant from the other. He ran of seagrass of the proper length, but I'll pick more up tomorrow to finish the job. :) I am so lucky to have him. It's not like I can't do it myself, but I think it's really sweet of him to have simply picked the hoop up and begun wrapping it, as a nice thing to do for me. :)

I can keep the hoop up pretty well now, and have begun to be able to step around in it, forwards and back and in a circle once or twice. I feel like I'm not doing so well on form however, even though I am keeping the hoop up. I think my leg is out too far, and sometimes the hoop drops down to one hip, and at other times it loses momentum and I have to try real hard to speed it up and get back on track. I am learning how to pop it up from my hips to my waist however, though I can't really hip hoop--it's only when the hoop slips down as I'm waist hooping. I'm doing better about breathing. I figured out why I was holding my breath--because it's a matter of tilting your pelvis in to keep the hoop up, I stop breathing when I concentrate on holding my stomach in as I tilt my pelvis back. Working on that. Also trying to get it so I can hoop with my feet closer together.

I've also tried floating, and it's frustrating because I can't really do it yet. Most times I'm almost afraid of the hoop hitting me, or I end up hitting the back of my head with the hoop, or I can manage to float it, briefly, but then the hoop wobbles out of the spin and it begins slipping down my hand onto my arm.

I can at least do halos though, including the prayer position halo (proper term?), and switch off hands as I do halos. I can also do passes, including under one leg at a time. Haven't practiced passing behind my upper back/neck yet though.

So in some ways I feel as though I'm getting better at it, in other ways I feel as though I'm getting worse. It'll even out in the end, I must be in that stage where I slip back abit and don't do so well before it really integrates into my body/core.

I was having a lot of fun practicing tonight. I put on some Afro Celt and then Enya and then more Afro Celt and hooped away. I finally had to stop though because I was losing my oomph, and couldn't keep the hoop going as well due to getting worn out. It wasn't even like I was hooping that long (20 min.? Half an hour?), but I am still new to it, and still getting it integrated into my body. Plus, there's that fatigue I've been dealing with anyway...

I should also note that I was swapping off back and forth between my lighter hoop, and my heavier hoop tonight as well.

I need a hooping icon.

Warclaw is amused that I bring home bugs in my coffee cup. Dead bugs, that I find beautiful, and so wish to keep. The latest one is a very small bee that I found at work. I don't kill them, just pick them up already dead. There's no point in killing a creature just because it's beautiful, better to let it live and carry out its functions, thus adding to the overall efficiancy and beauty of the world, which it does better alive than dead.

I have another hoop!

I was cleaning out the garage, including the upstairs (migod that's a lot of stuff!), when I spied the hoop from our old papasan chair. I had been going to make a large dream catcher out of it, but when I saw it today, I thought "Hoop!!" So I took it down off the wall and tried it out. It works great! It's about the same size as my other hoop, maybe a little smaller, but it's heavier. I can waist hoop more easily with it!

I should decorate it with some leather strapping or something, make it even more primitive looking. :P

Moving meditation, the circle, the roundness of earth herself, circling as planets and stars do. I am the center, the progenitor, the axis point, and I express the divine within myself through the hoop's motion.

Lay it down, sit inside, meditate, it is an automatic circle, the container and boundary from which to dive within.

Movement, creation, meditation, divinity expressed through grace and form.

I realized yesterday that I haven't been picking at my fingers so much lately. What made me realize this was the work stress and the fact that it caused me to tear up my thumb until it hurt. I used to do that all the time, and was unable to stop. I get stressed, and start picking at my fingers, ripping them apart. So I was thinking about how they haven't hurt in awhile, and then I looked at them, and saw that they're actually in better shape than they have been in years. They were healing, and while I still pick at them some, it hasn't been as bad. Still bite my nails just as much though.

I've seen it referenced as self-mutilation, in the same category with cutting. Not sure I'd want to go that far with describing it. It's just something I do when I'm stressed, don't think about it at all, it's not necessarily a concious thing, though even when I realize I'm doing it I can't stop.

Since it's turned out to be a rather rainy weekend, I'm going to practice my waist hooping, instead of my floats and halos. My waist hooping needs a lot of work, and I feel that I haven't quite got the hang of it, though I can keep the hoop up. I know that sounds contradictory. The Hoopnotica dvd says that the movement isn't in your torso, it's in your lower body. Yet I'm afraid I might not be moving my lower body enough, and so may be relying too much upon my torso. You're supposed to shift your weight from leg to leg, but I have a hard time with that, especially when it comes to side hooping. Probably some drills just practicing shifting my weight back and forth from leg to leg will help me.

Here are some links for waist hooping exercises:

http://superhooper.org/blog1/2007/06/get_the_most_out_of_waist_hoop_1.html

http://tribes.tribe.net/teachhoop/thread/457eb030-5ffc-47b2-b089-c772207d8537

http://hooping.tribe.net/thread/6d6d9fe4-2b72-4d3d-93a4-ed8cfffea75b

http://hooping.tribe.net/thread/848cb804-b89f-4abe-841d-dce11c5280d5

http://feeds.feedburner.com/SafireDance

On the tv this time. Baby sea turtles being released into the ocean.

So Turtle showed up again, this time in Wil Weaton's blog, of all places. :P

Then today I found this beautiful turtle necklace--silver, with very good detail, even on the underside of the turtle.

So, the Supreme Court has ruled that we have the right as individuals to own guns. Yes!! I am so glad they decided sensibly on this issue. I had been concerned they wouldn't, so hearing this is a relief.

more cat pictures

Notice the guy in the background who tries hooping it at the end of the video? I bet he thought it would be easy to pick up. Which it is, if you know what you're doing. :)

We were driving home today when Warclaw spied a turtle in the road. It was moving towards the center line, though it turned around after we had driven by. We turned around and went back to help it across before it got hit, but it was nowhere in sight by then. I didn't happen to see, what with tiredly staring out the window in the other direction. Warclaw didn't see it until the last minute, so we didn't really have any heads up.

Anyway, that's one more appearance this season of Turtle in my life.

For longer than before anyways. In fact a couple of times now I stopped only because I was getting tired and out of breath, not because the hoop was dropping! :) So I am getting the hang of it. My Hoopnotica instructional dvd came today, so I was watching that, and their tip of holding one's pelvis in has helped me immensely.

I also posted a question about breathing to the LJ Hooping community, and they've been so nice about such a stupid question (who forgets to breath? Seriously!...), for which I am grateful.

I love hooping! Can't wait until I can hoop comfortably, and can progress on to the opposite direction, and my hips, and such.

Oh, and I brought the hoop back into the house, and I've been hooping in the basement. The basement needed cleaning out anyway, and it's closer if I feel like hooping a little now and then, instead of having to trek out to The Grove.

And Oh! again: I pulled out a short shirt I picked up this last winter. It's the type that ends a little ways below the breasts, so it shows the belly. I find it convenient for looking at my the posture of my midsection as I hoop.

I can now keep the hoop up for almost a minute, maybe a whole minute. This may not seem like much, but it's better than the few seconds I had accomplished before. I would practice it more, but I feel like I don't really know what I'm doing. I finally ordered the Hoopnotic Hoopdance Beginning Level 1 dvd. I feel like I need some genuine instruction, and they have high reviews here: http://www.hooping.org/archives/000863.html, which in my opinion is even better than reading the reviews at Amazon. Plus buying the video is probably cheaper than taking a class, let alone the fact there are no classes for this anywhere near here. I don't think anyone in the area has even heard of hooping, and from what I can tell, there's only a very few who hoop in the entire state.

I'm thinking, that if I can practice enough, and get good enough, I may start teaching classes on it. I can make my own hoops (super, super easy!) and bring them to class. This way I can get people started right away, and if they want one, they can buy it off me. There's a local alternative yoga center that I figure will let me run workshops. I know the lady who started the center, and I know she'd think it was a great idea. :)

First though, will be practice--lots and lots of practice! :P

As an added note, Warclaw noted that all the ladies hooping in the vids I've found on Youtube have the same build I do, which I find interesting.

I've rearranged things behind the kitchen sink, and put in a corner shelf for an altar. My white votive angel is on the shelf with the candle lit, and a small vase of rose blooms I cut off my Mordan Blush. One of my aloes is under it, with a framed pic by Kinuko Y. Craft. It doesn't look bad, though the shelf needs a fresh coat of paint.

Next up I'm going to make some rice for dinner, then start setting up my baking corner.

I missed what little sun we had this morning by sleeping late (until 12:30!). I got a couple of the garden beds weeded anyway. I have to haul out all the rocks I pulled out when working soil in the root veggies bed.

I was reorganizing and otherwise tweaking the filing system in the filing cabinet when I went out to the garage for a minute to grab another *six pack of empty beer bottles. When I came back I started putting everything back into the drawer I had left open, and lo and behold, there was a cat!! She had squirreled herself away in the very back behind the drawer itself, and decided to emerge after I had started putting the files back in. O.O Cats. They're such silly creatures. :P

*(We have a fairly skinny cabinet, with no metal rods for the files to rest on, and as it turns out, the six packs work great at propping up the files and keeping them from flopping over.)