Hooping and life wisdom, Hooping flow

How to Deepen Your Hoop Practice

 

 

Mallory Maki dances with the sunset - Mission Beach, CA

Mallory Maki dances with the sunset – Mission Beach, CA

As a person who has hooped for over four years now, I can definitely say that I’ve experienced my fair share of searching for new ways to flow and even quite a few hooping “plateaus”- when you feel like you’ve learned all you can or have become stagnated for other reasons. Rest assured, however, that we all have limitless potential for learning, and that includes our precious little plastic circles. Perhaps thinking outside the box is all you need! In this piece I will go over a few helpful tips and new things you can try to help deepen your hoop practice or get that momentum going again if you feel you are stuck with nowhere to turn.

Hoop blind folded

Hooping blind folded might sound a bit unnerving or odd to some at first, but doing so offers many lessons. When we take away our sense of sight our other senses naturally heighten and create a different experience within the hoop. We can feel the hoop caress our bodies at every point single of contact on a much deeper level, and it also helps take away the judgment about how we think we may look.

Dance without a hoop

I personally reached a point this past year where I was ready to begin incorporating more dance like movements into my practice. While a lot of that came from messing around and trying weird dance moves with the hoop, a lot of the progress I made came from dancing freely with no prop and learning how to release my inhibitions. Even if you already dance with your hoop, try doing so without it for at least a few minutes every day. It feels amazing and invites a new twist!

Hoop with different sizes

Every time I felt stagnant with hooping I noticed that I had been using the same hoop size for a very long time. Changing your hoop size (whether going smaller or larger) may sound simple, but it transforms the dynamics of the way you move, respond, and play with your hoop, even if it’s just a tiny bit with certain moves. Doing so will open you up to a whole new world and many more years of practice.

Stretch/do yoga

Stretching or going even further by doing a physical yoga practice can open your body up to a whole new plethora of movements that can also be done with a hoop. It takes perseverance and willpower, but I’ve also found how much more easily I can move with my hoop in general after I’ve done some stretching or yoga, even if I’m not trying new moves per se. Limbering up the body works wonders.

Hoop in both directions

The first time I felt I hit a plateau a huge realization smacked me in the face- almost everything I had learned I only learned in one direction. Going back and correcting this proved to be much harder than it would have been if I had learned each move in both directions right away. Not only that, but the muscles on the left side of my body were noticeably lacking compared to the right, my right side was more lean, and my hips were not moving evenly. So while I had the chance to learn almost every move all over again and jump off my plateau in that regard, I also learned the hard way that uneven hooping could actually create disharmony in the body. Big surprise, huh? If you take one thing away from this piece- hoop in both directions for an even amount of time!

Go back to the basics

When many of us first start hooping, including me, we become so obsessed that we try to learn new moves as quickly as possible and often fall away from the basics that are waist and core hooping. Going back and working on perfecting your waist hooping allows you to work on your footwork and other small intricacies that can add a whole other level to your hoop dancing, especially from an audience’s perspective. This tip can actually be applied to any hoop move as well by going back to every trick and smoothing them out and working out technicalities.

Try new props

Trying new props such as staff, fans, poi, wand, etc… provides something completely new for you to figure out and play with. What’s even better, however, is that using new toys can help you figure out new ways of moving and new tricks that can be translated over to the hoop. Poi is an especially wonderful learning tool to utilize if you are ready to start using double hoops.

Discovering new realms of movement, new items to introduce, and going back to what we already know is often all we need to facilitate a whole new chapter of growth with our hoops. If you have any other tips that have helped you deepen your own personal practice or overcome a hoop plateau I would love to hear them in the comments below. Please don’t hesitate to share! Now go forth and explore, hoopers! 

***Amber Lane of Lucid Hooping is a general lover-of-life and hoop enthusiast. After being diagnosed with degenerative disc disease and two herniated discs at the age of 17, she entered the world of healing and relief. She discovered the hoop and meditation in 2010 when she was 19 and instantly fell in love, not only because they boosted her self-confidence to new highs, but also because these modalities magically healed her chronic pain. Life since then has been a whirlwind of learning and sharing self-healing techniques and manifesting the life of her dreams. Through Lucid Hooping she hopes to help others in their journeys to health and true happiness through self-healing and transformation.

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