First class.

Tonight I taught my first formal hoopdance class.

I've taught dozens of people to hoop in an informal setting but teaching formally is whole different thing. For a start, people are paying me to teach them to hoop. Gulp. I had 11 people enrol for the class, which was run through the local Community Education Service [CES] as part of adult learners week. Eleven was the maximum number we had allowed for the class - it sold out in less than a week, which I was pretty happy about.

So I spent much of my weekend organising music, practising stretches and warm ups, running through important information to tell the students, and going through moves - the class was focused on waist hooping, but I had to have some other moves ready just in case everyone picked it up really quickly.

Although I felt a little nervous about the class, I was mostly excited and happy. There was a quiet hum of satisfaction in my bones as I made my preparations - a sense that I was doing something I should be doing. I had been hooping for just two weeks when I wrote in my journal: "I'd love to teach hooping classes - obviously I'm nowhere ready to do this [yet] but one day I will be!"

I never imagined that day would be less than six months later.

The class went really well. My students were mostly older women and they were lively, enthusiastic, open-minded and so positive. Every person who successfully spun the hoop around their waists was rewarded with claps and cheers from her classmates. Some of them picked it up immediately; some really struggled, but by the end of the class everyone was spinning happily away.

Tonight's class was just a taster: in October I'll be starting an eight-week hoopdance course through CES. Most of tonight's students said they would enrol for the eight-week course! I can't wait.

Happy hooping,
Anne-Marie x