Just like the trees.

I'm writing this beside a roaring fire, with a certain happy dog stretched out on his sheepskin rug before it. Outside, heavy thundery showers keep passing over; it's dark, and it's cold. I'm feeling very grateful for all this cosy warmth.

It's a bleak time of year here in New Zealand. I find it hard going to work when it's still dark, and coming home after sunset. I even have to do most of my hooping inside at this time of the year.

A friend and I were walking our dogs at Kowhai Park last week, on one of those rare fine, windless, winter days. I confided to him that I often feel depressed at this time of the year, no matter how positive I am or how mild the weather is.

"I feel stripped bare," I said.

I didn't really understand my own words, but as we walked on I watched clouds of dead oak and liquid ambar leaves drift down to rest on the grass below. Some trees were only just starting to shed their leaves while others were nearly bare. I love the trees that fully lose their leaves in winter. They may appear to be naked and lifeless but they have a certain majesty about them. Without its covering of leaves, you can see a tree as it really is.

Maybe I am like the deciduous trees in winter. My leaves have been stripped from me, leaving only my bare branches. In winter, I see things - I see myself - as I truly am. Which is not always a comfortable thing.

I like this analogy.

The next day during my morning devotions I picked up Caitlin Matthews' wonderful, wise book, The Celtic Spirit {which I recommend to any Pagan with an interest in the Celtic world}, and the reading for that day contained the following paragraph:

"At this time of the year, when the trees look dishevelled, when growth stops, we may feel the loss as a personal thing and cross the threshold to depression. Yet the roots of renewal lie in the contemplation of the way in which this year's leaf mould on the forest floor will become the rich earth for next year's glorious growth."

I still long for warm sunshine and long days. Yet I feel I've been given a different perspective on winter: without the cold, the dark, the depression, the being stripped bare, we cannot experience the growth of spring.

My first Samhain.

Samhain altar, which includes photos of grandparents and great-grandparents.

At the end of April I celebrated my first Samhain {pronounced SOW-en}.

Samhain marks the start of winter and is one of four major pre-Christian Celtic festivals {the others are Imbolc - start of spring; Beltane - start of summer; and Lughnasadh / Lunastal - the start of autumn}. Of course, Samhain is supposed to be celebrated at the end of October, as it still is in the northern hemisphere, but there seems little point in celebrating the start of winter in October in New Zealand! So southern hemisphere Pagans switch the Celtic seasonal festivals around by six months.

Our modern festival of Hallowe'en originated with Samhain. One of the beliefs about Samhain was that it is a night when the veil between the living world and the Otherworld was open and if you weren't careful you might be harassed by all sorts of ghouls and ghosts and bad spirits. Fires were lit to drive them away.

Another less sinister custom of Samhain was that it is the night when our ancestors draw close to us. Pagans will often decorate their altars with photos of the beloved who have died. A group of local Pagans I know go to the local cemetery at Samhain to clean gravestones.

Many Pagans have great reverence for their ancestors; so Samhain - while it was originally an agricultural festival - has become a sort of "day of the dead". In New Zealand and Australia Samhain falls very close to Anzac Day, which is really appropriate because Anzac Day is a holiday to remember those who have died in wars.

I marked Samhain by placing photos of both my immediate ancestors and John's immediate ancestors on our home altar. I made a nice meal, lit some candles and set an extra place at our table for the ancestors. After dinner we drank mulled wine and ate Anzac biscuits {a delicious cookie which many Australians and New Zealanders bake at this time of the year}, and I said some prayers.

It was a very simple celebration, but it was meaningful and it felt good.

Midsummer reflections: Release

We are just about to release 2014 and move into 2015. And I have just released my dreads, after many years of having them - a really big step for me.

I never expected to get to the point where I wanted to let my dreads go. Sure, they could sometimes be annoying. They interfered with my hoop and they were so heavy they gave me headaches. But they were {literally} part of me, and part of my identity. Because they formed naturally over several years I developed a deep emotional attachment to them. People knew me and recognised me by my dreads, and they gave me a certain amount of cool. I loved how low-maintenance they were - I didn't even have to comb them.

The first suggestion of releasing my dreads came this time last year. I was irritated by them. They hung down to my hips, massive things that seemed to drain my energy. I took one tiny dread and combed it out, freaked out, and stopped halfway through. I definitely did not want to get rid of my dreads. My husband suggested I cut my dreads to a manageable length, and all was well again.

So when, this November, I started to feel twinges of wanting to get rid of the dreads, I figured it was just something that happened at this time of the year. I sat with the feeling for a while. Then one morning - just a couple of days before the anniversary of starting my dreads - I woke up convinced the dreads had to go. That evening two of my dreads actually broke off in my hands - something that had never happened before.

The next day I came home from work feeling like I was being smothered and couldn't breathe properly. I grabbed the kitchen scissors, handed them to my husband and told him to start cutting. He snipped them up to my shoulders ... ah, what a release. I took a bottle of conditioner and a comb and spent the weekend combing, combing, combing. Before I began on each dread, I ran my fingers over it and whispered, "I thank you - I release you."

In two days I had combed out 22 of my 42 dreads and filled an entire shopping bag with knotted hair. {I put most of it in the compost heap, but buried one dread under my elderflower bush in the garden.}
I spent the next two weeks combing out the rest of the dreads, just a few at a time.

This Saturday, just before the new moon and Midsummer, the very last dread was combed out. I washed my hair and rinsed it in rain water that had had rosemary, sage and lavender soaking in it, and allowed it to dry in the warm summer air.

And now I am starting to get to know this lovely new hair of mine. A lot of people don't recognise me; I still get a surprise when I see myself in the mirror. I love the feel of the wind on my scalp! I'm enjoying the texture of my hair, which somehow manages to be soft and rough at the same time {I've never had sleek, shiny hair}. My hair doesn't like to be combed or brushed; it just goes flat and sullen, like a dog that's been told off. So I comb it before I go to bed each night and finger-comb it each morning, which seems to work well.

Happy Midsummer to you all!

Before {the last picture I took of myself with dreads}:

After {completely dreadless and with hair freshly washed}:

What I should be doing at Imbolc.

Monty and I admiring daffodils at Kowhai Park.

Today is Imbolc, or First Light, the mid point between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. Officially, winter has another month to go here in New Zealand; but right now you'd never know it. Spring is bursting out every where - warm north-west breezes blowing, daffodils blooming, birds singing, and daylight lengthening.

This is my one day off work this week, and I lay in bed this morning and thought of all the things I should be doing: you know, cleaning-the-bathroom-type things. Then I remembered it was Imbolc, and instead decided I would do the bare necessities of SHOULD today, and no more. I do far too much SHOULD.

As if to emphasise my decision, my body has gone out in protest. Doing almost anything - including hooping!! - makes the muscles in my back, neck, shoulders and arms spasm painfully. This is probably the result of too much work and study. I really need a massage and some serious relaxation.

So I have spent most of today doing very little, and it's been most enjoyable [despite the nagging voice telling me how lazy I am]. The best part of the day so far has been walking with Monty through the trees and daffodils and sunshine of Kowhai Park. Tonight I'm looking forward to having a hot bath to try and ease my aching body.

I want more of this. I don't want to slack off from my responsibilities, but I do want more fresh air and relaxation in my life. It's nearly spring - what better time is there for fresh air and relaxation???

Happy hooping,
Anne-Marie x

Winter hooping.

Rugged up on a chilly morning.



Summer and hooping are natural companions. Summer and hooping go together like ice-cream and jandals, like sea and swimming, like dog and walks. I love hooping in summer, especially in the long, warm evenings after the heat of the day is over.

Winter and hooping? They don't go together quite so well.

Unless you have a very spacious house, or you live somewhere that doesn't really have a winter, hooping in the cold months can be a challenge. In my part of New Zealand we don't have snow to contend with, or even a long winter, but we do get a lot of rain and wind - which can last all through spring.

I, of course, do hoop right through winter but there's no doubt my winter hoop practice is different from my summer hoop practice. Because I often struggle with the winter blues my winter hoop practice is more important than my summer hoop practice. I thought I would share with you my tips for hooping in winter.

Make yourself do it. It's not always easy to motivate yourself to hoop when it's freezing cold. But I set myself a goal in autumn to hoop a minimum of 15 minutes per day, no matter what, and so far I haven't missed a day. Only the days I only manage 15 minutes I don't feel bad about it.

Make the most of the good weather. This winter we've been blessed with a couple of weekends of calm blue skies and mild temperatures. On those weekends I may have had plans to clean the bathroom and do the groceries, but you can bet I abandoned those plans in favour of hooping outside in the sun for most of the weekend.

Challenge yourself. I have limited space to hoop inside, but I do it anyway. Having a wide open space to hoop in is great, but sometimes challenging yourself by hooping in a constrained space can be good for your practice. Winter is your chance to try things like this out.

Hoop with others. Join a local hoop jam or, as I did, start one of your own. It's always fun to have some company while you hoop.

Focus on other things. Hooping in winter may be hard but you can focus on other things that will benefit your hooping once summer rolls around again. For example, yoga is really good to keep your body supple over winter, which can only benefit your practice.

Accept it. Hooping in winter will never be the same as hooping in summer. That's just the way it is. But summer will roll around again, and before you know it you'll be complaining it's too hot to hoop!

Happy hooping,
Anne-Marie x

Spring!

Here in New Zealand, today is the official start of that delightful, crazy season which I always look forward to. To be honest, it has felt like spring for the past month or maybe even six weeks, as winter has barely licked our lawns with frost this year.

But, no matter how mild or short the winter, it is always so wonderful to see the daffodils in bloom, the magnolia trees flaunting their fragrant flowers, the first tender green on the trees.

I have been hooping outside as much as possible recently, making the most of the sunshine and mild temperatures. I love the feel of grass on my bare feet and the breeze on my bare arms. In the spirit of the season, I haven’t really been working on things – just playing around with my hoop to see what happens between us. Some days all I want to do is shoulder hoop for 20 minutes, nothing else. And that’s okay.

In my spare time I’ve been busy getting ready for Under The Spinfluence, which begins on Friday. This year I’ve booked myself a stall at the market and I’ll be selling my handmade polypro hoops. So I’m often to be found with hacksaw or sandpaper in hand, crafting the brightly-coloured material into beautiful hoops. [Well, I think they’re beautiful!] I have no idea how well they’ll sell … we shall see.

I’ve just realised it’s 18 months since I first picked up a hoop. More on that another time.

My hoop-making station in the garden.

Summer ... and some goals

Ah summer ... I love you so.

My summer break was all too brief – six days off at Christmas – but it was enough to spend a couple of days with my love at a bach in Himatangi, just across the road from the sand dunes.

We ate simple meals, turned our phones off, read a lot, slept a lot, walked on the beach, and watched a thunderstorm at sunset from the top of the dunes. We even had our first surf of the season. Bliss!

And, of course, I hooped and he kicked his football around.

My hooping has been spasmodic over the past few weeks. I’ve hooped every day but it might only be five minutes when I first get out of bed in the mornings. My gym membership has run out and at the moment I can’t afford to renew it. So I’m limited to hooping indoors [mind that television!] or in the garden when the weather’s fine and not too windy. When I do hoop I feel quite unfit!

I’m not worried. These past 10 months I’ve thrown myself so utterly into my hooping that it’s good for me to have a break. I’m hooping purely for the fun of it and that's exactly what it is.

Soon enough my classes will begin for the year, and that will be the time to start my practice again.

These are my hooping goals for 2013:

+Attend New Zealand Hoopfest 2013

+Complete Level 1 of Hoopnotica Teacher Training

+Expand the range of hoopdance classes I teach

+To give a hoopdance performance [eek!]

+Learn how to make my own hoops and sell them

+Master knee hooping [my nemesis!]

+Master shoulder duck-outs

+Complete the Budding series of hoop tutorials