HoopFest 2013.

It's been more than a week since I came back from New Zealand HoopFest 2013 but I'm still trying to process it ... so fun and inspirational.

HoopFest was different from Under The Spinfluence because it was solely about hooping. No workshops on poi, fans, acrobalancing, etc. It was smaller, more intimate. I loved that the entire weekend was about hooping and about community. It was held in the same place as Spinfluence - at a scout camp in the hills behind Wainuiomata, near Wellington.

I shared a cabin with my friends Richie, Nicky and Tony [the west coast crew] as well as two other guys. We had our own little shady lawn to hoop on, surrounded by native bush and with a little stream tinkling past just a few steps from our cabin door. Three delicious meals a day, amazing workshops by gifted teachers, a performance show by said gifted teachers, and dozens of other hoopers to spin with at any hour of the day or night. All this for just NZ$95. Phew! It doesn't get any better than that.

Another reason HoopFest was different for me was the teachers. Spinfluence was mostly about community – it was my first experience of hooping with other people, and I revelled in it. I only took a couple of workshops because I was so busy jamming with my new friends. While the community was just as wonderful at HoopFest, it was the workshops that blew me away. We had some great Kiwi hoop teachers and even a few from overseas – Emma Kerr from Kenna Hoops [Britain], Lisa Lu [Germany] and KaytiBunny [United States]. We had workshops on multiple hoops, performance, elbow folds, jumps, floorwork, and others. I loved them all, but the last workshop was my favourite: Lisa’s delightful instructions on “throwing the hoop away”. It must have been a sight to behold, 20 or 30 hoopers finding creative ways to twist, flick and pop their hoops away!

HoopFest was a humbling experience for me, too. Everyone I hoop with in Whanganui [students, family, friends] thinks I’m amazing at hooping. I know I'm not, but being constantly surrounded by people praising my hoop skills can give me the wrong idea. Yes, I'm almost certainly the best hooper in Whanganui ... but having a late-night jam session with Emma Kerr at HoopFest puts that into perspective! It doesn't discourage me - it just makes me more determined to learn, learn, learn.

Here's an article I wrote for hooping.org about HoopFest 2013, along with some great video footage: New Zealand HoopFest spins it up.

Happy hooping,
Anne-Marie x 

Lilac Glow.

I've never been that interested in men who hoop. Some female hoopers get all excited by male hoopers, but I'm not one of them. I would rather watch a woman hoop than a man any day. Men - and I'm generalising a lot here - tend to hoop faster and more technically. Women seem, to my eyes, to have more flow.

However, I did discover this video, which is of a man hooping. And he is rather gorgeous. But I posted the video because the whole thing is amazing. I love all of it - the smooth, chilled hooping, the hoop, the glow pants [!] and that wonderful tree.

Enjoy!

Hooping with the kids.

It's been a sociable summer for us this year. Nearly every weekend John and I are invited out to parties, drinks or barbecues. Being an introvert, I have a limited tolerance for social gatherings but I do enjoy getting together with friends on a sunny evening for some good food and good conversation.

We had a barbecue for some friends at our house on Friday night, and afterwards I reflected on how much hooping has changed my social interactions. Most places I go I take hoops with me, and I often end up hooping with a bunch of kids on the back lawn. On Friday night I spent at least an hour hooping with my friend Brendan's 11 year old daughter, Laura [she's wearing the white t-shirt in the photo above]. I showed her hooping tricks and while we hooped we talked about her favourite books, her school, and her family.

I used to be the person who talked to the women about their children, and the men about sport and politics [and yes, I still do that]. I never took much notice of the kids. But kids - both boys and girls - adore playing with hoops and usually don't have the inhibitions their parents do.

So that's where you'll usually find me at parties these days. Hooping with the kids.



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

The big D.

Despite all the good things that have been going on in my life, it’s been challenging times in my little corner of the world recently.

The black dog has paid me a visit, for the first time in about six years. The black dog has been my companion since my teenage years, mostly staying in the background, but occasionally attacking me with sudden, sharp ferocity. I like dogs, so perhaps that’s not a good analogy. It felt like a gradual ascent into a black pit – it began with the realisation of a low-level sadness running through my days and reached its zenith when I found myself on a stormy Sunday afternoon, after a bust-up at home, at the beach contemplating walking into the wild waves and never coming back.

That’s when I began to cry and couldn’t stop. That’s when I realised I needed help.

For those who have never suffered depression, it’s hard to understand. It’s not just feeling sad. My experience of depression is a literal absence of colour: when I look around all I see is grey. I feel completely alone, disconnected from my loved ones. I feel trapped down the black pit and I’m looking up and seeing, at a far distance, light and happiness and life – but I can’t be part of it because I’m down in the darkness. It’s struggling to fall asleep at night and hoping I never wake up in the morning. It’s nasty voices in my head telling me how worthless and useless I am. It’s feeling like nothing good will ever happen to me again.

Yet most people wouldn’t have a clue that anything is wrong with me because I’m really skilled at hiding it when I feel I need to. Perhaps that’s not such a good thing…

I think I’m coming out the other side now, hopefully. I still have bad days but the possibility of feeling joy again seems real. John has cared for me tenderly and I’ve had several sessions with a counsellor I trust. Depression always has something to teach me, so I’ve been looking for the lesson. I know I need to make some changes in how I live my daily life and I’m trying to work through that.

Throughout these dark weeks, hooping has been one of the few things to make me feel like a “normal” person. I’ve continued to hoop, even on the days I felt like I was barely capable of lifting my hoop. I’ve even continued to teach, although now most of my teaching has finished for the year. Even the big D couldn’t destroy the joy hooping - and teaching hoopdance - brings me, although my joy is a muted one, as if felt at a distance. Because I haven’t had much energy I haven’t been at my usual spot in the gym; mostly I’ve hooped for short periods of time in the garden, in the sunshine - sunshine is definitely good for my state of mind!

I have had some wonderful hooping experiences recently, including hooping on the beach with some of my students, hooping with my youngest nieces, and taking part in a celebration for World Hoop Day. All of which have helped, in their own way, to nudge me back towards the light.