Uncategorized
Learning Hula Hoop Moves & Tricks | Learning Poi Moves & Tricks
May
Learning Hula Hoop Moves and Poi Moves
I have been learning hula hoop/poi moves for AWHILE now, and I felt like it would be beneficial for you to hear about the easy step by step process is takes to master a hula hoop move/poi move at an ever quickening pace. These five steps will not only help in your flow arts growth, but to many areas of your life you want to grow! Life is a Flow Art!
1. Choose a trick that looks like something you would enjoy doing and is not well beyond your current skill level.
There are a lot of tricks to learn out there; just look at all our tutorials on the Sacred Flow Art YouTube Channel! First thing you must decide is one that you feel you’d like to apply yourself to. There’s little use doing a trick because you think you have to, or it would impress someone else. Although those can be motivating factors, I overall don’t recommend it, for flow arts is to find YOUR flow not someone else’s. Also, choose a trick that is a small to medium size step up for you as far as challenge level. I’m sorry but you are just not going to jump from just learning the poi Four Directions to the Buzzsaw Flower, there are a few steps in between. Trying to learn a trick that’s too hard or that you don’t enjoy practicing will make for a very long and likely frustrating practice!
2. Find a teacher that communicates well and is flexible to your needs.
This might mean getting perspective from multiple teachers, if you can find two or three people who know the trick, they can all give you different perspectives on the same move. I have noticed all my students learn differently and adapt to each prop uniquely, so I often have to think of new ways to describe the same thing. In the end though, my students always get it, because I make them follow these last three steps.
3. Visualize yourself already having mastered the trick.
Over and over again. If you can see yourself clearly in your mind’s eye doing the trick masterfully, your nervous system will work in a flurry to align themselves to see that reality matches up with… real reality. We often don’t think of our minds and imaginations as real because they are so much different then “the real world”, but science has proven that the brain doesn’t know the difference between a very vivid imagining and something actually happening. Here’s a funny practice: Whoever your teacher may be, picture your head on their body doing the trick. This will both begin to prime your mirror neurons (the neurons designed to master the “monkey see, monkey do” method) and take the edge off of getting too serious. After all, this is supposed to be fun, not serious.
I know not everyone is well versed in creating mental images, so I highly suggest practicing. Yes, meditate, daydream, and do what you can to get into a calm but energized mentality. There’s much truth about the mind being reality itself. So as you picture things, so they are, eventually. Choose to think differently, and think about the solution, not the *challenge* (there are no “problems”, only challenges not met, and potential solutions denied). This is a trick in and of itself but will help you on so many levels.
4. Take breaks and BREATHE
Not kidding, often enough, NOT DOING the trick will help you to learn the trick. The nervous system are like roots and branches, they take in their nutrition during the day and then expand at night (or rather, while they rest). If you have visualized well, and practiced, the moment you feel like stopping, stop. Take a break for 5 minutes, an hour, overnight, or even a whole day or two! Just ideally not more than two days, as I find taking more than this amount of time off will begin to decrease your momentum and your nervous system will prime itself to do more of whatever else you’ve been up to instead of your flow arts. Give yourself time to breathe (and stretch) and let the muscle memory sink. It will do wonders for your learning curve. Who would’ve thought?
5. Consistency and Diversity
Now all that is left to do is practice consistently.
I suggest at least 15-60 minutes a day, 4-5 days a week, and practice in different ways. Practice the move facing north, south, east, west, looking at the sky, looking at the earth, looking in a mirror, by a river, in a desert, on a mountain, around people, and by yourself. Learning a flow art trick is like riding a bike, you can usually get up and going if you keep getting up after you fallen down, though then you gotta go somewhere! Learn to flow in many conditions and really become one with your prop! Learn to do the trick forward and backwards, left and right, squatting down low and standing on your tip toes. Perhaps play some music and dance a little while you flow, put on a blindfold and see how that goes! The more ways the better!
The people you see who are truly one with their flow are the ones WHO LIVE THEIR FLOW. There are not some conditions okay for flow arts and others not. Be bold, and be in love with the practice! Don’t ever get caught in “the law of familiarity”, for there’s always a way to further master a trick, make it fresh, or further evolve it. In my perspective, the only way we can fail is we give up and throw in the towel. Mind you, taking a break is different (more like “giving in” than giving up).
Your Turn!
So get to it! Follow these steps, pick a move (or two, or three; eat hearty but don’t bite off more than you can chew), and watch yourself get better and better, one step at a time. Months to years later you will find yourself being able to do new moves very quickly and sometimes instantaneously!
Consider me a resource! I just learned a new move to help out someone who commented on a video! Happy to be of service!
Yours in flow,
Jesse Hart of Full Circle Phenomenal
A Sacred Flow Art Community Blogger
