Comfort zone experiment 1: Hooping

During my junior year of college, Everybody’s Free (to Wear Sunscreen) was released. It was a mock graduation speech set to music full of corny but oh-so-true advice. The best? “Do one thing everyday that scares you.” Taking that advice to heart led to a bunch of awesome, eye-opening experiences and brought many new people into my life. I have decided to take up this mantra again. (Hopefully, it will be much easier than other mantras I’ve attempted this year like “only snack on fruit” or “speak Japanese everyday.”)  

Tonight, I agreed to attend the ‘Dance! Move! Play! Gathering,’ that promised hoop tricks, music, and poi (the Maori juggling toys, not the Hawaiian dish). I felt I qualified to join this event because I am one of the few people in my class who can keep a hoola hoop going around my waist (never mind that the rest of the class is made up of 4 and 5 year olds). 

Initially, I was intimidated because I didn’t know any spectular hooping tricks like incorporating different parts of my body or spinning with a hoop on fire but the event was actually really mellow. Deanne, the organizer, (that’s her on the left) brought a dozen striped hoops and we spread out in a gym, hoops a-spinning. Dani, who invited me to the event, had a hoop going around her foot while bent in a back bridge. I learned how to hoop while walking, and how to do the ‘cowgirl’ (hoop moving orizontally around hand, arm extended above head). I spent much of my time trying to get the hoop from above in the cowgirl position smoothly down to my waist and back up again. I only got hit in the face with spinning plastic few times though did manage to elbow myself in the ear. It wasn’t even that embarrasing running across the gym to retreive my runaway hoop. Concentrating on something so random and fun made me feel like a kid again and the two hours just flew by. Fingers crossed now and hope that my abs will be aching tomorrow from the work out. (Icing on the cake.)

This entry was posted on May 1, 2009 at 10:02 am and is filed under Comfort zone. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.