Surya Namaskar

best wake up stretch evah :)

Namaste

Weave Death

Well, this was inevitable. And now I progress to the greater evolution of this precious flow art.

My weave dance is about over. This, because I shot a video of it. And I looked at it without seeing the poi. And all I could see was a hunched over person focusing all energy internally, hands tied together and staying close to body core.

I didn't want my dance to look like that. I want it to be free and expressive and OPEN. I began to really move my arms and hands OUT from my body, stretching to maximum extension and re-discovering those BASIC poi moves. It felt good. For the first time in a while, I got the good ole spine tingle... for me, that means I'm opening up new energy channels. Yay!

The FINAL nail in the coffin was when I realised that my "tight weave" manuever could be best explained by saying "pretend like you have handcuffs on"... I did subsequently confirm that I can do forward / backward / spinning weave while handcuffed, but was that really the dance I wanted to be putting out into the universe?

So, farewell continuous weave, hello OPEN SPINNING.

With Open Heart Forward,
+h30ry

Weave Flow

Yay I'm celebrating for a new "trick"... not really a trick, more like a natural flow.

First I had to nail my front to back weave transitions, so I just kept doing them over and over until I could do them without thinking. This is where you rotate your body 180 mid-weave and simultaneously transition from front weave to back weave or vice versa. It was a lot harder smoothing out the clockwise rotations than it was the CC, go figure.

Once I got these rotations nailed, I realised that I could do a continuous circular body rotation instead of just moving 180. So I started doing FW-turn-BW-turn-FW-turn, etc. continuously.

A few days later, I realised that I could rotate my weave without rotating my body, so that if I could be running a forward weave with my torso torqued 90 degrees leftward, than I could simply rotate my torso 180 (to the right), keeping my feet firmly planted, and in doing so switch to the back weave, on the right side. Neat!

It was only natural at that point to realise that I could stop, start, or reverse both my body rotation, my torso rotation, and my weave direction at ANY TIME in the dance, and I didn't need to have set entry / exit points or "cardinal directions". That was where the fun began. For like 20 minutes I listened to a series of songs (a good mix of 180bpm techno and 45bpm folk FYI) and just freely explored the bodyspace inside the coccoon of the weave. I stopped thinking about where the poi actually were and my body naturally rotated, my wrists naturally reversed when needed, and I reveled in the dance.

Max Rocks

Tonight, just before bed, the kids and I had a poi party. we turned off all the lights and I turned on the glowpoi (in their zebra sock casings). Alyson went first since arguable she had the most experience. I played her favorite song. But the performance, though fun, was uninspired, and she wouldn't listen to my gentle guidance of holding the socks midway down so they would stop smacking the floor.

Next I performed, and I took C's advice to heart and gave it my very best, really getting into the music (Incubus/Dig) and trying some fairly challenging moves like a weave high overhead while on my knees.

Max was chomping at the bit by the time I was done and requested he perform to a song from his first CD, "I'm A Ram" by Government Mule. I gave him a big MC-style intro and he immediately disarmed the crowd by saying casually "Well, I'm normally a stand-up comedian but tonight I forgot my routine, so I'm just gonna play with these here glowy things." As the music came on, he then proceeded to completely dazzle Alyson and I with a passion I had rarely seen. He reminded me of my first poi days after midnight, drunk, syncced to blaring punk rock. He danced with abandon and the poi followed his every move. I cheered him on loudly and he really rocked to the beat, dancing all over the linving room and doing some moves so chaotic I couldn't even interpret them, mixed in with stalls, butterflies, and wraps. I was so proud.

Alyson then insisted she do it again and wanted to do it to Max's song, which I refused, but played Gorillaz/Dare instead, which seemed good. Again she didn't heed my advice and ended up giving herself a really strong poismack right in the mouth (I know how much that hurts!)... all the while Max continued dancing with abandon, grace, and his own unique style. It was a great night for us all.

Natural Movement

after another 30 minutes of spinning to some of my favorite spinmusic (Prodigy: Breath, Fighting Cocks misc, various Burning Man DJ set rips), I have both integrated the weave, both directions, and had some good practice moving into and out of it from other places.

I can truly say this is the most natural move I've ever assimilated. After the first few "watch the video" disasters, I gave up on it, and then "voila!" at the beach, it simply materialised out of thin air, and now its like second nature.

I hope that all moves come so easily in the future!