During the past month, as I have moved through, within, around and often stood stagnantly in this transition from my home in the hooping “mecca” of Carrboro, NC to the Detroit Metro Area of Michigan, I have been spent the least amount of time in my hoop in years. My once 5-6 day a week practice has dwindled, at best to once a week, primarily because of logistics. The three times I have hooped I’ve found my heart lighter, my mood lifted significantly, and a connection back to something deeper and greater than myself.For many, I’d even venture to say, for most, what is created inside the hoop is healing, powerful, personal and many times communal. Over my almost 9 years of hooping I have heard story after story of transformation and continual growth that began the day someone picked up a hoop or saw someone hooping. I know this is true for me. It is difficult to try to explain this to those unfamiliar with flow arts, or who have not found that connection with something powerful in life. So I wanted to share two stories, neither mine, but both far more powerful than what I could write.
The first “story” is actually a comment written about a video I made over 3 1/2 years ago when I was pregnant with my second child. This comment still deeply affects me and lives close to my heart. It reminds me that power lies in each movement, act, word spoken and everyday we each influence one another, often in small ways, sometimes without ever knowing it, and other times irrevocably .
“When my sister became pregnant against her will at 16 she struggled to find a way to heal her spirit and accept the beauty of life. She watched this video over and over again. She picked up a hoop and created a circle of love and acceptance around herself and the blessed life with which she had been gifted. You were able to show her the way. We all thank you for sharing your Love with us.”
The second story is from a dear friend, whom I have been talking to regularly as she is finding her way back into the hoop during a period of healing. She wrote to me recently sharing with me that this was not the first time she has sought hooping for the purposes of healing. Her prose, her story, her courage are so powerful I requested to use it verbatim in this blog, changing her name to protect her privacy.
I’ve given her the name “Willow”, always bending gracefully with the wind, even when it harshly blows, but never breaking.
Willow’s Story:
"i remember the first time i saw them. they were outside and mostly barefoot, women moving within their sacred symbols. i felt so drawn to them, to their energy, to their sacred circles, but i also remember thinking, i could never be like them, i could never do that...i could never move my body in that way, so free, so archetypal, even provocative...
All my scars would be showing, and besides, i would be "asking for it", i guess in the same way a five year old little girl "asks for it”...
but that was all before i know what i know now. that was back when i had no safe place, and nightmares ran my life, awake and asleep. memories of my dad and my uncles, their hands on me, their bodies on me in ways they shouldn't be...
images of them beating my mom, holding her down, having their way with her. beating the dogs until they stopped crying out. pounding them in the face. my face. i was a haunted woman, a lost little ghost.
Then i saw a poster at my gym, about hoop classes. for many weeks i would pass by the poster on purpose, but i never went to the class. finally, for mystical reasons i still am thankful for but still don't understand, i went to the class, and there began a journey that changed the way i move, the way i think, the way i relate to others...
i fell in love with my hoop. it surrounded me. it surrounded me. it surrounded me. it defined the space around me, drawing a line around and around and around me until i understood that there was a space i could claim, into which others could not come uninvited. it protected me. it danced with me, a gentle partner, understanding when i had had enough, waiting nearby and patient when i cried. rocking me when i cried within its arms. soothing me when i was still and quiet within her encircling arms.
At the same time, the hooped worked a strange and seemingly opposite magic. it connected me to a community of other holy dancers, other seekers. i wasn't such a lonely little ghost anymore. i always felt different because of my history, never felt like i fit in. i could never figure out where to put myself, where to be. but somehow in the hoop, we are all one. it joins us to a place in time before we all subdivided into races and genders and people with problems and people with and without money and all the other ways we categorize ourselves and each other. If you ever see many people hooping together, you will be mesmerized by the unique expression of each person's energy. and you will also be mesmerized by the collective energy, the affirmation of community. So finally, i belonged somewhere -- inside of my hoop, and i belonged to something, the hooping community. "
