Category: Hooping

So, my hoop arrived yesterday. On picking it up, I had an instant reminder of when I started spinning. My first yarn was spun on a homemade CD spindle, where the CD was fixed to the shaft with a bit of polystyrene and the cap of an old film cannister, and using a lump of fleece I found in the field up the road, combed with a cat comb. It was yarn, and it didn’t even look too bad as far as beginner yarns go, and I mostly got the hang of drafting, so i didn’t need to park and draft, but still, it was DIFFICULT. It was hard enough trying to get my body to co-ordinate all these new movements without using crappy equipment, and the fact that my shoulder was still very painful a lot of the time didn’t help. When I first got a wheel, it came with some wool tops, and when I first tried spinning them on the wheel, it was like magic, it was just SO EASY. Like all of the things I’d been fighting against with the spindle and old wool had just gone away, and I was instantly drafting and twisting evenly.

And the hoop was like that. As soon as I picked it up and started playing with it on my waist, it didn’t need so much effort or concentration, I could move around without it falling down, and it felt a lot more natural.

Of course, I still have a long way to go before I am any good at it, but having a proper hoop has made such a difference.

And here’s another video for me to look back at some day.

Currently I can waist hoop in an anticlockwise direction with minimal effort, I can do corkscrews successfully about half the time, and move the hoop from my waist to my hips and back most of the time, though I need to work more on pushing back so it stays on my hips and doesn’t move to my waist without me wanting it to. I can’t do any form of chest, thigh, or shoulder hooping.

Oh, and yes, injuries. I’ve smacked myself in the head with it a couple of times with no permanent damage, but I am currently sporting a nice bruise on the back of my right hand between my thumb and forefinger. It’s pretty swollen, but hasn’t started going funny colours yet, so that fun will probably start tomorrow. I’ve been trying to work around it by using the hoop higher up on my fingers, which mostly works, but still, ouchie! I also have a bruise from a few days ago on my calf, but that one is just really ugly rather than painful.

Now I’m mostly just annoyed with my body for not being as fit as I want, and for getting tired really easily. I know I’m doing soooo much better than this time last year, but still, i wanna plaaayyyy, and it’s annoying to have to make myself stop and sit down every couple of minutes.

So, the internet was all ‘hey, people with CFS will feel better if they do exercise’, and i was all ‘stfu internet, how can i exercise if i feel like i’m gonna faint all the time?’.

But then I realised I no longer feel faint ALL the time, and have actually been feeling pretty well this spring. Okay, so I’m still sleeping at least 12 hours a day and I still need help with certain household tasks, and still have the odd few days in bed when i overdo it,  but I’ve been generally okay for a month or so. So I decided to do some exercise. I started off with some easy yoga poses. Well, easy in the sense that they don’t require me to lift my whole bodyweight, but still with some difficult stretches, and I’ve been trying to strengthen my arms with little girly weights. But i needed to find something that gets my heart pumping that isn’t too strenuous, running or aerobics is too much for me….so I decided I wanted to try hooping. I was pretty good as a kid, and I had a crappy hoop in the garage for some reason, so i got it out and started to play. I couldn’t do it. It’s only crotch height, and reaallly light, and the interwebs told me i needed something at least navel height as a beginner. I messed around with it on my arms for a bit, then figured that if I can’t make it bigger, at least I can make it heavier, so I took it apart and filled it with water, and yay, I could do it!!!

So I made this video in hopes that I can look back in a few months and see some improvement!

My dad is getting me a pretty 40″ hoop for my birthday, so it’ll be easier and slower and hopefully won’t be as tiring, then maybe I’ll even be able to learn a few tricks!