A couple days ago, I noted how I’ve been struggling with the “last foundational move” of my hooping repertoire. I learned how to do vertical reversals right around the first of January; by the 6th, I could do a barrel roll; by the 12th I could vertically chest hoop (but it would always lean to the right, in which I’d follow it and end up going in some kind of circle).

I learned to do vertical breaks & reversals in very early January, and I had since been trying to hoop in the vertical with my shoulders to no avail. I learned all these other cool things along the way, bu this one thing was practically mocking me.  I don’t know how many hours I had dedicated to not only physically practicing but watching every possible YouTube video describing the process. I watched many of these videos more than twice. Still, nothing.

Maybe it was yesterday that hooping.org had an article about “keeping it up” (“it” being the hoop, of course) and when I read it, I thought, “well, maybe I’m just not going fast enough.”

Over the course of the night, I spent about 3 hours practicing my vertical chest hooping, faster, slower, one arm in, then out, then the other arm in, then out. It just didn’t matter, nothing was working. I went to bed cranky. I was frustrated: physically frustrated.

So this morning I got up and grabbed my hoop even before I had coffee. I spun it across my back to the left, right and finally a good shove and it went around once, then fell. Reminded by my meditation practice, “try, try again,” I did.  I decided, “Okay, I’ll try for it to go around my body only twice.”  Left, right, shove: body once, body twice, yay! Okay, now I will try for three times. A couple tries late,  left, right, shove: three times!

OH. MY. GOD.

Okay, if I can get it 4x, I will record it. And then it happened! I spun it around 4x! It was seriously as if the heavens opened up. My body went a bit loose and all I might have even cried a little tiny bit.

So pardon the bedhead. And the purple garden smock. And the messy digs… Here goes:

IMG 2393 from merrycarrion on Vimeo.

Note: It may not look like I was happy in the video, but I assure you: I was ecstatic! 😀 I just hadn’t had any coffee yet.