SeaHeart

To those new on the Ye Olde Friends List, I'm an avid hula hooper (called "hoopers!"), and have been hooping for two years now. I'd always wanted to learn (I've been belly dancing since I was fifteen, and some of the hip movements are similar, and I thought hooping was such a beautiful art), so one day I was like I HAVE PUT THIS OFF FOR YEARS, and said "FUCK IT," bought myself some rubber tubing, made my own hoops and taught myself. :P THIS EXPLAINS A LOT ABOUT ME.

For having been doing it for two years, I'm still kind of crap at the more complicated tricks...add to that that I can't hoop over the winter (there's no place indoors around here where I can haul out my hoops and have at it), so I get rusty, and every spring, I have to re-learn what I learned last fall...so it's slow going. But, to be honest, it doesn't really matter to me how many tricks I know. I get such fucking joy from hooping, which is really the only thing that matters~ :) <3

Hooping, just like belly dance, is a completely spiritual action for me. When I'm spinning the hoop around me, there's this knowledge that the world is spinning, that life is spinning, that everything is a circle and never-ending. I really, really missed it over the winter, and I'm so grateful to be able to pick up the hoops and dive right back into it. <3

I hooped quite a bit today, trying to un-rust some of my tricks. Some of them were super easy to fall back into, but some of the newer ones that I JUST mastered last fall are now MISERABLE FAILURES. :P We'll see if they come back quickly. A somewhat easier trick, the Corkscrew was my EPIC ACHIEVEMENT of last year (IT IS HARDER THAN IT LOOKS), but it's been coming back rustily, which I am like THAT WAS HARD WON, C'MON, BODY, PLEASE REMEMBER, whereas the "Teacher, Teacher!" (sticking one arm up when hooping around your neck and shoulders, then down, like you're raising your hand in class) trick, which is much harder, came back in one try. :P Of course.

Jenn came out just as the sun was setting and snapped some pictures of me~ <33333 So I thought I'd share a few! :) One of these days, maybe when I get the Corkscrew back, I'll get a video of me dancing, and you can see all of the CRAZY EXPRESSIONS I MAKE when I'm hooping. XD



( Like a record, baby~ )

I am the firebird! I am his daughter!
I am the firebird's child!
I am the firebird! I am his daughter!
And like the flame, I am wild wild wild wild WILD!
I am the firebird, the boldest song you've ever heard!

To see a maiden dance around a fire is not so strange
but fire dances round the limbs of this uncommon maid!
Be brave enough to burn and you'll be brave enough to fly!
Join your sister Solace as she lights the morning sky!

I am the firebird! I am his daughter!
I am the firebird's child!
I am the firebird! I am his daughter!
And like the flame, I am wild wild wild wild WILD!
I am the firebird, the boldest song you've ever heard!

Sister will you follow me?
Sister will you dance with me?
Sister sorrow walk with me!
Sister sorrow dance with me!
Like a flame you must be wild!

~*~

Imagine this:

You've just taken part in one of the most amazing rituals you've ever experienced. You're at Diana's Grove, surrounded by exquisite community, men and women who shine with a vibrancy that can only be summed up as divine. You've gone through a weekend filled with growth and magic. Music begins, and you rise because you must. You rise to dance.

It is night. A full moon nestles in a bed of silver cloud overhead. A drum pounds all around you, creaking floorboards beneath your bare feet, the night smells sweet and green and there is grace everywhere. Women surround you, women in swirling skirts and jeans and t-shirts and velvets, and they're laughing and twirling and moving their bodies in a perfect embodiment of the Goddess. You're moving with them, slapping your feet against the boards, arching your back under the myriad of stars that crown you, overhead. The song shifts and change, and you hear cries of the purest joy. "Firebird's Child" begins to pump through the speakers, and suddenly, you hadn't even noticed, but the women are dancing in a circle, and you're calling to them, and they're calling to you. You are their sister, you are the firebird's daughter, and you must be wild, wild, wild. And you are. Oh, you are.

Something moves through you. Joy, euphoria, Goddess. It's all the same thing, isn't it? She moves through your limbs, and the fingers against the sky are yours, but not your own, and your legs move, and oh gods, you're a serpent, aren't you--the way you move your body, the way you bend and curve, and it's not you, but it is you, and it's the most you you've ever been. The candles burn, the flames flickering as the breeze moves among the women, circling them, drawing you closer. Your heart thunders along with the beat, and as you bend, heart up, arched like Diana's bow, suddenly, the skies open.

Rain, rain, cries of delight and joy, and everyone keeps dancing, but more and more and more, and it's a rising crescendo of euphoria and witchery and beauty and oh gods, it's building like the most exquisite circle casting you've ever taken part in, and it is, and the power, the power of woman, of beauty, of love, crashes around you and shoots into the sky, a reverse falling star--rising, this time, into the heavens.

The song ends, and everyone erupts. Cheers, applause, a deafening echo that you add to, by crying out from your belly, clapping your hands against your thighs, twisting and turning as another song takes place, surrounded by sisters, dancing in beauty, Goddess incarnate.

All acts of love and pleasure are Her rituals. And oh, you know this. So well.

Every time at Diana's Grove is life changing, an evolution of soul and spirit. I am a completely different person from when I went there, and the time before that...and before that. It is community, it is love and a place of safety and solace created by the Goddess Herself, it seems. The rituals, the community creations, the evolutions, the skins shed, the tempering fire, the illustrious inspiration of air, the crashing crescendo of water, the solidity of earth...I can't articulate it. The rush of the creek, the movement of the serpent, the embraces, the shift of tree overhead, and the echo of breath in my breast and the sparkle of every eye that held divinity...which was every one. Oh Goddess. Oh Beloved. Oh Brilliance. I returned from my time there Monday night, utterly spent, but glowing.

And tomorrow, we leave for Salem.

My heart is overrun, a pool of starlight, a spout of fire.

I am the firebird.

I am his daughter.

I am the firebird's child, and I am wild, wild, wild, wild, wild!

Every night, I hoop at twilight. The first stars are faintly shining in the sky, the sun is gone, but the splash of color on the horizon will last for about forty-five minutes, giving me enough light to dance.

The fireflies come out, one by one, and shift and move around me, dancing, too. It's hard to describe, that connection, that feel of earth beneath bare feet as I twirl things into being. I imagine the Goddess, shaping the world with a spiral, and I swing my hips to a sound only I and the fireflies can hear--a song made by the stars, the crickets, the waning moon overhead, the trees as they shift, pressing soft leaf tongues against the wind--the robins, as they put their babies to bed, singing lullabies in feathered language.

My heart beats fast, when I spin the hoop. The larger, heavier ones require more effort, and your skin has to stay connected to them longer to keep them in the air, suspended. You don't fight the gravity, you realize that you're a part of it, and if you romance it a little, it won't fight you, either...

It's such Witchcraft, these magic hours. I belly dance, when my hips begin to ache from too much spinning, moving myself like a serpent-made-human. I undulate, hold out my arms to the fireflies, spin and weave and whir, a piece of living clockwork in the greater Universe.

I lay down, spent, last night, body cupped by soft grasses, gentle dews, as I stared up at the stars and traced the pictures I know by heart. There is the great bear, her head held high, while she smiles indulgently down upon the world, holding us all in her great ursine embrace. I felt such magic all around me, felt so connected that I could not have spoken, even if I wanted to. I was mute, silent to the pervasive beauty and awe in the line of every living thing.

I held up my hoop to the stars, my body cradled by the earth, my hoop suspended in the heavens. I thought about what it is, as a Witch, to cast the circle, to invite the elements to witness your great rite, to draw down the Goddess from a sickle moon into your heart. I thought about magic, I thought about how it exists within me, within all things, and in that moment, I pressed my hand against my heart, overwhelmed by the greatness of the universe, and my own smallness. And how, despite my tiny spirit in comparison to a star--I am still cradled, I am still loved. I am still held.

And I set the hoop down around my feet, as I stood. And I raised my arms up to the heavens, cradling them in my arms, as I imagine the Goddess does.

I was too filled with gratitude to tell Her the two words my entire being sang. So I write them here:

Thank You.

I've been really tapped into my own mortality lately in a very good way--it all began with Beethoven leaving. I'm a pretty in-the-moment kind of person to begin with, but I've been so...well, even more aware of everything. We never, ever know how much time we have on this beautiful blue/green planet. Never. I could be gone tomorrow, I could be gone a hundred years from now, and I will never know that time or place or day...but while I'm here, in this body, in this time and in this place, I will never have it be said that I didn't live with all my heart. I've been so much more aware of that lately, so tuned into that...that every moment, every breath, every second of this existence is to be lived, and it's this incredible, immense blessing. I'm so grateful for everything...for the blue sky and the blossoming earth and for everything in between. I'm more in the moment than I've ever been before, and I relish that.

I don't put off much in my life, but there are definite things I've postponed until "circumstances are better" to learn them. I love tribal belly dance with all my heart. I can do devil sticks pretty well, and learned them so that I could incorporate them into dancing, but I've ALWAYS wanted to learn poi and hooping to add to my dance practice and into my own dances. I think they're both so wild and intense and grace-ful and filled.

So, you know...no time like the present to learn. XD


by J.Boswell

I have a child sized hoop, which is really not doing the trick for me. I've been practicing very LAMELY on and off for about a year, but last night, I began to dedicate chunks of time to the training. I got, in the almighty words of Darkwing Duck, dangerous. XDDDD Since it's child sized, I can't spin it around my hips very well, but I've been concentrating on arm work, spinning it on arm and hooping it in patterns. I'm pretty graceful when it comes to actual dancing (thank the ever living GODS), so it's not too difficult yet. I'm so sore this morning, though! Apparently, when you begin to dedicate an actual practice to it, you get super bruised up to start with. Joy. XDDDD

I've never been so excited about buying piping in my entire life. XD It's totally possible to make your own hoop, inexpensively, that--you know--actually works for you.

Last night, after drills, I began to do a bit of actual dancing--very simplistic, but it was darkening, the stars were beginning to come out, and the lingering and failing last rays of sun were causing the most incredible colors to spill across the sky... I began to think about different dance Goddesses, and star Goddesses, and as I hooped, I realized I was doing an invocation. The energy from the hooping, the dancing and the perfect twilight spiraled together into perfect beauty. It was transcendent~

I came across this today, and thought I would share~ <3

Many purveyors of heavier hoops have a decidedly spiritual take on hooping, including myself! What I experience when I hoop (fondly referred to as “the hoop zone") is like an alternate dimension, a place of no thought, high vibration frequencies and limitless potential. It seems that whatever I am focused on creating in my life, whatever is the most true intrinsic I is magnified a thousand fold when the hoop spirals into motion. This holds true for negative thought patterns as well! If I am dropping my hoop it is usually because the “I can’t do it” bug has slipped in. So, the more I let go, the more I drop negative personal judgments, the more I just allow myself to BE within the hoop, the higher and more powerful my expression and ability to hoop magnificently and simultaneously manifest my dreams!
~ from HoopRevolution.com

Last night, I was meditating before I began my ecstatic dance practice. It was a simple heart opening meditation...my hands were placed on my heart, I was thinking about what I wanted to bring to the practice, I was opening my heart to the Goddess. When I do ecstatic dance (which is sadly rare now, as I often do belly dance instead of ecstatic dance...I used to balance the two out much better, but things go in cycles, I suppose), I do it as an offering to the Goddess, and I was opening my heart in gratitude and love to Her...

I wasn't prepared for what happened next.

( Read more... )

So! Question! What would YOU like to see in a Pagan book for women who love women (notice it's not just lesbian...this is for ALL women who love women, regardless of labels)? I want to take into consideration ideas that might not have been in this original outline, and I felt I needed to ask. <3