 | Ann Humphreys trained for four years with master hooper and hoop meditation pioneer Jonathan Baxter of North Carolina’s HoopPath. Her approach is defined by HoopPath fundamentals, a curriculum that offers both a rigorous technical framework and the evocative use of imagery to free individual expressiveness and the capacity to allow each student, ultimately, to teach herself. Below, Ann offers and in-depth tutorial on her latest work on dancing within the outer spaces of the hoop. www.hooppath.com
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Ann's Bali Retreat Focus: Technique as Meditation
We will explore a variety of technical frames, allowing ourselves the space and time necessary to experience the specific insights that shine through the prism of technique. Though movement with the hoop invites the freedom of improvisation and Flow, technique is the fundamental element of all hoopdance. Without technique, there is no movement. Without technique, there is no dance. Technique creates our vocabulary of movement, and therefore our relationship to the hoop.
In the hoop meditation, technique can become the path for us to deepen our connection to the Present. In HoopPath teaching, the term 'technique' is meant to point only towards the movement that is necessary to keep the hoop up, revolving, and/or interacting with your body in a way that reflects some degree of intent. Technique does not exclude experimentation, openness, or creativity with the hoop; rather it suggests a physically real and specific structure within which movement with the hoop is possible. Though this structure is ever-evolving, some of the foundations have been poured and can be set through practice to provide you with a solid basis on which to build your own personal and vividly expressive dance. When we are fully focused on the movement of body and hoop, we make a clean sweep of the clutter in the mind. Anxious thoughts that might normally take up too much space in our minds are given an escape valve, and fade into insignificance. When the mind is opened completely to the hoop’s movement, there is no room for anything else.
We will ground ourselves in the HoopPath fundamentals that instruct the essence of our dance, both on- and off-body: One Tree/Two Tree, Two Birds, and Second Current: and we will also explore some newer technical frames that can offer new ways to deepen our meditation: Mother Current, Infinite Axes, Spiral Channels and Velvet Vortices, Playing with Negative/Outer Space, Sweeping, Stitching, and Stapling.
You will need both a core or “groove” hoop that you can comfortably hoop on the core from shoulders to knees (and we will work on both shoulder and leg/knee hooping, not to worry!) as well as a hoop that you can comfortably manipulate off-body, often a smaller and lighter version of your core hoop. If you use the same hoop for core and off-body hooping, all the better.
We will explore a variety of technical frames, allowing ourselves the space and time necessary to experience the specific insights that shine through the prism of technique. Though movement with the hoop invites the freedom of improvisation and Flow, technique is the fundamental element of all hoopdance. Without technique, there is no movement. Without technique, there is no dance. Technique creates our vocabulary of movement, and therefore our relationship to the hoop.
In the hoop meditation, technique can become the path for us to deepen our connection to the Present. In HoopPath teaching, the term 'technique' is meant to point only towards the movement that is necessary to keep the hoop up, revolving, and/or interacting with your body in a way that reflects some degree of intent. Technique does not exclude experimentation, openness, or creativity with the hoop; rather it suggests a physically real and specific structure within which movement with the hoop is possible. Though this structure is ever-evolving, some of the foundations have been poured and can be set through practice to provide you with a solid basis on which to build your own personal and vividly expressive dance. When we are fully focused on the movement of body and hoop, we make a clean sweep of the clutter in the mind. Anxious thoughts that might normally take up too much space in our minds are given an escape valve, and fade into insignificance. When the mind is opened completely to the hoop’s movement, there is no room for anything else.
We will ground ourselves in the HoopPath fundamentals that instruct the essence of our dance, both on- and off-body: One Tree/Two Tree, Two Birds, and Second Current: and we will also explore some newer technical frames that can offer new ways to deepen our meditation: Mother Current, Infinite Axes, Spiral Channels and Velvet Vortices, Playing with Negative/Outer Space, Sweeping, Stitching, and Stapling.
You will need both a core or “groove” hoop that you can comfortably hoop on the core from shoulders to knees (and we will work on both shoulder and leg/knee hooping, not to worry!) as well as a hoop that you can comfortably manipulate off-body, often a smaller and lighter version of your core hoop. If you use the same hoop for core and off-body hooping, all the better.
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