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A Second Hoop-Honeymoon
It turns out an old dog can indeed learn new tricks.

First things first. Superhooper hosted The Hoop Path workshop in Atlanta with Ann Humphreys this weekend. In
hosting it, I intended it to be a galvanizing event for Atlanta - something to bring this massive city's community
together (the 'burb hoopers can't always make it to Sunday in-town jams). In a city where it can take an hour,
depending, to get to one agreed-upon place to hoop together, I figured, we'd make the effort to travel to the
industrial West End to be personally inspired by Ann, a bona fide hoop-star. So I did what it takes to host an
event, I told myself, for the community. For Atlanta. For hoopers in a 100 mile radius. That happened.

What happened, too, is something I couldn't and wouldn't anticipate. It changed my life. This is where I suppose I
should confess that I started writing this blog for two reasons. One, because I had a philosophy about hooping
that wasn't being shared because I was reluctant to shake it on a YouTube video. And two, I wanted to work
through my very real hooper burn-out in a way that made me regularly accountable. Maybe it would mean
something for someone else too.

If you're a new hooper, you may not know what hooper burn-out is. It's the time that comes after what I call the
hoop-honeymoon, which is the 1-4 year stint where everything is new and exciting and it's all happening inside
your hoop. After my hoop-honeymoon, my hoop became a familiar symbol of a time of radical expansion in my life,
but my hoop was no longer the space of that expansion. I had reached a hoop-plateau, if you will, I had hit the
hoop-wall. There wasn't anything I didn't know about my hoop. I couldn't take it anywhere it hadn't gone. I didn't
have anything else to teach it.

Until ... that is, until Ann had me put on a blindfold. Until she invited me to imagine that the hoop might teach me. I
fought her every step of the way. "What is a hoop going to teach me," I said aloud, "I've got a PhD. I've overcome
personal struggle and hardship. It's awesome fun, but it's just 36" of molded plastic, after all!" I guide my hoop.
Seriously. I guide my life. I don't look to my hoop to understand where to go next.

If you already know me personally, you know I'm a Webster-dictionary skeptic. If you don't know that about me,
now you do. I expected to have a great time at the workshops and meet some fabulous new people. I certainly did
not expect to close my eyes and find in myself what I could not see there before ... all over again. A whole world of
possibility and range of movement opened up before me, as if I were discovering hooping for the very first time.

The Hoop Path workshops didn't ask me to reckon myself to a hoop. It asked me to reckon with myself ... in the
space I had chosen and with the partner that had chosen me. My hoop, the piece of plastic that had, once upon a
time, prompted me to think about my body and space in the first place. The workshops invited me to be receptive
and attentive to where I am. In a hoop. In my life. And not only did it change my opinion about myself and my
hoop, it bolstered my appreciation of our hooping community as those who consistently join and celebrate each of
us there.

I find myself embarking on a second hoop-honeymoon and I couldn't be more excited about it. I'm newly smitten.
And I'm finally listening to my favorite circular dance partner, instead of bossing it around :-).
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Hooposophy articles are written by
Superhooper.org's Lara Eastburn
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