[brownie]

stand in front of your bathroom mirror and slide your hands down your body until you can PHYSICALLY FEEL the bumps of your hip bones under your palms- if doesn’t matter actually if you have a mirror or not- the important thing is that you are facing something square on- your TV, for example, will work fine, it’s just to give you a reference point-

so here you are, standing in front of your TV, facing it. if you don’t have a TV, put your boyfriend or a friend in front of you and FACE THEM straight on. feel your hips, physically, with your hands. your left hand is feeling your left hip bone and your right hand is feeling your right hip bone. now without moving your feet, rotate your body to the left. feel how your hip bones move PHYSICALLY through space, the right one moving forwards, the left one moving back. rotate to your right. again, feel how your hip bones move PHYSICALLY through space, even though you are not moving your feet at all. now find the center again, the place where you were when you- and both of your hip bones- were facing the TV/friend straight on.

it’s helpful to think of your hip bones as two headlights. they are beaming like car headlamps straight at your TV. now begin to lower yourself into the splits. the natural tendency will be for your hip headlights to WANT to turn to the right, if your left leg is in front, or to WANT to turn to the left, if your right leg is in front. the reason this tendency occurs is because initially, you will be able to get further into the APPEARANCE of doing the splits, when you let your hips shift, than when you are strict with your hips and make them stay pointing straight forwards. give it a try and you’ll see what i mean.

the goal is to get all the way down into the splits WITHOUT ALLOWING your hip bones to shift to either the right or the left. unless you’ve done lots of yoga or have naturally very open hips, most likely this will seem like an impossible feat for quite some time. not to worry. with patience and daily practice, you will arrive at the splits.

VERY IMPORTANT while you are practicing extending your legs OUTWARDS into the splits, is to at the same time draw the muscle energy in your legs INWARDS, isometrically together- the sensation is as if you are pulling your front hip (the one that belongs to the leg extending to the front of you) BACKWARDS, while at the same time you are pulling your back hip (the one that belongs to the leg extending to the back of you) FRONTWARDS. this drawing inwards, balancing the extension outwards, will help you to keep your hips facing squarely to the TV (or whatever is your reference point) in front of you.

because keeping the hips square doesn’t initially allow you to get as far into the splits as you can get when you allow your hips to shift sideways, most people let their hips do whatever is necessary to simply get as low down into the splits as possible (the farther down you get, the better it looks, the better YOU look, the more accomplished you feel, maybe the girl stretching next to you is all the way down and you don’t wanna look like the least flexible person in the room, blah blah blah all ego stuff). so in the short-term, it looks better & thus you feel better- BUT if you continually practice the splits by allowing your hips to shift any which way but straight, your hips will TIGHTEN over time, and you might very well find yourself with all sorts of problems in your hip flexors, hamstrings, etc., and you will be confused because all this time you thought you were lengthening your muscles when actually you were gradually tightening them. in short, = opposite of the desired effect.

still, we all want to look as good as possible, especially when other people are watching us, so i feel that as long as you ALWAYS keep your hips square in your personal or class stretching practice, it’s ok to let your hips shift a little to the side to get into the splits when you are performing https://www.studioveena.com/img/smilies/icon_e_wink.gif) what can i say- when i am performing, i "cheat" by letting my hips shift, but when i am practicing, the goal is to OPEN and LENGTHEN my muscles, and this will only be accomplished by keeping one’s hips square.

[brownie]

oh girl, i’ve bruised myself all over in the last year since i took up hoop dancing–hit myself in the face, bruised my lip, bruised my forehead, my hips all the time in the beginning, my shins, my nose, knocked myself in the teeth–don’t worry about it, whatever you do DON’T STOP HOOPING!–you’ll be fine. i had bruises on my shins almost every day when i was first learning to climb the pole, and still i kept climbing. you’re more resilient than you think–i think we all are! if you’re learning tosses or duck-outs, a lightweight hoop will definitely make things easier on your body when the hoop does land on you–i got a lightweight hoop right off, during my first "tosses" class, and it was so much less bruising–and easier to hoop with for longer periods of time–that i just kept it for on-the-body hoop practice as well. i haven’t gone back to heavier hoops since, actually, so that’s one option. the lighter hoops will feel harder/faster at first, but after the first couple of days, you’ll adjust, and those big heavy hoops will feel so…HEAVY, and SLOW. now i only use heavy hoops when i am first trying to learn a new move (unless it’s a new toss). when the lighter hoops hit you in the face, it’s still not pleasant, but you won’t have black and blue marks for days (maybe just half a day https://www.studioveena.com/img/smilies/icon_e_wink.gif))