It is very important to learn in both directions. I swear I went through the same exact thing when it was brought to my attention to learn both directions. I had a seriously rough time adapting but it eventually came. My advice to you is to keep practicing and be patient. It WILL come to you! There are many tricks that require the ability to go both ways. Also, it's excellent exercise for the brain to engage your non-dominant side. And, as you stated, it's crucial for balanced muscle development.

Not only is it good to do, now, to give yourself the greatest performance flexibility, but for later too. If you get into fire hooping, for example, there are certain recipes for making hoops that work better in one direction over the other. Spending a lot of money building or buying a hoop that comes apart because you cant go left is a bit frustrating.

It is SUPER important. Don't give up just because it's hard. Lots of things are hard at first ... and then they're not. It's just a matter of applying yourself and not giving up.

Allow me to relate a personal story. Early in my hoop journey, I only hooped one direction. I was hooping a lot but I began having back pain like crazy and it was keeping me from being able to hoop. I couldn't power through it. Finally I made an appointment with a chiropractor because I was just miserable. He couldn't see me right away. I had to wait two days. Well, the day before I was supposed to go, I was hooping outside and I thought, I am going to hoop in the opposite direction and I am not going to stop, no matter how many times it falls. I am just going to pick it right back up and hoop in my non-dominant direction. After about one or two minutes of this, all of a sudden, my entire spine went "pop-pop-pop-pop-pop!" And I was healed! Basically, I had been throwing the musculature of my entire spine out of wack by only hooping one direction! I was constantly wrenching the bones in my back one way. I was also only developing the muscles on one side of my spine and one side of my abdomen. I was virtually ensuring that I twisted the bones of my spine and that my one-sided muscle development held them in this twisted place.

After I integrated hooping both directions into my practice, this back pain dissolved. I cancelled that appointment with the chiropractor and I have never had that kind of pain again. Ever. It's been years. And I used to have back problems before I began this practice.

Hooping in both directions really helped me grow as a hooper also. You find your balance at that place in the Center. It allows you much more variation in your dance. It allows you to switch directions at will. It's just plain prettier. Plus, again, you find yourself working from that place in the Center so that, at any point, you can go in any direction.

Plus, who wants to have a three-pack of abs instead of a six-pack?

I recommend practicing in your non-dominant direction for one song every day for a month. Pick a short song if you want. (Mine was Paperback Rider, which is just over 2:00 minutes) In no time, you won't even remember which direction was your dominant direction anymore! But it's important to start early, before you get too dependent on one side. The longer you wait, the harder you're making it on yourself.

Good luck. And hang in there. Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly at first.

p.s. There are no stupid questions.

Thanks everyone for the good information! Not exactly what I wanted to hear, haha... but I'll get it eventually, and probably thank you for it.

Back to the hoop! ...

:)

Hi Emily, the best way to answer this is to start by asking yourself what you would like to achieve in hooping (physically, emotionally, spiritually and/or mentally).

I naturally hoop clockwise and I have found two-way hooping to be wonderfully Freeing. When I was able to do vortex (what I call bringing the hoop up and down the body in a continuous spiraling motion) counterclockwise I felt Incredible! I remember literally feeling my higher chakras, especially my crown chakra, open up. It was really sensational. I felt mental blocks being dissolved like particles and lifted into the ethers. There were other moves I achieved two-ways prior to vortex, like hara (waist hooping) and shoulder rolls that simply brought on the feeling, and reminder, that I can do anything I wish to do. =) Moves like hara and shoulder rolls helped me balance the output of my energy and the strengthening of my core muscles, spine and hips in ways that were really only achieved when hooping in one direction. So even the slightest shift in hooping two-ways has helped me to break free from previous conditioning. Just as I broke free from other forms of conditioning when I initially began hooping!

So I doubt you "suck". That's really just the ego kicking in to sabotage your Greatness. Just go at it and know that if you have gotten this far in hooping you can only continue to go further.

I hope this helps! =)

Love Light & Hoopbliss

Hi Emily,

You're supposed to suck when you hoop in the non-dominant direction. Everyone sucks. That's the point. If you don't drop the hoop, you are not trying something new and/or interesting.

I felt the same way when I went to a hoop path workshop, and they told us we were hooping in both directions. And then walking in both directions. And then *jumping* in both directions. Argh! And I had a hoop padded with foam, so you can imagine how much damage my hoop took. I'm sorta decent these days, but not awesome, but like every hoop thing, when you finally get it, it's worth all those days you did nothing but smack yourself in the back of the head (which was me learning to twirl the hoop above my head).

Besides, I started getting pains in one leg cause I was only hooping on one side, you don't want your muscles developing lopsided!

Just don't worry about sucking. Everyone does when they first try it, you're supposed to suck right now, and you won't suck forever.

The way I like to look at it is that you wouldn't go to the gym and only do bicep curls with your right arm. Of course you would want to do tricep curls for a full range of motion AND you would want to also do bicep curls with your left arm.

Once you learn reverses and breaks, you'll find that it's not as fun to reverse the hoop if your hoop is going to then immediately fall the ground because you can't hoop in the opposite direction!

Bi-lateral is good. Very little of our daily life is actually bi-lateral, and there's a whole half-brain underused most of the time.

If you spend your work days doing logical things, you might find a bit more creative energy as you start working the other side. (Probably the reverse is true, too, but that doesn't apply to me so I can't speak to it.)

I hate to even bring it up in my seniors' classes, but if you ever have any kind of brain injury, you're going to have to learn to use new pathways, and I can't help but think that learning something new on your weak side before you "have" to can only make that easier.

It's also a compassion-building exercise, in that you are learning just how hard it can be to learn something new on the "left" (whatever side is non-dominant for you).

I have noticed that if I learn a new trick on the weak side, sometimes I will be able to do it faster on the strong side the next day. But my strong side never teaches my weak side anything overnight.

This is something very close to me at the moment because I'm having problems with my left hip. Evidently my pelvis is out of line. I went to the Chiropractor yesterday to be straightened up, but then hooped a bit later and feel that it's gone out again. Certainly today I'm suffering. Over the winter I've hooped in my sitting room a fair bit. It's tiny so I've had to rotate with the hoop in a tight circle. I hoop clockwise. Although I've been conscious of needing to hoop both ways, I can't turn very gracefully anticlockwise so I think I've tended to do a lot of tight clockwise turning and only a bit to the left. This could be where the problems have come from. If I had to put money on the cause it would be the tight turning.

So, I'm going to force myself to hoop only in my non-dominant direction for the next few weeks! It's going to be hard. I can do most of my tricks either side, but the right is stronger. I feel ungainly to the left and so I'm not able to flow with the music or let myself go. It's going to be like going back to the beginning. But I think it needs to be done. If I can force myself to become a hooper with no preference to direction that would be a huge achievement.

My plan is to take my new travel hoop on holiday with me, but it's really heavy compared to my other hoops. I'm not sure if this is going to make the problem better or worse. Only trial and error will help me find that out I suppose.
Having just booked onto both HoopGirl level 1 and 2 I'm desperate to get fit again. That's the carrot, the stick is that I hate not hooping.