Find Your Balance with Yoga

It's been about 15 years since I first discovered yoga and alongside hooping - it keeps me balanced and reasonably sane!

I have discovered from my yoga practice and then becoming a hooper that the flexibility and balance that I had gained from yoga complemented my hoop practice.

Yoga develops true body awareness - an awareness of breath, (it's so easy to hold your breath when you are hooping/focused on learning an new move) your connection to your surroundings, rootedness (which is needed when you are hooping on one leg). Stilling the mind's endless conversation and moving from the head into the body can bring a wonderful sense of calm and inner peace. Losing myself in a flow of hoop moves also brings me calm, stills my mind and elevates my mood.

I have found it to be most important in my life to have a "tool kit" or a "medicine bag" full of ways to de-stress and find peace in a chaotic world, also to help anchor, nurture and love myself.

When you develop body awareness, hooping can become more than just the physical practice - connecting your breath to each movement of your hoop takes it to

another level.

Knowing when a move feels too much and being aware of how you are feeling and what your body needs, (which is an awareness developed through yoga) can prevent strains and injuries whilst hooping, because, you are able to connect the mind to the body, you are able to listen to your body.

Yoga means unity and your breath is the bridge that can make that union between mind and body.

So, I recommend if you want to do that shoulder stand with a hula hoop on your foot or have perfect balance whilst you hoop on one leg but mostly because it can become a sanctuary and place of healing and rejuvenation - find a yoga class xxx

*(In Vedic Sanskrit, yoga (from the root yuj) means "to add", "to join", "to unite", or "to attach" in its most common literal sense)