Hippies hoop with fire

I just have to share—I got to do something last weekend that I thought was pretty sweet—hoop with fire.  You may be thinking, ‘Hooping? Fire? What?’

            Even though it’s becoming more well-known, hooping, or hoopdance, is still pretty obscure.  I hear over and over again adults saying that ‘they can’t hoop’ and thinking it’s only for kids. Nope! I love to coax people into trying it, and I love it when they get hooked, or at least have a dang good time for those few minutes.

            So I’ve been hooping for a few years now, and looking back I can see how much it’s stretched me and how much I’ve progressed, and how many people I’ve met through it. It’s been a wild ride.

            And last Saturday night it got a whole lot wilder.

            I’ve been wanting to fire hoop almost since I started hooping. I let people know that I would firehoop someday and I was patient, knowing it would happen. Finally, it did. My friend Rebecca, queen-of-all-things-circus was up in Indy for the weekend and arranged to teach a fire safety workshop and take us would-be-fire-hoopers on the fire hooping ride with her.

            We were nervous and a little jittery, not really knowing what to expect other than we’d be spinning a flaming hoop around our bodies. ‘What if we catch on fire?’ was a thought that ran through our minds more than once.

            Before we knew it, we were intentionally catching ourselves on fire. Rebecca had us swipe flames on ourselves and then put them out, to help take away the fear of being on fire and to see that if it happened, we could stay calm and take care of it.

            So, we jumped in and fire hooped. And it was amazing. We can’t stop talking about it, so there’s a good chance that there’ll be more fire hooping in the ‘ville.

            All this to say, whether it’s fire hooping in our case, or whatever you dream of, do whatever you can to make it happen. Life’s short, live it up!