Showing posts with label meditation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label meditation. Show all posts

11/8/10

Guided Hoop Meditation Series

So over the weekend I played with an idea that I had been wanting to experiment with lately.  I have been studying and practicing yoga for over four years.  During this time, I have tried to pick up meditiation, mainly without success.  I am what you would call, a busy-body type person and it can be very hard to turn off my mind.  I knew that meditation could potentially help this, which is the reason why I started to meditate in the first place.  Sometimes I would get rather flustered and annoyed with myself for not being able to quiet my mind and eventually stopped trying. 

Then, one day I found a wonderful podcast full of guided meditations.  This helped me extremely.  I felt like it compared very closely to what the setting was like during savasana at a formal yoga class; the sound of the voice, the gentle music, and the imagery that usually accompanied it.  I was hooked.  Now, I can usually sit down for 5-10 minutes and do a regular medition that focuses on the breath- though I do prefer to still do guided meditations and especially mantra meditations.

I began to think how amazing it would be to connect this practice with my hoop practice.  Since I came from a yoga background before I hooped, I always tend to try to meld the two.  I started to incorporate meditation into my hoop practice, especially after joining the Holistic Hooping newsletter in which they send you a hoop meditation to help jumpstart your holistic hoop healing journey.

Well, this weekend I actually had the time to sit down and come up with my first guided hoop meditation.  I focused on Metta meditation only because I love how joyous and energizing that Metta can be.  It is ultimately one of my favorite types of guided meditations.

My goal of starting this series is to prepare myself for potentially teaching hoop-yoga fusion in the future.  I have all these really great ideas for a practice that joins the two.  Also, I am trying to get a few really great videos together for the website that I am putting together for my hoop business Centric Hoops.  I hope to have the website up and available for viewing by the end of the month.  I will be sure to make an announcement here and on my Hoop City page.

Though it is suggested to do light yoga before meditating, as yoga was orginally practiced to help condition the body and mind for meditation, it is not required to do so. I do plan on doing a hoop-yoga sequence very soon which could be practiced prior to doing this, or any other, meditation.

Guided Hoop Meditation #1- Metta



I want to apologize for the extended beginning and end.  My movie maker was being a pain and YouTube is having technical difficulties with their editor.  I hope to fix it once it is back up, but for now, please excuse me getting comfortable at the beginning and such.

Like I said, this is the first guided meditation I have ever done for someone other than myself so it isn't perfect and I am still trying to work on my vocabulary and tone/softness of my voice.

If you have any questions about meditation, guided meditation, or hoop yoga, please don't hesitate to ask and I will do my best to answer or find someone who can.

Peace.