My New Love

I haven't been online much lately, because I got a new doggie!!  She came up on my boss's email (she is on a bunch of different email lists) for needing a new home and my boss said she would be the perfect dog.

Her name is Vera; she is an Eurasier American Eskimo mix.  She has been through a lot in her few years, but she has an amazing potential to be the best dog.  It took her a little while to warm up to the both of us, especially Bill being so big and hunkering.  She listens to us, knows tricks, plays well with our neighbor dogs, and can even be off leash in our backyard and not run away.

Today is day four and will be her ultimate test.  I am going to work for about 6 hours and daddy won't be coming home a lunch to make sure she isn't getting into anything.  Sunday we left her alone for a test run for a couple hours and she jumped up on our counter (how?  I have no idea) and ate a 1/4 stick of butter.  Luckily, that was all she ate considering some of the most toxic items were up there, too:  grapes, potatoes, garlic, onions, and two chocolate chip cookies. 

Yesterday she did better, only biting a little hole in the bread bag.  We don't really want to have to put her in a kennel all day and would much rather let her roam the house while we are gone.  That is what all the pets I have ever had did, though kennel training can be very beneficial. 

Bill is going out of town today, again on Friday, and then all next week.  Hopefully she will miss him and not be timid again around him when he gets home.  She loves him though and I told him the more he did with her, the more she would love him.  He has been taking her out for play dates, car rides, and play wrestling with her.

In the summer I am hoping to do some agility with her considering the amount of energy she has and how athletic she is (hello- 3 foot high counter top).  More to update soon; time to go love on my girl before I get ready for work....

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.