Wanting to Want It

Last weekend’s magazine in the New York Times ran a feature about sexual desire among women, and its Lack. It focused on the work of a psychologist named Lori Brotto who has been charged with revising the description of the “mental illness” known as hypoactive (low) sexual desire disorder (HSDD) for the bible of psychology, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, aka the DSM.

I should probably note that I believe the DSM is one of the most destructive of human creations, right up there with uzis and DDT, and about as useful in helping people feel/function better as a sieve is for carrying water. I like what philosopher Rob Brezny says about it: “this ultimate word on the state of the human psyche describes countless pathological states, but there’s not a single entry referring to good mental health.” The NYT article expresses its own doubts about the usefulness of a manual that declared homosexuality a mental disorder as late as 1973 and is written by shrinks who routinely receive money from the pharmaceutical companies that profit from selling pills that treat most everything declared a disease by the DSM.

But the fact is that many women report feeling distress over low sexual desire: 1 in 10 in the US, according to a study of 30,000 women conducted in 2006; a smaller study done with 3500 women in Europe and the US reported 6-13% prevalence in Europe and 12-19% in the US. Even allowing for the possibility, as I do, that these studies are bogus and primarily intended to show a market for pharmaceuticals, I know from my friends and my own experience that lack of female libido can cause problems.

What I did find interesting about Brotto’s work is her focus on mindfulness. Because “an underlying theory is that while her patients’ genitals commonly pulse with blood in response to erotic images­ or their partners’ sexual touch, their minds are so detached — distracted by work or children or worries about the way they look unclothed, or fixated on fears that their libidos are dead — as to be oblivious to their bodies’ excitement, their bodies’ messages.” It’s nothing new to hear or believe that sex drive is affected by all those things (stress, lack of time, mass-media-influenced body image issues); what’s newer is the idea that our bodies are actually sexually activated despite all those factors, but our heads don’t get the message, and so we don’t feel turned on.

As part of her experiments with mindfulness therapy (which is based on the successful model of cognitive-behavioral therapy, consciously “altering patterns of thought to transform self-image and experience”), Brotto describes very deliberately infusing a yoga session with sexual energy—envisioning her breath transmitting sexual energy throughout her body, repeating a mantra in her head that she was a highly sexual woman—and how strong the reaction was: undeniable erotic power coursing through her. And that, of course, made me think of hooping. Specifically I thought of Christabel’s hoopsexy classes and jam sessions, in which she guides her students to focus on the sensuality of every part of their being, their body, their movements. I thought of Baxter telling me that the greatest blessing of his teaching is watching women remember their desirability. And own it.

In the HOOPING book we cite some of the physical reasons why hooping improves sex drive: blood flow to the pelvis, stimulation of the nerves in that area and the sacral chakra, and we quote prominent women’s health practitioner Dr. Christiane Northrup, a hooper herself, who writes “women with strong, healthy pelvic muscles tend to have more fulfilling sexual functioning with better pelvic blood flow, better vaginal lubrication, and stronger orgasms.”

Separately we talk about how hooping quiets the mind and assists the connection between body-mind-spirit. But if Brotto’s notion of mindfulness therapy is useful—and it seems kinda well duh to me—then that also figures in. It means hooping increases the mind’s ability to feel the body’s sexual responsiveness.

All of this also made me think of the “anti-sexy” crowd in hooping, the practitioners who feel that hooping has been associated for too long with women gyrating suggestively in revealing outfits, and that the focus on sexyness does hooping a disservice. Hooping, they contend, is a serious movement form that requires rigorous study, or, for some, a squeaky clean fitness regime. I understand and appreciate their quests to legitimize hooping.

But I guess I want to cheer on the presence of sex within the culture of hooping.  (We could leave behind the furry bootcovers with bikinis, though.)

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A word to newbies: It’s not rare that I teach someone to hoop and, after the initial euphoria of just keeping the hoop in orbit has faded, they complain: “but I look goofy/stupid.” “Why is it that you/HoopGirl/insert favorite hooper’s name here- look sexy when you do it, and I look like a dork?” So here’s the thing. The fact that you’re saying that means your brain is talking and judging and existing in disconnect from your body and it’s time for you to shut your brain up. Or as Christabel would more lovingly say, focus on your breathing and the sensation of the hoop on your body. Try closing your eyes. Hoop in private so, if you’re prone to worrying so much about what the world thinks, there’s no one there to see. It’s not about LOOKING sexy, it’s about FEELING sexy. A distinction that sounds so simple and obvious, yet its actualization can be pretty elusive–and then powerful, once grasped.

hot damn

it’s not so often that I master a move these days– I haven’t been working at “moves” so much as just re-connecting to my hoop …and to what the spirit moves me to do inside of it, if you will.

But just now while I was leg-hooping (doing spunk, in the HoopGirl vocabulary, for all you lovely Readers and Owners and Buyers of the Book) I dropped my hoop onto the floor and managed to give it a kick with one foot and then knocked it higher with the other and got it going around my hips again, without it ever coming to a stop (whatever that’s called, a live kick start?)– which is a freaking FIRST for me, ladies and gentlemen. And I had one of those luscious experiences of mastery-satisfaction that are far and few between. (You know whereof I speak? You want to share your last luscious mastery moment?)

Just one more thing to celebrate, really.

stepping beyond my self

Samhain: the day when the veil between the world of the living and the non-living is at its thinnest.Hence our celebration of All Hallow’s Eve.  Last year on Samhain I danced in the Spiral Dance, invoking West, the direction of Water, with 2 other gorgeous dancers.

I missed the ritual this year, but was delighted to receive a bunch of photos from last year’s photographer, Richard Man.

All Hallow’s Eve, and Autumn in general: a time to step out of your self and into costume and, more importantly, into empathy/relationship with others — alive, dead, unborn…

on the opposite side of the continent…

…my peeps were playing.

World Hoop Day 2009

9/9/09– together with hoopers around the planet celebrating hooping on this day, we Bay Area folk  (over a hundred of us) met up at San Francisco’s Civic Center–right in front of (back of?) City Hall. (Maybe Gavin was watching.) There were Santa Cruz, NY, Austin, even Canadian and French hoopers there! What a treat.  I caught the free tutorials from Nicole Wong of Cherry Hoops, Miss Rosie of Hero Hoops, Christabel of HoopGirl, Rich of isopop. I hope I caught something symbiotically from talking, hanging, and just a tiny bit of hooping with Fraulein Spiral and Brecken, too.

While on the platform in Oakland waiting for the train to SF, a woman approached me and asked about the hoop, whether I’d been to Burning Man…She–Susanne–is a photographer, and wound up coming with me to City Hall and shooting us for a bit. Turns out she collected me as a “stranger” in this cool “100 Strangers” project. Someone posted a comment on the Flickr page saying I look like a mermaid.

photo by Philo Hagen

This photo here is by my wonderful friend Philo Hagen, who covered World Hoop Day beautifully here.

My tank top, by the way, is from Hoopla Berlin (“guaranteed to make your hips smile”), and arrived the day before World Hoop Day  as a surprise gift from my bestest Berlin girlfriend (bbg?) Uta. It seemed obvious I was supposed to don it for WHD. Since it’s yellow with day-glo orange, I decided to go all the way with the kawaii candy colors.

It was a nice way to go out with the hoopers of the Bay Area.

Sanneart.com photos from World Hoop Day!

the 100 strangers shot (the "mermaid"!)

Spun & Cycled

photo by Philo Hagen

There was a time when I wanted to write a book about the culture of hooping. My initial proposal (before it was, upon the advice of my agent, merged with HoopGirl’s book idea) covered influences and convergences–places where various forms of dance, movement, and music touch on hooping (e.g. bellydance, object manipulation, acrobatics, yoga, hip hop…) It also covered some key personalities: the innovators who have made a distinct mark on the art. I’m not going to name names, but you probably could guess them.

In any case, that wasn’t the book my agent thought would sell, and she was undoubtedly right. We hoopers are still a pretty tiny subculture. My agent said that would be a good 3rd or fifth book on the market on the topic, assuming the movement was catching on, but not a good first book, which needed to be something more akin to a hooping bible, laying the groundwork.

If in the future I do return to the original idea, though, I just spent a week gathering some good fodder for it, at the Spin Cycle Camp at Burning Man. The camp was designed and organized by Rich “Isopop” Porter and his wife Lauren, and built with capable crewmates Grant-Kenny-Ryan–for whom there can’t be enough gratitude. Our shadestars, their coverage drifting slowly with the sun’s progress (and the center post functioning as a sundial to boot!) were perfect, and were the envy of everyone who checked out our camp.

Most of the biggest names in hooping lived at Spin Cycle, and the few who didn’t dropped by a few times and came to our massive jam on Thursday evening. No classes were offered, and there seemed to be a sort of collective sigh of relief at not carrying that particular responsibility, which is always a part of every other kind of hooping gathering/conference/convergence that happens. We were really just there to build community.

Some folks did have performances to do–you’d see them rehearsing with earphones on, or getting themselves done up in their fineries–flowers, leaves, feathers, metallics, whites…–but for the most part there was just a lot of chilling and laughing and hooping, punctuated by hibiscus with agave plus or minus tequila (thanks to S), pickled eggs (thanks to K), unaccountably healthful, freshly-prepared food from the kitchen of (another) K, and non-dairy ice cream and truffles (thanks to R, who secured her place in heaven by bringing such gifts).

The quality of hooping around camp was just over-the-top ridiculous–but I’d have to say I had most fun watching G, whom I’d never seen hoop before, and who really embodies grace despite gender and stature, and M, whose intimacy and imagination with the hoop melts me into a puddle of Desire. I had my own best hoop moment on the full moon Friday night, after we came back from the wedding (there was not just one wedding that went down, but two, among the campmates), when the Light One (L) and the Healer (R) and I took the unwatched stage with our hoops. Weird magic was afoot all that night, and channeled right into our dance.

photo by Philo Hagen

In the hushed undercurrents of the Spin Cycle, there were some old divisions and wounds, some of which found healing; and there were some romances, some of which came to fruition. There was some jealousy, as certain ascendant stars outshone other equally-talented folks. There were moments when I was reminded of the dynamics of high school: the cool kids, the jocks, the hippies, with me and Philo (editor of hooping.org)  feeling kind of like the yearbook and newspaper staff, existing both inside the system, and observing it from the outside.

Overall, though, I couldn’t help but keep asking, as I did of A one morning at Center Camp, what makes hoopers such divinely wonderful people? Is it that hooping draws already-amazing people to it? Or is it that the hoop has a transformational effect on everyone who truly invests in it? A little of both, we decided…and there’s always more research to be done.

strange attractors

It’s been a while since I posted an update on my heartspace….Really, it was four years of healing, and of processing the lessons of my first go at long-term partnership-turned marriage, and of dating (first a ton, and then barely), and of getting clear about the partnership and partner I want… since leaving my ex at the end of 2005. Lying fallow.

Last spring, during a sorry-ass sick-of-being-single stint, I hauled out some old photo albums, going back to my college days. One image stopped me: it was my flame from senior year, an utterly beautiful and brilliant boy, pinning me down on the ground, my smile so wide it could crack the earth in two, totally blissed out and secure in his arms.

That feeling! I want that feeling again, I said. I pulled the photo out of the album and stuck it on my altar, next to my most magnetic objects. It wasn’t the boy in the photo I focused on (the boy, last I’d heard, was still happily married and fathering, and we’d had no direct communication for 14 years), it was the joy and ease. The bliss, trust.

So… I do believe we co-create and alter the life around us as we live and experience it. I believe that we–those of us privileged enough to be able to dedicate the necessary energy– can pull a certain aspect of reality into being by will and focus. But–could I have conjured a man “off my altar and into my arms,” as one friend put it?

Because almost exactly a month after that, I got an email from the boy in the photo. Subsequent emails revealed he was separating from his wife, while I was well underway with a move… to the city where he happened to live. And ever since then, we’ve been revelling in our re-discovery. Magic.

practicing some Brecken

practicing several of the moves Brecken taught 8/24-25/09: swinging the hoop into an isolation behind you with the 180 body turn (2x, bookending the clip at beginning & end); the finger “flair” on the isolations (which I seem to need to stick my tongue out for); “bouncing” the hoop while isolating.

bodybending and mindbending: Brecken Rivara.

For days now I’ve been mulling over what to say about Brecken’s 2-day workshop that took place in SF this past Monday & Tuesday. Last night I was telling a non-hooping friend about how indescribable it was, and in doing so I came up with the best term yet: “liminal.”

Here’s what wiki has by way of a definition:

Liminality (from the Latin word līmen, meaning “a threshold”) is a psychological, neurological, or metaphysical state of being on the “threshold” of or between two different existential planes, as defined in neurological psychology (a “liminal state”) and in anthropological theories, a ritual, especially a rite of passage, involves some change to the participants, especially their social status.

The liminal state is characterized by ambiguity, openness, and indeterminacy. One’s sense of identity dissolves to some extent, bringing about disorientation. Liminality is a period of transition where normal limits to thought, self-understanding, and behavior are relaxed – a situation which can lead to new perspectives.

Really, the word does a pretty outstanding job of describing both Brecken‘s style AND my experience of the workshop.

Brecken has a totally unique thing going on with her hoop: on the threshold between wobbly/sloppy/ drunken on the one hand, and precise/controlled/quick on the other. And surfing between planes nearly continuously. She stays relatively grounded, maybe bouncing a little on the balls of her feet, and then executes these crazy sideways/diagonal leaps where her body arcs through the air and mimics the curve of the hoop. (My core was *so* sore after Day One from twisting around in efforts to mimic that.) I should add “genderbending” to the title here too: her dance is simultaneously “masculine” (with strong pops reminiscent of Kahunahula & Rich) and incredibly “feminine,” the way she arches her spine or lets her hands waft through the air while doing angled rolls. She moves with total confidence once she’s connected with her hoop, yet she’s all shy and self-deprecating outside it, the most humble top-hooper, hands down.

And the workshop, being her second ever, felt like a birth of a new creature. Her explanations of her hooping motivations, inspirations, experiences took us down long windy undertravelled paths, wild green tendrils and jungle sometimes obscuring the way, until we’d arrive at some mountainside spring-fed pool of clarity. Sometimes I lost the thread entirely, but sometimes I made it there, to that remote gem.

Yeah, it felt like a rite of passage, for sure. I felt incredibly lucky to be there, surrounded by so much hooping talent, and learning from this capricious creature. Here she is (I watched this soundtrackless wonder, which really takes *off* around 2:30, with Cheb i Sabbah’s Jai Bhavani) :