[Hooping.org columnist Lara Eastburn opens our eyes in this weeks Hoopsophy entry.]
When you started hooping, did you start seeing circles and spirals everywhere? That’s because they ARE everywhere. After all, your body is not the first thing to opt for turning around itself in circles as the most natural and intuitive way to go. Nature itself often chooses to do the same. As it turns out, from the cellular level to our galaxy’s planetary orbits and beyond, the most efficient way from A to B is NOT always a straight line. Instead, when nature opts for a spiraling path, scientists and aesthetes alike find themselves reflecting upon it in awe. The phenomenon is incredibly complex and, somehow, also mind-boggingly simple… so much so that we define it as “the golden ratio,” an irrational mathematical constant. In layman’s terms, that means we don’t know how or why it happens, but it does happen over and over again. It is how math explains and draws lines between nature, art, and music. In short, it is the mathematical equation for Beauty. I don’t have to dig on math to dig on that … that’s just spectacularly awesome.
Since this is clearly a topic that requires illustration, I submit this week for your perusal and pondering what is known as a visual, or image essay. Inspired by my favorite book in the whole world, Jon Berger’s Ways of Seeing, the image-only essay offers up a visual narrative and vocabulary for the connection we feel in the hoop to “something bigger” than us. I invite you to sit with these images and observe what thoughts and feelings come to mind. “Read” the images as a whole, as a composition. Allow them to speak to you in whatever way they will. I do hope you will share your “reading,” gut feelings, and impressions with us here. And even if you don’t, I defy you, like flying pigs, to not see spirals anywhere you look. Yup, even in your latte. Spiral on, family!
*Pi, also an irrational mathematical constant, is what you use to calculate the diameter of your hoops!
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Lara Eastburn has been dancing in meadows and singing with the moon while spinning in circles for eons at Superhooper.org. Beyond commenting here, you can also discuss this and other topics related to the Hooposophy for living in Hooping.org’s Hooposophy Group and Gorum. Lara is also the planting and gardening force behind discovering our hooping community roots: The Hooping Family Tree Project.
Wow! I love the “visual essay” concept, I’d never heard of it. Great article! Parts of this reminded me of Donald Duck in Mathmagic Land (if anyones ever heard or seen that…) If you have it from when you were a kid and you haven’t watched in it years, break it out now, because its a GREAT video about this subject matter, and its Donald Duck! “Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe.” Galileo Galilei
makes me recall this amazing pattern nature created. Recently when walking through the woods i saw this perfect circle in the snow and in the center was a smaller perfect circle…..i was so taken aback because there was all untouched snow around it. It was just staring at me like two hoops
then when i bent down i saw a leaf in the center and its stem was stuck in the snow and it just kept spiraling around and created this beautiful little design in the snow. sooo made i didnt have a camera with me,
Well, I must tell you that last night as I tried to wrist hoop, the hoop flew off and headed for the spiral stairs. It clattered down the metal rail and hit the wall, knocking off the barometer and hitting the concrete floor with a loud smack. Needless to say it startled my husband and left me running down the stairs to recover it. I don’t know why the spiral stairs seemed to suck up my hoop as the entry is very narrow but it made for an interesting sight. The circular hoop accelerating down the narrow spiral stairs. Don’t want to see that again . . . .Loved the pictorial essay.
I love math and love natural fractals. Thanks for this!
Great column! Beautiful, creative and mystical.
Thanks for this essay – it spoke to my heart and added a piece to why hooping has enchanted me so quickly, fully and deeply. I’ve been studying & working with spirals for a long time. As a choreographer, my first piece was called “Leaning toward Fibonacci” – Fibonacci was the theorist credited with articulating this mathematical sequence associated with spirals, and recognizing its universal presence in all natural life forms – plant, animal, human, mineral, elemental. I used to have a textile business called “Spiral Designs” and worked with an organization called Therapeutic spiral. This form has so many important wisdom teachings for me I won’t even go into it here. I am deeply touched by the photos & images you share, and for bringing this bit of what I see as “universal, elemental truth” to the forum. Thank you!
It’s marvelous to read this when I’ve been wrapped up lately in Sacred Geometry. The Golden Ratio is part of Sacred Geometry. A basic example is this video on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZvGbjeUymo&feature=related
Enjoy
You asked to know how it made me feel to “read” this essay. I love all the pictures and grouped together like this they make me feel organic.
That was just the word that my brain gave me when reading it. So if spirals make me feel organic, hooping must be connecting me with my own being and with nature. Probably why I feel so frustrated when I can’t hoop outside.
Spirals are everywhere in my garden. I adore fern spirals most of all.
Love your article and the visual aspect of it! Thanks for sharing. It makes me think of the chapter I am reading in Waking the Global Heart by Anodea Judith, she explains that in human social history we have gone through the stages of static feminine, dynamic masculine and static masculine. We are entering dynamic feminine which she uses Burning Man to describe and explains that it is the key to much needed balance and our survival. She speaks about how the spiral is the symbol for the dynamic feminine because the spiral “has no limits. It is not fixed, permanent, or repetitively cyclic, but non-linear and ever expanding”. When she describes a dynamic feminine community it sounds like she is describing the hooping community!
The synchronicity between spirals and circles in nature play a large part in my reason for hooping.
Thank you for posting this.
this is beautiful. im sharing it.
love the very first question. i saw circles EVERYWHERE
Lara,
I’ve loved reading all of your articles on hooping, circles, spinning, nature, Rumi . . . . . rings so true and makes me feel even better about hooping than I already did. I have not always left a comment because of time constraints, but wanted you to know your writings are very much appreciated.