If you know me or follow this blog, you will know that I’m mildly obsessed with hula hooping. Not just spinning hoops around my waist, but dancing and playing with them in all kinds of different ways. Hoop world is my happy place. I love the constant challenge learning new things, practicing and practicing until they feel easy and natural, and the best of all is when I find myself in the flow state - out of my head and fully in my body, fully in the moment.
Hoop world is also one of the loveliest places on the internet, a wonderful community of mutual support, inspiration and encouragement. The wonderfully spinspirational Katharina, one of my favourite hoopers to watch and learn from - is running a #hoopchallenge this month and invited us to come up with a one a word answer to the question, what does flow mean to you?
My one word is water.
I’m enjoying this prompt so much, not just for hooping, but as a reflection on flow in other areas of life, and also as this reflection on Water…water is reflective!
Water is buoyancy, being carried, waters of the womb, oceans…
Water is connection to source… the source of all life…
The moon pulls the tides, in oceans of Earth, in the bodies of women…
Water is feminine, powerful, undulating, the ultimate expression of motion…
Water moves in waves, spirals, curves…
Water flows…
Water circulates…
Water is always returning to the source…
Water is yielding, always finds the path of least resistance…
As a student of #Druidry and long time explorer of nature inspired spirituality, I’ve been working with the four elements, Air, Fire Earth and Water for over three decades now, ceremonially, and in many other ways.
This week I’ll be meeting one of my wedding couples at their venue. We’ll be reading through their draft script together, so we can refine the way I’m going to tell their love story in the ceremony. Then I’ll be leading them through an elementally inspired vow writing ceremony.
As well as being a way for them to connect deeply with the places they’ve chosen (most of the weddings and handfastings I’m asked to conduct take place outdoors) this is a moment where they’ll be invited to reflect deeply on their relationship and what marriage means to them, using the elements as a mirror.
We will turn to each direction (the Four Quarters, traditionally and symbolically linked with the Four Elements) and I’ll speak, drawing on my relationship with the elements themselves and the relationship I’m building with this particular couple, inviting them to consider their relationship - past, present, and future - from these four different perspectives.
When we turn to the West, I’ll be inviting them to imagine water in all it’s different forms… gentle rain, morning dew…frost, ice and snow… pools, ponds, and lakes… streams and rivers… from chuckling brooks to mighty torrents… and the sea with with all it’s different moods… I’ll be reminding them how much of our human bodies are made of water… how it flows in us as our life’s blood… and also as tears when we are deeply moved. With it’s many different states of being, all of which pass, and flow from one to another, water is a ready metaphor for our emotions. This ceremony is always conducted very much in the moment, so the exact prompts and questions I’ll offer will be different for each couple. But they might concern emotional connection and interaction; how they yield to one another and and flow with one another; intuition; imagination; shared dreams and visions; the unknown future; how they’ll navigate life’s twists and turns together…
After each element is invoked in this way, the couple will be invited each to write down, ‘I vow or ‘I promise’ and whatever words come to them in that moment. And after we’ve turned to all four quarters, I’ll invite the couple to turn and face one another, and reflect on why it’s this person standing in front of them to whom they’ll make all these promises.
What they come out of the ceremony with won’t be the final version of their vows, but it will be a start. Some couples will want to share what they’ve written with one another and come up with joint vows, others might like to work on their vows individually so they’ll be a surprise to one another on the big day. Often couples will choose a combination of these two.
Whatever the outcome, ceremonies like these are invariably a special and magical moment in the process of working towards a wedding, handfasting or vow renewal. If you’re thinking of having one any time soon, I’ll be delighted to hear from you!
And if you want to see how I'm getting along with my hula hooping, find me on instagram @riv_olving_celebrant, where you can also find Katharina @spin3sixty and be entranced by her beautiful hoop flow.
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