I've found that I've been doing a lot more body tracers of late and it's motivated me to try and find transitions for them that integrate with other moves I know well. One such transition that's working out pretty well is horizontal stacks. Here are a couple transitions using vertical body tracers that set up stacks fairly well and as I discovered while filming also then present an opportunity to switch between different body tracers.

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Kind of a fun brain/kinesthetic workout that came out of a trick I've seen G and Ronan do wherein they play 4-petal antispin against a static spin to create hybrid moments at either side of the body. I took that same idea to a vertical place to start, and then placed the top position behind the head to add a body tracer flavor to the overall movement. Don't know if it has any good performance applications but it definitely gives the brain something to chew on :)

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While I was in Boulder, Alien Jon and I spent an evening playing around with some movements based around creating right angles with inspin stalls and pendulums. Here are a couple variants we played with and a couple transitions one can use to get in and out of them.

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A couple weeks ago, I'd done a tech blog on no-beat (sneaky) throws and a weave that one can perform using them. One of my commenters pointed out that there was a variant I hadn't covered and when I was in New York a couple weeks ago, Ted showed me the component I was missing: each hand has a no-beat throw on the up-beat, so you can actually perform that weave in such a way that every beat but the cross beat becomes a throw. It's hell hard but I think it also looks hell cool :)

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Shortest tech blog ever! A fun little variant on the split-time same direction stack I've played with before on this blog. Turns out it has more spaces to insert new movements than I'd really considered before and it leads to a nifty compound stack that reminds me of some stuff I've seen Charlie do.

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Last weekend as Ted and I played around in the Dube showroom in Manhattan, he showed me this nifty use for a toss forward over the shoulder. I'd seen Ronan doing this toss on the playa but hadn't yet thought of a good use for it, but Ted pointed out that one could then catch the poi head in cradle and the direction of the handle would continue in the direction to initiate a contact roll down the back of the forearm. The catch for this is exceptionally difficult, but I really like the result. Enjoy! :)

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I know this topic has been done to death, but in trying to come up with a way to classify toroids, I came to realize we've barely scratched the surface of them. Here I use the approach of imagining the axes around which we can move the plane of a toroid as being similar to the major axes inside an octahedron and choosing specific axes that are parallel with the arm, hand path, or neither.

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A follow-up to last week's poi math video. This one tells us how to determine the size of the hand path for poi when we're graphing out patterns using parametric equations. Includes properties of wavelength and amplitude among other nifty math concepts.

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Here's an interesting idea inspired by Mel's recent video of his workshop on snakes: I'd noticed that when he was practicing tracing along his arm that it was somewhat reminiscent of a box mode antispin flower that had been somewhat squashed. This reminded me of a concept that had been thrown out on the old Tribe tech poi group: the snake eye. This was a trick wherein you'd take a snake but perform it in antispin, theoretically creating cateyes around your shoulder. While Mel's arm tracer definitely doesn't produce a cateye, it does seem very compatible with snakes. Here's the result.

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People frequently reference the math behind poi on many forums and groups, but it can seem a little daunting to folks that don't have that kind of background. Here's an attempt to level the playing field. A lot of this will be review for the more mathematically inclined folks out there, but for those who aren't, hopefully this will give you the Cliff's Notes as to some of the math we use to describe flowers and the like and make it a little bit more digestible. If you like this, please leave me feedback as I've got plans in my mind to do a whole series of these kinds of videos :)

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