Saturday, June 18, 2011

Poi

Poi! You may have seen Poi before, but probably had no idea what it was called or what the purpose of it was.

Poi
is a performance art in which a ball or balls suspended from a length of flexible material, usually a plaited cord, are held in the hand and swung in circular patterns. Poi is one of the traditional performing arts of the Māori people of New Zealand, and has developed many forms used worldwide as a hobby, exercise, or performance art alongside juggling and other forms of object manipulation. (A great definition provided by Wikipedia :p)

Check out this gorgeous short video of a guy using some neon poi:


I've been into Poi for quite a while, but I stopped doing it and I'm not really sure why. I plan on getting back into it because my plan a while ago was to do Fire Poi for the talent show this year.

Poi is actually a very calming activity to do, and if you do it for more than a short amount of time, it starts to become a great workout, it helped tone my upper body a fair amount. It is also very easy to learn, there are tons and tons of tutorials, lessons, how-to's, etc all over the YouTube and the rest of the internet. Here is a great one to get you started:


You also don't even need any fancy equipment which means you don't even have to spend money on it! I spent probably my first 2 months doing Poi with two tube socks with a tennis ball in each one, it works great! Give it try!

Final Thoughts: Poi is relaxing, a good workout, an interesting way of meeting new people (including the ladies c;), and just an overall fun activity.

19 comments:

icey said...

first video with the music looked amazing.

...what did the ladies say? :P

Austin said...

Ladies are always very interested in it, just, not usually when you're flinging socks around. If you want ladies you may want to get some real poi ;)

TK1927 said...

That looks so cool.

Salted Plum said...

nice performance art!

icey said...

@Austin and if you want to attract the police you simply use strings attached to knives and swing 'em around ^^

Austin said...

I'll have to try that ;D

Anonymous said...

I could watch these swirls for hours!

D4 said...

Dayummm that's tight

Daniel said...

wow poi 1 is spectacular but too short

Lizard said...

hahaha, poi is pretty neat. never heard of it before.

Jackson.k said...

This is awesome! i went to a show of just this stuff, it was incredible!

Anonymous said...

Cool stuff, wish that first vid was longer.

Waffles13 said...

Never seen this before, but damn does that look cool. You should definitely get back into it and post some videos!

Terminally Ill said...

SIQ POST BRO!!!

Unknown said...

i was almost hypnotised from watching the first video. it's amazing, i've seen people practicing poi with fire but i never researched it deeper. very very interesting post mate, i might give it a try with my footie socks tonight. I'll use the dirty ones so it will too be hypnotising.

Inside Journalism said...

Poi looks really cool. Keep it up man!

A Lord said...

Interesting stuff you have here.

Unknown said...

I heard about it for the first time. It reminds me flower sticks or Diabolo. I was very good with diabolo, but I didn't practiced in a while, so I forgot a lot of tricks. I will post in the future about it on my blog. Thank You for the post and the videos!

LinksZee said...

That is awesome! im want to try this sometime!

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