Beginner

Welcome to beginner poi! If you’ve never touched poi before, go to the menu and find Uber Beginner. It will build your foundation strong.

Otherwise, welcome to some of the most important lessons and tutorials to start your adventure!

As your skill grows, poi becomes more of a choose-your-own adventure. If you’re trying some of these moves and you really don’t like them, move on!

Also, it’s great to be practicing multiple things at a time. Get started with a few moves and practice them whenever feels right, and they will come to you.

Now let’s get started along this logical progression of new moves!

Timing and Direction

First thing’s first: timing and direction is one of the most important concepts in all of poi. It’s time to open the floodgates. If you haven’t learned about planes yet, do that first!

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And now, what is possibly the most staple poi move of them all. You’ll hear it once, you’ll hear it again and again:

The 3-Beat Weave

This 3 beat weave tutorial is important. Learn this move, and you’re officially a poi spinner.

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You can also check out this tutorial, or this one. It may take a week or so of practice, but you’ll get it. And you’ll need to! The 3 beat is the building block for all weaves in modern poi.

Got it? Awesome job! You’re really a poi spinner now!

Let’s move on to a different way of weaving:

Reels

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Can you feel it? No problem? How about trying reels in a different timing? If you haven’t tried the windmill yet, click here.

Split-time hip reels

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Awesome! Oh my goodness! Have you noticed yet? You can really move with your poi now! How empowering. The doors of expression are beginning to open. 🙂

Now let’s open those doors to your three beat. You’ll need to learn in the other direction so you can turn around!

The Backward 3 Beat Weave

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Now you can turn with your weaves! Practice the transitions in every direction:

1. Turning left from forward to backward 3 beat.

2. Turning left from backward to forward.

3. Turning right from forward to backward.

4. Turning right from backward to forward.

What freedom!

Now let’s find yet another way to connect these wonderful weaves:

The 4×4 Fountain

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Holy cow! Now you’re dancing!

Let’s keep this learning momentum and move in a somewhat different direction. Here we go!

Extensions

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This is Drex. You’ll see his tutorials a lot on your journey here. He has taken on the incredible task of creating hundreds of original poi tutorials to help YOU learn poi.

Here is a link to his site, which is filled to the brim with poi knowledge for your brain.

Now let’s revisit the butterfly for a new chapter in our learning. We’ll start thinking of how the poi and cooperate with our body spaces in any timing and direction.

Thread the Needle

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Whoa Nelly! That one will take some practice. That’s how you know things are getting good. 🙂

In case you haven’t noticed yet, this is one of many thread the needle tutorials out there. If you’re looking for other takes on a move, you can always go to youtube and search. You’ll find an inspiring community of collaboration, just like you find here.

Practice is awesome. Are you enjoying it? It’s recommended to enjoy some of your favorite music while training. In fact, pretty much every time will suit you well.

Now let’s move the poi like we never have before, changing their direction suddenly with poi stalls.

Stalls

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Stalls are a whole world! In the future, you’ll learn all kinds of interesting things will stalls, like top stalls, stall chasers, and more. If you feel you’re ready, then click and go for it. You may want to skip ahead to intermediate or advanced spinning, too. 🙂

Thanks Drex!

Now, you’ve come so far. You are probably already experiencing the greatest aspect of spinning poi: Flow. What is flow? Well, it’s difficult to communicate without experience. It’s a sort of transcendent state of mind one reaches when they feel time standing still and we drink our fill of experience out of every sensation we’re going through.

Try using the moves you have practiced thus far…just spin. Don’t think too much about it. Let things happen. Watch yourself. Feel the sensation. Do you get it?

We could talk about flow for ages. Maybe you have a special way of describing your experience with flow. You can write about it and post in on this website here! Community thrives on shared experience. 🙂

Let’s take a look at some inspirational videos. The spinners here are doing relatively simple moves. You’re getting there!