"In the moments before lighting up, I let myself relax, telling myself, "if as far as I go is dancing my heart out, on fire to my favorite music, and they send me home, it will still have been worth it...everything is exactly as it should be... of course!"
I thought of those first times lighting up on the beach in Seabright and the many places and people I've encountered upon the path that this pipe-dream has led me down. I felt gratitude for all of it....so that when I lit up I felt centered and excited to dance."
- SriKanta

"Mastery is being able to think into your poi. So the way I imagine that Beethoven could play the piano or the ultimate jazz master could play jazz, which is that there is nothing between your imagination and what manifest in the world. So that what you hear in you soul, what's in your imagination just comes into the world. Through your fingers, or through your body, or through your voice, or whatever it is. You've removed all the limitations, you've removed the motor skill limitations, you've removed the things that get in the way, and so when what you imagine just manifests, through you, I think that's mastery."
- Nick Woolsey

"Sometimes, we confuse outward appearances for the totality which really exists. Occasionally, we look beyond the surface and recognize that there is more then what meets the eye. We realize that, though it may be cloudy and dark at midday, the sun is shinning beyond the clouds. there are times in life when we may find it difficult to see beyond our own clouds of negativity to view things in a positive light. But we must recognize that we can always reach through the gloom and access our individual light, our Neshama (soul). The darkness will surely dissipate, as clouds are just clouds."
- Nochi Krohn

"We do not truly live by our principals unless we are willing, if necessary, to die for them."
- Unknown Author

"Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;
None but ourselves can free our minds."
- Bob Marley

"We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are."
- Anais Nin

"I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not
refuse to do something I can do."
- Edward Everett Hale

"Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding."
- Albert Einstein

"You only live once - but if you work it right, once is enough."
- Joe E. Lewis

"This is your life and it is ending one minute at a time"
- Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

"Look how far the light came
To paint you
This way."
- Bruce Cockburn

"Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident."
- Captain Corelli's Mandolin

"...a little music is all anyone needs..."
- Carl Ender

Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.
- Chinese Proverb

"I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees. I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues."
- Dr. Seuss

"You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams."
- Dr.Seuss

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.
One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise."
- F. Scott Fitzgerald

"Two men look out of prison bars, one sees mud and the other sees stars."
- Frederick Langbridge

"Be the change you wish for the world"
- Mahatma Gandhi

"You see things as they are and say, 'why?' But I dream things that never were and say, 'Why not?'"
– George Bernard Shaw

"To be alive

To be alive: not just the carcass
But the spark.
That's crudely put, but…

If we're not supposed to dance,
Why all this music?"
- Gregory Orr .

"If men were angels, no government would be necessary."
- James Madison

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will finally know peace".
- Jimi Hendrix

"When people ask what my best work is, it's the bus. I thought you ought to be living your art, rather than stepping back and describing it."
- Ken Kesey

"A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step."
- Lao-Tsu

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
- Marianne Williamson

"In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
- Martin Luther King Jr.

"The things we know best are the things we haven't been taught."
- Marquis de Vauvenargues

"you are so much more beautiful then you think
and it's ok the way you keep forgetting that
because one day
you'll remember"
- Nick Woolsey

"A poem is never finished, only abandoned."
- Paul Valery

"By the time it came to the edge of the Forest the stream had grown up, so that it was almost a river, and, being grown-up, it did not run and jump and sparkle along as it used to do when it was younger, but moved more slowly. For it knew now where it was going, and it said to itself, "There is no hurry. We shall get there some day." "
- The Tao of Pooh

"If success or failure of this planet and of human beings depended on how I am and what I do...
How would I be and what would I do?"
- R. Buckminster Fuller

"Love is not blind - it sees more, not less. But because it sees more, it is willing to see less."
- Rabbi Julius Gordon

There are two kinds of teachers: the kind that fill you with so much quail shot that you can't move, and the kind that just gives you a little prod behind and you jump to the skies.
- Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
- Robert Frost

"Though my soul may sit in darkness, it will arise in perfect light. I have loved the stars to fondly to be fearful of the night."
- Sarah Williams

"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards."
- Soren Kierkegaard

"Enlightenment, for a wave in the ocean, is the moment the wave realizes it is water."
- Thich Nhat Hanh

"To have a friend you must be one."
- Unknown author

"It is impossible to fall out of love. Love is such a powerful emotion, that once it envelops you it does not depart. True love is eternal. If you think that you were once in love, but fell out of it, then it wasn't love you were in. There are no 'exit' signs in love, there is only an 'on' ramp."
- Unknown author

"A wise man once said: 'You have two ears and one mouth, therefore you should shut the fuck up and listen.' Though, to be fair, he might not've put it _quite_ like that..."
- unknown author

"We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love."
- Unknown Author

"Do not try to satisfy your vanity by teaching a great many things. Awaken people's curiosity. It is enough to open minds; do not overload them. Put there just a spark. If there is some good inflammable stuff it will catch fire."
- Anatole France

"Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there."
- Will Rogers

You can't control the wind, but you can adjust your sails.
- Yiddish proverb

"Do, or do not. There is no 'try'." - Yoda

The Poi Theory of Everything - An ongoing collaboration

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www.homeofpoi.com/ubbthread...cs/886966/
www.thefiregarden.com/forum/t...thing-an
artofpoi.tribe.net/thread/5...3e92ff4f5

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the limitations of this field are to much for the material in the Theory of Everything so I've taken the text out and only left the links above.

recipe adapted from How to Make Sock Poi by Playpoi: www.playpoi.com/how-to-make-sock-poi

Ingredients:
- find a pair of long (about knee high), different colored socks that are strong, have a little bit of friction and are not very stretchy. Ideally you also want them to be brightly colored, have each poi a distinctly different color, and have some kind of stripe to mark their middle. Sports socks are easy to buy and work well.
- 2 size 16 or 14in balloons
- 2 size 9 or 12 in balloons
- 2 rubber bands
- enough rice so your poi are a comfortable weight (commonly somewhere between 120-160 grams each)
- enough sand to equal about one fifth the weight of your rice (around 30 grams)
*note: total weights do not have to be exact as long as the poi are equal to each other.

Steps:
1. put half your rice in each of the size 16in balloons and tie off.
2. place the rice balloons in the bottom of your socks.
3. spin them fast a bit to stretch out. they loose some of their stretch over time and you will have to adjust them less later if this happens now.
4. put half your sand in each of the size 9in balloons and tie off.
5. hold the head (bottom) of your poi in one hand and bring the top end to your shoulder. place the sand balloons in the sock at that spot just before your shoulder. The general rule for length is that while holding the handle, the poi should reach to somewhere between your elbow and shoulder or alternatively the distance from your hand to the middle of your calf. This way they will generally not hit the ground or your chest. Dependent on the style of the spinner this can be varied to produce different visual effects, longer poi for graceful, slow display and shorter for more dynamic/technical performances.
6. twist the sock tightly above the sand balloon and fold down.
7. place a rubber band below the sand balloon and fold up.
8. done, go play.

I don't put my poi down, ever.
Not even when I am spinning something else like staff, I am really still spinning poi.
Even when am am dancing without any props at all, I still feel my poi in my hands.
When I sleep I keep my poi at my feet and we dance together in my dreams.