So you've just picked up poi and you're
having a devil of a time with it. Believe
me I get it.
I've been there, too! Drex here from
DrexFactor.com and today I want to talk a
little bit about how frustrating it can
be when you're first starting off poi
spinning and specifically I want to tell
you guys about what happened to me when
I first started and how I managed to
break through those frustrations. So
before we dive in, I just want to give a
shout out to the friends of the channel.
Big thanks to Dark Monk, Emazinglights,
Flowtoys, Spinballs, and Ultrapoi for
helping to make the videos on this
channel possible. You can visit them on
the web by following the links down in
the description of this video. So we're
gonna flashback real quickly to the
summer of 2006. This was when I attended
my first Burning Man! Now I had never
seen fire dancing before at all, but
seeing it on playa really motivated me
to try and learn how to do it. I just
thought it was really beautiful and it
seemed to me like a really cool kind of
physical pursuit that you could pick up
and use as a hobby. Now bear in mind
there is absolutely no reason why this
should have worked out for me. I was an
extremely uncoordinated kid in
elementary school. I remember one of the
kids on my intramural basketball team
actually asked me not to attend the
games. I was like 10 at the time! And as I
grew up it always seemed like my body
was just a little bit bigger than my
brain really knew how to use. I just
thought that poi was really beautiful so
when I got back from Burning Man I asked
around my circle of friends to see if
anybody could teach me how to do that
one thing with the fire. So one day as
I'm asking this question, finally I have
a friend who says, "what you mean poi?" Now
bear in mind, they literally could have
said any word in the world that I
probably would have said, "Yeah! that's got
to be it!" Nonetheless, we had a friend
that did it. He'd just moved to Colorado
from Seattle and he was willing to sit
down and teach me. So, I prepared for my
first lesson. I was so excited! And then
we had the lesson. It was two hours of
him trying to teach me how to do just a
basic real turn in together same. Now I've
never had anything remotely like
spinning poi in my life before this--this
just did not compute in my head
whatsoever and I was so frustrated
because every time I tried to do the
turn I would keep hitting myself with the
poi. And I couldn't figure out why. My
friend really did his best to be patient
with me and try and guide me through the
process but in the end I wound up
leaving that lesson two hours later
feeling incredibly frustrated and I
thought: well, you know, maybe this isn't
for me, then. And honestly I probably
would've given it up if not for two
things. The first was that my roommate at
the time came home from holiday in
Thailand with a
set of poi that he'd bought at a street
market for me. I didn't want to
disappoint him because what he'd done
for me was actually really nice, so I
took the poi and I told him, "Yeah!
I'm gonna continue working on this." The
second was that I read a really great
book called Mastery by a guy named
George Leonard and in it he proposed an
idea that really blew my mind which was
that mastering something is not a
product of being naturally adept at it,
it's a product of spending the time
practicing it. So, I figured why not let
me give that approach a try.
I literally just decided that poi was
going to be the thing that I would
master--that I would spend the time to
practice over the years and get better
at. And again: this was completely random
I could have made this decision about
sculpting, about drawing, playing an
instrument, what-have-you. But I just
decided that come hell or high water no
matter how frustrated I was, no matter
how much it seemed like the poi wasn't
making sense to me, that I would still
practice. That I would show up to do it
every day. And then something really
magical occurred: see, as time went on; as
days turned into weeks, as weeks turned
into months, as months turned into years,
what I discovered was that a lot of the
people that I really admired when I
first started either it stopped doing it
or I would get to a point where when I
was spinning with them people would come
up to me and talk to me about what I was
doing. And this didn't happen overnight.
It was a process it took a long time and
to be honest with you, I didn't really
understand what was going on for most of
it. I wasn't paying attention, I was just
focusing on getting my practice in and
now a little over 10 years later I have
my youtube channel. I reach out to other
people and I try to inspire them. I try
to teach them. And one of the biggest
reasons that I do that is that I
remember what it was like to be there at
the beginning and feel so frustrated and
feel like poi made no sense at all. So
here's what I'm gonna tell you guys out
there if you're in that place where
you're starting off and you're
frustrated and you feel like it's not
making any sense.
Keep on pushing through it, because I've
been there. I have done that. I have gone
through that experience and believe it
or not there's something really
beautiful waiting for you on the other
side. Don't give up! It's worth it.
Thank you guys so much for watching! If
you could please leave a like and
subscribe, this stuff helps my channel
grow and it helps other people to find
me. I also want to include a special
thanks to all of my awesome backers on
Patreon! you guys are really the ones
that make these videos possible. Without
your support I would have had to stop
doing this channel a long time ago. If
you like the work that I do and would
like to continue to see free poi videos
made that everybody all over the world
can benefit from, please consider joining
up to help me out at patreon.com/drexfactorpoi.
Thank you so much and peace!
