Game ~ Poi Epiphany
Epiphany ~
A sudden manifestation of the essence or meaning of something.
A comprehension or perception of reality by means of a sudden intuitive realization: “I experienced an epiphany, a spiritual flash that would change the way I viewed myself†(Frank Maier).
Here's the game:
First person names a pattern
eg 5Bt Weave.
Next person recalls a revelation about that pattern, like recalled what it was that finally clicked and allowed you to repeat that pattern.
eg When the pattern crosses from the left side of you to the right side it is your RIGHT HAND which controls the poi which crosses first. Whereas in a 3bt weave it would have been your LEFT hand.
So the 'penny dropped' when I realized that whilst i PUSH a 3 beat weave across my body I have to PULL a 5bt weave across.
Now that I have shared that epiphany with you I get to name the next one:
2 Beat Butterfly (=Thread the Needle)
So the next person needs to tell us what it was that finally clicked into place that allowed you to do this pattern.
Hopefully this little game will compile a list of very useful little tips.
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Comments
Game ~ Poi Epiphany
Nice thread Matt
TTN really worked for me when I started thinking of it as a push through (I only know standard TTN, not the pull through versions). With the push in mind the timing aspect that screwed me up royally previously naturally resolved itself, and I was soon threading the needle
BTB backwards 3bt (please someone follow up with BTB turning- mines crap
Chut
Game ~ Poi Epiphany
[hi9 there
it helped me alot not to think about that its behind me (3beat BHb Weave)
and just let the poi go round you have to turn to the opposite side were your poi at hope that helps
please someone can go on with 5 beat treat the needle
Game ~ Poi Epiphany
With four or five beat TTN I found that to get the extra beats one hand stays still for two beats while the other one does one beat underneath and then comes around to do one on top... then swap which hand stays still. It's similar to the way in which you get an extra beat in 5bt weave by having your wrists crossed.
Flowers
Game ~ Poi Epiphany
Flowers
When spinning your poi they rotate around your hand. If you rotate your arm about the shoulder then you move this center point. Just like a 'spirograph'.
The thing that really clicked for me was that if my arm rotates in the SAME direction as the poi then the poi circles all join together on the OUTSIDE of the giant circle. If however I rotate my arm in the OPPOSITE direction to the poi then the poi circles all join together near the CENTRE of the giant circle ~ this is how you form well defined PETALS.
Next up: Stalls
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Game ~ Poi Epiphany
Stalls:
From what I know of them, its where you 'stall' the poi near entirely still for a moment , the string taught then continue spinning, again, just from my knowledge
What helped me with them was this one video of matt's, I lost the link but when I find it I'll edit the post, anyways, getting to the point, it was one of his freestylin vids I think #5 , and it said in there "notice the similarity to isolations" and when I saw that, it just clicked because I understood isolations. So now what I do which is helping my st alls along , is I kinda watch the path of the poi head, then when I wish, I have my hand follow it for a second to make it stall , just like I do with isolations so thats how its clicked with me
Instead of just thinking "ok try and let it go still" I just kinda go "hm.....following" lol thats me 
And relax too , that helped tremendously
Buzzsaws
-Poikid-
Game ~ Poi Epiphany
buzzsaws
This is when you spin both poi in the area between your arms.. directions and axis are variation dependent..
I didn't really click with the buzzsaws, or even saw the point in them until I learned two things.. turning them and moving them.. By turning them I mean chaning the axis (ie. a corkscrew buzzsaw).. Even beat weaves (like corkscrews are naturally) allow you to go up and come back down in the buzzsaw, while only making one poi pass outside the between area. moving them works roughly the same, but involves going from a forward buzzsaw (turning your body) and ended up in reverse buzzsaw using the same one beat out..keep practicing and soon you'll be doing it with no beats out.
3bt reverse weave
Game ~ Poi Epiphany
This didn't really click until someone broke it down into the motions of each individual hand... each poi spins once on its own side of the body, then once underneath the other arm and then once above the other arm and repeat.
Windmill?
Game ~ Poi Epiphany
Windmill:
What made it click with me was doing a corkscrew , then slowly standing up, and doing a vertical corkscrew. Then I had my sis watch and she was like "yeeeh right on sis your windmillen" so yah, and thats how I taught it to a couple peeps, exact handmovements as a corckscrew only your standing straight up...most people got that before they got the corkscrew correctly lol so whatever, that helped me.
BTB Butterfly
Game ~ Poi Epiphany
btb butterfly-
this was one of those pains to learn.. for me it was th einital btb and was one of the earlier moves I learned.. what helped me was leaning over forward so that I could look btl and see my poi.. all you really need to do is realize that it you are spinning upside down.. The leaning forward puts you upside down view wise.. which helps.. plus it begins to stretch out those muscles which presents the second half of the btb hardness..
BTL weave
Game ~ Poi Epiphany
[looks like you've stumped everyone with this one Rev. I do Under the Leg Weaves but Behind the Leg weaves are different, like spinning poi upside down and behind your legs....erm...which i don't do....so Rev, looks like you may have to share a poi epiphany of your own with us]
¦m¦
Game ~ Poi Epiphany
sorry.. I didn't mean behind the leg.. I meant between the leg.. see I see a difference between utl (under the leg) which is liek say doing a weavepattern in front of you and lifting a leg.. and it passing Under the leg.. where as BTL (between the legs) happens when you pass the poi in the space between the legs to get to the other side.. with little to no lifting of the legs..
so in this case.. a between the leg weave is just taking your poi and letting them pass in the area betweeen the legs and back.. kinda like a windmill for the underside..
what basically hammered this in with me was learning how to to spin upside down.. I would put the poi BTL and jsut let iut spin cirlces back there.. the entry and exit angle kinda worked itself out after that..
sorry for the confusion
3bt butterfly weave..
Game ~ Poi Epiphany
3bt butterfly weave -
Oddly enough this didn't click for me until after I had figured out the 5bt. The magical realization that made this click for me was that the arm/hand movements are almost the same as a normal 3bt weave. Once I figured that out it got a lot easier.
Isolations
Game ~ Poi Epiphany
Isolations
This one finally made sense when I found that lil flash video Matt made, over in the isolations sphercular style thing. I'm not very good at them yet, but once I realized that your hand basically follows the path your poi just made, I tried it and it worked at long last
So yah, what helped was understanding how they worked (so go see his vid) and most of all to remember the rhythm of the poi, dont rush it. That is key to it imo. Now putting it into spinning I cant say, still can't do that meself 
MIND-POI CONTROL
Hyperloop/Airwraps??
Game ~ Poi Epiphany
The trick with hyperloops/airwraps (and clean isolations too!) is that your hands remain at a constant distance apart throughout the move in order for them to exit cleanly. If your hands move closer together they sag, if they move apart the heads speed up... both of these make it messier and harder to exit properly.
Wall plane 3bt weave
Game ~ Poi Epiphany
Well you kno when you spin 1 poi behind you in the wall plane there are 2 ways to do it, at middle height your elbow points down and when you do it low you can 'Invert your Elbow' so it points upward.
With this in mind you can do 2 different styles of weave in the wall plane, one with a natural elbow and one with inverted elbow. Once you get both you can mix and match between the 2 for a real purdy style.
'Flow'
Game ~ Poi Epiphany
For flow it helps to consider how your centre of rotation is moving. Is it just going from one place to the next, stopping there and then moving to another place? Or is it constantly changing and moving? It's basically going from spinning a series of moves with transitions between them to spinning a constantly changing set of "stuff"... the point where the line between a move and a transition blurs and vanishes, where everything you know isn't something you do, it's a way to add to the overall possibilities when you spin.
Horizontal buzzsaws
Game ~ Poi Epiphany
horizontal buzzsaws are soo much fun... they play into the even beatedness of the corkscrew and thus you can effectively go up and down just buzzsawing.. what really clicked it for me is leaning a little bit.. instead of shooting straight for the horizontal.. take a lean a little to the dside and you will quickly see how going up and going down corresponds to a particualr buzzsaw... in the case of coutner clockwise spin, the reverse buzzsaw takes you up (lean a little to the left..) and the forard buzzsaw takes you down.. (lean a little to the right) beforew you know it you'll be able to do buzzsaws that come up oneside of the body and down the other..
split time butterfly
Game ~ Poi Epiphany
If this is what I think it is.
Split time butterfly I find infinitely easier than an in time. What helped me is to stare kind off in the distance so as not to focus on any one hand, and imagine the poi as two big fans one on each side, and think of having the fans going so that its like 'woosh-woosh woosh-woosh' , and your hands will automatically start going split time.
Under the back corkscrew as done in black and blue full???
Game ~ Poi Epiphany
[just to get the ball rolling again]
It's frigging hard Bluecat, come back to this one later.
Butterfly Turns
Game ~ Poi Epiphany
Pretty much do nothing at all is the key! When you turn keep the positions of your hands locked relative to each other and you'll find that the poi automatically end up in the right place going the right way.
Straight-arm weave
Game ~ Poi Epiphany
I was practicing my 5 bt weave by keeping my wrists locked together.. as I kept practicing it, I slowly keptpushing one around the other, until it got to the point where one hand was still and the other hand was making all the motions, by going alll the way around the other, and then all the way back on the other side.. needless to say all I had to do at that point was stick my arm straight out, and voila straight arm weave.. its all in loosening up the wrists, methinks..
REELS
Game ~ Poi Epiphany
To learn the easiest reel - same direction, same time - each poi does a figure of 8 centered on a hip - one circle in front of you, one behind. The key is that to get the circle behind you your wrist has to twist so your your hand is palm upwards... this will feel unnatural when you first try it but persevere!
Atoms
Game ~ Poi Epiphany
[hears crickets in the background]
Uhh spiralx, you'll have to explain that one
Anti-Spin Fwds 3bt Weave
Game ~ Poi Epiphany
[quote="poikid"][hears crickets in the background]
Uhh spiralx, you'll have to explain that one
Game ~ Poi Epiphany
Anti Spin
I'm pretty new to this concept but as far as i can tell you go to stall one of your poi, as you are stalling you switch your arms round (so the one that should be under becomes over) then instead of stalling and changing direction you continue spinning the poi in the same direction.
Works for me doing forwards (edit) Anti Spin by doing upward 'stalls' so i'm guessing that to do it backwards (edit) you do downward 'stalls'.
[disclaimer: i've never been show anti spin so i only know this from text and playing but i think it's about right
]
Under the Leg Patterns
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Game ~ Poi Epiphany
I'm pretty sure there's no stalling in the anti-weave. You have to separate in order to get it to work I think.
Game ~ Poi Epiphany
Under the leg patterns
Well with me, seeing as i tend to watch my poi and then figure out what the body would have to do in order not to hinder the spin. I started watching a weave I was doing, then with no strings I did what I thought would be the movement. Tried it with strings of slowing it down, and with timing slid it under the legs almost feeling the pulse of the beats as it went under then came back out. Also I had recently read Matt's post on utl patterns, about entrance plane tweaks and such. So that's how I learned my first one, then after that I just did the exact same thing with all my utl patterns
Trinity
Game ~ Poi Epiphany
I just edited my last post cos i do the anti spin stuff forwards not backwards.
I've also added some more clarification to what i was talking about above. I put it in this thead blow.
http://www.spherculism.com/poiple/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=5187#5187
¦m¦
Game ~ Poi Epiphany
Trinity... this is where turns are 120 degrees (a third of a whole circle) rather than 180 degrees (half a circle). I found that by realising that even when spinning normally your planes aren't really parallel you can exaggerate this to get trinity. For example in the following diagram I'm looking down on a spinner who is facing the top of this post...
[code:1]
^ Facing this way
|
| ^
| < O >
[/code:1]
The three arrows represent where wheel plane and wall plane weaves go - they're actually V-shapes rather than perfectly parallel planes. All you need to do is widen these Vs so that each side of a weave in front of you is also one side of a weave to your side.
Urk, it's hard to explain
BTB weave turning
Game ~ Poi Epiphany
OOOooo
Okay. This really was an epiphany for me.
First off when you are doing your btb weaves you wanna bend away from the weave at your hip and imagine you poi to be a wheel with its center poking out of your hip.
As you turn keep your hip pointing out towards the weave.
It helps to turn 2 90- degree turns with a sligh pause in the middle...
btb weave: cross >> 2 >> 3 >> cross >> 2 >> 3 ...
Turn: cross >> 2 >> 3 >> turn >> 2 >> 3 >> turn >> 2 >> 3 ...
Where each turn is only a quarter turn, ie 2 quarter trns make 1 half turn.
Making your timing really tight
Game ~ Poi Epiphany
The obvious answer to improving your timing is to practise in front of a mirror/watch your shadow on a wall so you can see if you're going wrong. But there are other things that might help...
* Parallel weaves. Okay so they're fairly pointless but they do require good timing. The easiest is parallel 2 bt - keep your hands close together and swing a figure of 8 around you. Then try 3bt which is a fair bit harder - maybe try it straight arm as well so your hands aren't just copying each other but are both keeping time.
* Beats. Not circles but drum beats in your head. Same time is dum---, split time is dum-dum- and quarter time is dumdum--. Each dum is when you give one of your poi a "push" to keep it going or equivalently when it reaches a particular point in a pattern.
* 2 beat weaves. Can you do all 4 same direction 2 beat weaves? And both opposite direction 2 beat weaves? I certainly learnt 3bt before being able to all of the 2bts, and they took a while to get right as my timing was fairly sloppy
Over the head butterfly
Game ~ Poi Epiphany
this one's simple. its like a progression between the standard butterfly to the mexican butterfly, except that you bring your two hands behind your head. its got me a while to get used to bringing my hands behind my head, and waiting for the poi to complete its rotation behind my head before i bring my hands back in front of me.
7 beat reverse weave
Game ~ Poi Epiphany
arg... I loathed learning this move until I realized that you don't -need- the elbow over elbow method.. you can actually reach around with the reverse easier then the forward.. it helps to start similar to a wrist carry over.. keep working at it and evnetually you'll be able to reach far enough around to have the string not touch the wrists.. voila 7 bt reverse..
butterfly corkscrew
Game ~ Poi Epiphany
Fun
I got this one just by learning a horizontal buzzsaw on both hands on top, then with one poi did the passing movement then the other, combined them together and there it was. Just try it with short strings and keep your arms exaggerated positioned
One legged stuff, doing poi with one leg in the air to do utl passes and hyps and all that. Balancing basically
-Poikid-
Game ~ Poi Epiphany
To do this ~ focus on the central point in your mind, then concentrate on moving that point into the air above your head and imagine yourself to be at the end of a very large pendulum. The further you move the assemblage point away from you, the longer the pendulum you manifest and the better your balance will become.
dancing
Game ~ Poi Epiphany
This is the easiest part of all.. the whole point of POI before it got hijacked as an artform.. hehehe.. was to teach people how to dance.. and it works.. it teaches you balance, rhythm, transitions, and patterns.. etc..
for example take and run through some of your hand motions without poi.. you'll see what I mean..
so the trick is.. you learn to dance by spinning poi..
now I know matt meant dancing with poi.. BUT I feel this is identical to spinning without poi... as you spin more you become comfortable with certain moves.. infact I like to take and exagerate my movements in different ways.. this helps teach you what can be done with the move.. how to move with thew move and how to balance when moving with the move..
this to me is the heart of dancing.. just being able to feel when and where your poi are and moving with them...
Rhythmn ie timing move beats to music..
Game ~ Poi Epiphany
Hmm...not so much the epiphany for me, but no one's posted here for a while.
Basically you've just gotta learn to feel the music and flow with it. Figuring out the speed of the music is as easy as tapping your foot along with it. That steady rhythm you find yourself tapping is the beat (1-2-3-4, or 1-2-3, or whatever) of the music you're listening to.
Then move with it.
Plane control
Game ~ Poi Epiphany
Try spinning in a corridor
Face the walls for wall plane stuff, face along the corridor for wheel plane stuff. And do lots of turning... if you can keep your poi from hitting the walls going from say fwd weave -> low reel -> rev weave -> low wheel -> fwd weave (and other similar rotations) then you're doing well 
Alternate over the head butterfly
Game ~ Poi Epiphany
I've always known of this as a Mexican wave
So this might be a dif one then the one your talking bout but the way I learned was, and ya'll are gonna groan but its true
I made myself visualize it in slow motion and tried to spin it as slow as I could to get all the planes nicely (though at that time didnt know they were called that) , and so yah.
Showers
Game ~ Poi Epiphany
Nifty things you use to get clean...
seriously.. though.. wtf is a shower?
Game ~ Poi Epiphany
It's a release of some sort. Named after a juggling term, I'd guess...