Home of Poi: You can go to the ball.....

edit- now with descriptions - Of one characteristic member of each family.some families have 60-100+ members.
and over simplified definitions of ways of spinning and of fundamentals, you should get the idea

In reverse order:
Moves:
as if I'm going to write out a list

up one level to:
Families:
CROSS FOLLOW - weaves and variations
BUTTERFLIES - see hop lesson for a simple butterfly ( a butterfly is still a fly.)
WAIST WRAPS - oldskool clubswinging term, for me the carry defines the wastwrap. lush vaiations btb and butterfly
STARTS - play
STOPS [inc. stop wraps]
REELS - Reel (simpelist butterfly reel) = low wave or mexican wave + a lot of variations
oldskool clubswinging term. Look it up in schatz, watch the gandini clubswinging dvd. ailing that you can be pretty sure that if its wall plane and you have a poi on each side of your body than its a reel variation.
PARTIAL ARCS - incomplete circles in lots of different ways eg pendulums
JEDI MOVES - the one that isn't logical: defined as stuff that I and almost nobody really understand fully and is concepts that are really really hard. members don't tend to stay in here for more than a year or 2, because, as more people learn them they become far easier to learn (somone type global conciousness in here,) because as we gain understanding we learn how to teach it, and because we get to see it IRL and in videos rather than just in our heads. so it used to be that 5bt btb weave was jedi, now its just very difficult. Part of the reason that it exisst is that its often not completlt clear where now concepts are going to fit in when they are finally fleshed out, so it kindof existed as a holding group when I made the list for stuff that is really hard and we don't fully understand and haven't got solid. by the time it becomes mainstream nobody really thinks its Jedi anymore.
ISOLATIONS and taking the weight off - see below, buzzsaw isolation was one of the first also known as illusion
THROWS - toss juggling poi
THROUGH WRAPS
TANGLES - inc hyperloops and airwraps
BIG CIRCLE LITTLE CIRLCE - see below
SEPARATE [independent] - disconnect your arms and have 2 brains
BUZZSAWS / INSIDE - spin a wheel with short poi follow time
SPIDER - follow time, spin in follow time anywhere, you can think of it as one move (arashi classification) or as a family (ww cross follow etc traditional club swinging classification) and as a way of spinning. It becomes a game to extend your spider, add btb, add wall plane, add long arm etc etc. )then go do a split time spider then butterfly, then parallel etc)
BODY TURNS
ILLIGAL MOVES [ edit:

]
FOUNTAINS and FLOWERS - edit oops forgot this sub family of cross follow. flowers are very simmilar to fountains if you reverse the major circle
There are more or less depending on your breakdown

up one level to
Ways of Spinning:
FOLLOW TIME: same direction 180� apart. like you do in cross follow or 3 bt weave.poi point in opposite directions
PARALLEL TIME: same direction and parallel, , its the simplest time to understand
BUTTERFLY TIME: opposite direction crossing at top and bottom
SPLIT TIME: opposite direction crossing at sides. same rhythm as follow time but poi travelling on opposite direction so they cross at 3 oclock and 9 oclock
QUARTER TIME (ugh) poi at 90 degrees
2:1 // 3:1 // 3:2 // X:Y // X:1 - one poi completing one revolution everytime the other one does two? and so on and so on.
CLOCK TIME- jedi at the moment, so I won't describe. variation on x:y and specically playing with 5:4 big circle little circle wall plane
BIG CIRCLE / LITTLE CIRCLE - combine long arm with normal circles or isolations - play with circle size eg
flowers
VERTICAL
HORIZONTAL
INCLINED
DIFFERENT PLANES - ATOMS (poi spinning on different planes) - OTHERS non atom
eg - vertical and horizontal - one poi on each
TRINITY

up one more level to
The Fundamentals:
BASIC CIRCLES - Shoulder centre (long arm rotation - watch pk or jo derry do it cleanly very hard to do well)
- Elbow centre
- hand centre (normal spinning)
- mid string centre (isolation see below much difficult)
body turns - (move yo' ass)
HANGS AND STILLS (and gilligans) - po hanging straight down post modernist poi swinging
PULL THRU's - when the poi climbs up to 10 oclock tug so it flys acrros to 2 oclock and chops off the top of the circle etc
CRITICAL MOMENTUM: when near the top of the revolution, the speed of the po at the top of the arc falls below a certain speed (aside: it think its about 2m/s or 6 ft/sec for the old timers and yanks if your hand is stationary but i wouldn't trust the math i do late at night and your hand isn't stationary )...
where was I, ok, below a certain speed at the top the tension falls to zero. and the po falls off the circle for about a quarter to a third of a circle, but still completes the loop around the hand.
Ideal for drunken master style. very difficult to have any plane control or timing, but that�s just more drunk, very nice feeling at the po fall over your hands plop plop plop. much easier if you don't try. mostly poi ntless
THROWS & RELEASES - letting go
CONTACT MOVES - po head or string in contact with some part of the body and still moving
ISOLATIONS - difficult analogous in many ways to club swinging snakes. the po rotates about a point in the middle of the string. powered isolations - rotate about a point between centre and head. lame/lazy or bad isolations rotate about a point between handle and midpoint of string.
WRAPS - po wraps around part of your body and unwraps again recoil or stop wraps- bounce off and come out in reverse. thru wraps unwrap because you moved the limb they are wrapping round to the other side of your body
SPIRAL - play with spirals
CONSTRUCT/helix - this is super dark, and I'm not going to explain it here, its the most complex concept in poi that I have ever understood. I can now explain it. but expect your brain to cook. id saw its utterly jedi to even form a mental picture the concept in space.

EDIT:
also if you want to get serious about terminology - get a copy of schatz (I've lost my copy, have i leant it to you??)
gillings can be very useful, but not all of it is correct (fountain is counted wrong, and very difficult to under stand in places, but http://www.semlyen.net/cosmosjugglers/lib/contents.htm.
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It isn't complete. They're my definitions, in my list of moves. (And if you're using expressions like families / hyperloops / isolations / and about 1/4 of the terms up there you're using words defined for poi in my list)

before you get really confused, most moves live in more than one family, and most moves have cousins in every other family. (if you want to develope your spinning, take any move and transcribe it to another family, or to another way of spinning.... eg take a weave, put it in split time get a split time butterfly weave).
one last thing: my recommendation is that you don't put your effort into try to work out what other people have done, don't waste your effort trying to disentangle badly described poi words. use them mearly as inspiration, its far more rewarding to explore the teritory for yourself, and to define perfection in poi for yourself, and to always aim and strive for that point.
\end technical nerdy poi spinning mode

I wish you all clean planes and down right dirty dancing
Drew