Forums > Help! > Spinning fire behind your back

Posted: 6th Jan 2004
Nope, in fact, there's an innitiative in the US stating all that all fire spinning must be done behind the back I've managed to get 5 tickets for spinning regular old butterfly in front of me.

Tis fine, in fact, it's easier to spin fire behind your back than other things I find, if it gets too hot, your planes are probably off

Posted: 6th Jan 2004
the general rule with spinning safely is to practice to the point where you're extremely unlikely to go wrong. This is even more so with fire. I spin very few moves behind the back with fire, despite having known many for about a year now. If you have long hair and you want to keep it that way, my advice is to make sure its either in a hat or tucked down your tshirt. You may want to wet it also, and make sure you have someone standing behind you when you're spinning, to alert you if your back catches alight (it's amasing how some people don't notice).

All fire performing is dangerous, there's people who think it isn't, but they arn't people i'd trust my safety with. It's FIRE! Of course swinging it behind your head is dangerous! Just make sure you practice to death (no pun intended), and take the precautions that can be found in articles on this site. Most importantly, when it comes to personal saftey, more important than anything anyone tells you (either in person or online), is whether you feel safe. If you don't, you're more likely to mess up. So practice, practice, practice!

Posted: 7th Jan 2004
yeah, i reckon that spinning btb with fire is easier because they're heavier and tend not to go off course as much. also, thins might just be me, but i find it easier going foreward btb not backward btb.


if that makes sense


Peace!

I had a dream that my friend had a
strong-bad pop up book,
it was the book of my dreams.

Posted: 7th Jan 2004
low mexican wave alight is fun, bearing in mind i've only done it once!! I didn't think about it, just went into it from a different move

Monkeys monkeys and bananas

Posted: 7th Jan 2004

Quote:

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Most importantly, when it comes to personal saftey, more important than anything anyone tells you (either in person or online), is whether you feel safe. If you don't, you're more likely to mess up. So practice, practice, practice!

---

Have to say, thats about the best advice for any fire spinning I've ever heard.

If *YOUR* not comfortable with it, don't do it!

when I tried fire poi for the first time I ended up dropping into a fountain without thinking, I got confused, panicked (there were big balls of fire spinning round ma heed! ) and ended up wrapping the poi round my head. Not nice as I set light to my hair and put a loverly burn all the way down the side of my face.

I have picked them up since, but I wear a 100% drill cotton beanie, make sure I only do stuff I know I can pull off everytime, and stuff that I'm comfortable doing, and I don't spin fire whilst too "altered". it just always ends in tears...

Not that I want to put you off spinning certain moves with fire, it is a great feeling, and the noise, and light is just incredible. But practice, practice, practice and then practice some more before you try the move out with fire.

And if you practice with different poi, make sure you try the move with your wicks dry before you set them a blaze!

Hope this helps.

PsyB.

Posted: 7th Jan 2004
Although you shouldn't do anything you're not comfortable with, there's plenty of things my friends are comfortable doing while spinning fire that they really shouldn't do. It's easy to get overconfident, so make sure you give it a lot of thought; I was doing BTB reverse weaves with fire much earlier than I should have.

Posted: 14th Jan 2004
Spinning fire btb is nicer than with beamers. In my experience fire just kind of bounces off whereas beamers leave bloody great dents. The trick is to be as relaxed as possible. If you start thinking "this is going to go wrong and I'll get horribly scarred and spend my life with small children throwing stones at me..." then it will. Do it with one chain until you get used to where the poi is, just like you did when you were learning the move. I've never yet seen anyone set fire to themselves through the wick touching them accidentally without another factor involved like way too much fuel that's not been spun off, or spinning in a fluffy fleece.

There is a slight possibility that I am not actually right all of the time.

Posted: 14th Jan 2004
You're not supposed to spin in fluffy fleece? Doh! What if I wet it down with kero first?

Posted: 15th Jan 2004
Or make a hat from cotton wool?

There is a slight possibility that I am not actually right all of the time.

Posted: 20th Jan 2004
Thanx guys! Its just my Dad screamed when he saw me doing it the other day :-P

Caz

Caz

Posted: 20th Jan 2004
I agree with Eera,

you have to be relaxed and confident, when peaple [censored] up with fire its mostly becuase they get scared halfway through something and try to bail, but poi dont bail very well.

After a car crash recently i found that ive lost all fear of fire, this dosnt mean i disrespect it, but it does mean that I now treat fire chains as if they were practice poi, and have made it my mission to do everyhting with fire that i can do without. This has really helped my spinning and ive found real joy in fire. also a few close scrapes have made me realise what the danger level is, its fairly high, but not actually as dangerous as you think, disfigurement is far more likely than maiming, and im ugly enough already.

there are a few moves that you should really watch out for, ttn, especially in split time can land you with tightly wound wrists so be extra shure about that one, and double butterfly neckwraps are the only move ive yet to do with fire, despite haveing got them for 6 months without, just cos if they go wrong, they is gona go very very wrong.

I also ahve to add that my worst ever burn has come from staff, not poi.

T

This is a post by tom, all spelling is deleberate
-><- Kallisti

Posted: 21st Jan 2004
spinning fire behind your back is cool fun
why do u think there are so many moves that include it

.....behind the back butterlfy...behind the back weaves and so on and so forth its a little scary and the first time i did it i [censored] my self-------these flames are coming from nowhere help but yeah go fro it and enjoy the sensation

we cant stop here its bat country!!!!!!!!!!!