Difficulty: Easy

Safety Warning: Make sure you have enough space so that you don’t knock anything over or hit anyone with your poi. Also, be careful of hitting yourself with your own poi!

Els shows you how to do poi turns, a simple but visually effective trick for poi learners. To achieve this trick, you’ll spin your poi backwards and then turn 180 degrees and switch to spinning your poi forwards.

Els breaks down the trick into its separate components. First, practice spinning the poi forwards, both at the same time, one on each side of the body. Next, practice spinning the poi backwards in exactly the same way.

To turn, start spinning backwards. Stop the poi spinning by dropping them behind your shoulders – raise your arms up and over your shoulders. Turn, then start spinning the poi forwards. Once you’ve got the hang of this, speed up the stop and turn to make it a smooth motion.

Next, Els shows you how to start from spinning the poi forwards. From spinning forwards, bring both poi to the front, turn, and switch to spinning backwards. A harder variation is to bring the poi behind your back in order to switch from forward to backward spinning.

When you’ve mastered the basics of poi turns, you can switch between the two as many times as you like!

You can see all our poi tutorials by tagging ‘poi’ on our library homepage here!