What is Blis Hoops and who is Koren Walsh?

 
 
What is Blis Hoops?
Far more than simply a hula hoop company, Blis Hoops stands for body, love, inspiration and spirit. Created to hold the concepts of hoop dance, performance and instruction. Blis Hoops also embraces empowerment, inspiration, joy and laughter as core components for health and wellness

Who is Koren Walsh?
A birth doula with 20 years of massage and bodywork as a background, Koren Walsh, founder of Blis Hoops combines the healing aspect of hoop dance as a personal empowerment tool as well as a holistic approach to exercise and expression.
  
 

Because Koren has seen, first hand, the healing qualities of hooping, she has introduced this craft to hospitals and healing centers as an important healing modality.

Working with women experiencing conditions such as depression, eating disorders and chronic pain, Koren has witnessed the healing of bodies, minds and spirits through the implementation of movement, massage and creative expression.

Koren is a healing artist.
Using her hands to sculpt muscle, she moves energy with compassion and releases pain with empathy. Medical grade massage, reiki, reflexology and ethnic massage techniques such as hot stone massage and lomi lomi blend together in her healing sessions bringing mind body and spirit together as one.
Using her body to teach movement and breath work, she creates a gentle learning enviorenment in which women blossom with her support.

As the Midwest's only Certified Hoop Dance Instructor, Koren not only teaches dance, but inspires women to become dancers in her workshop fundamentals of hoop dance.

As a performer, she captivates audiences of all ages with her fluid movements.
As a speaker, Koren's gentle voice urges women to live to their full potential.

From the moment of our birth, our lives open up before us with uncharted potential.
As a birth doula, Koren brings peaceful strength to the side of a laboring mother, setting a child off on their journey through life with love.

Reaching out to the community of women in this world,
Koren has created Honor the Body, an empowerment workshop for women.

Honor the Body helps women realize the power and beauty they possess. Breath work, meditation, massage and movement exercises combining belly dance with hooping ecstatic dance come together in this powerful workshop inspiring women to embrace who they are right now with love and acceptance.

Koren believes that when a woman truly loves herself,
she is able to love the world.

 
 
How did I begin Hoop Dancing?

To answer this question, I need to step back two years before I actually picked up my first hoop. I was driving home from work on a beautiful autumn afternoon, feeling relly good about where my life was heading. I had just made the decision to leave my part time office job to move into my bodywork career full time. I was on the top of the world.

I drove around the corner in my pretty little vintage VW Beetle and came to a stop as a school bus was dropping children off in the opposite lane. I leaned forward to open my glove box when I was hit from behind by a large pick up truck which pushed my car forward and underneath an Expedition. I hit the left side of my face against the steering wheel breaking both the steering wheel and my left hand. I dislocated my clavical and my knees were forced up against the metal dashboard.


My accident put me on a long road to recovery, which still continues today. My brain injury made somthing as simple as walking a physically challenging and mentally exhausting chore. I knew, however, that if I stopped moving I would never start moving again.


After two years of acupunture, massage, chiropractic and intense physical therapy sessions, I was strong enough to attend a music festival with a friend. It was Bonnaroo where I first discovered hoop dancing. My freind and I were camped next to the most graceful hoop dancer I had ever seen. I watched the hoop float over and around her body
as if it was her dance partner. She tried to teach me how to spin the hoop, but I couldn't keep the hoop up. No matter how hard I tried, the hoop would fall to the floor, but I didn't give up. At the end of the festival, she gave me my first hoop, which I still use today.

I proudly carried my new hoop into my physical therapist's office and described the dancer I had seen. I made my therapist promise that she would help me become strong enough to dance in my new hoop.

My new hoop gave me a new goal to reach in my healing journey. I hung my hoop on a hook on my living room wall so I would see it every day. As my skills in hooping grew, I began to share my hoop with my friends so they would be inspired to dance with me as well. Soon I was building hoops for friends and family so they would have their own.

My accident has left me with some lasting physical and mental effects. I still experience pain in my head, face and hand. My memory is not what it used to be, and my knees know when the wheather is going to change, however, I am now ever more at home in my body now than I have ever been. I also have a new appreciation for the joy that life can bring.
I recieved a true gift of healing when I was given my first hoop. This gift has inspired me to write "Honor the Body" a woman's empowerment workshop which includes hoop dance as a tool to help women realize the power they have inside. I also traveled to San Francisco to take part in the first hoop dance teacher cirtification training with HoopGirl's founder Christabel Zamor, I am proud to say I am the first certified Hoop Dance teacher in Minnesota!

My hoop and my healing journey have taken me from a place of learning how to walk, to a place of teaching others how to dance. For that I am truly grateful.
 
 


You may have seen Koren at:
Harmony Park Harvest Festival, Minnesota
The Big Wu Family Reunion, Minnesota
Pagan Spiritual Gathering, Ohio
Heartland Gathering, Kansas
Bearded Lady Biker Gathering, Minnesota
Earth Dance, Minnesota
The 3-11 Club, Minnesota
Imagine This, Minnesota
Spirit of the Lakes Art Show, Minnesota
Kingman Studios, Minnesota
St. Paul Museum of American Art, Minnesota
Rosemont Leprechan Days, Minnesota
Woman Song Gathering, North Dakota
James J. Hill Days, Minnesota
Carpe Mammae Breast Cancer Benefit, Minnesota
The Dark Carnival, Minnesota
The First Woman's Association, Minnesota
Woman & Spirituality Conference, Minnesota
Trail of Terror, Minnesota
The Minnesota Renaissance Festival *GEM Award Winner