Doubles: Inside Planes. 

Short staffs! Inside planes, inversions, horizontal, inside anti-spin and isolation, and other tomfoolery that you can only do with short doubles. (1.2m im my maximum length, 1m or less is good if you have short arms, or are short, or just want to make it all easier.)




So inside planes. What are they? You might ask, so I'm going to explain. (You'll probably know, if you do poi.)

Normal planes, like the wheel plane and wallplane, are always 'outside' your body as it were. they create flat planes that are always away from your body. (apart maybe, when you switch sides, but that's an issue I'm not going to get into.) So normal planes are 'outside' your body and your arms. 

Inside planes occur when you get the plane of the staff between your arm and your body. So for example, the staff goes 'behind' your arm, as if it was doing a figure eight, but it's still in front of your body. Similarly, the staff can go 'infront' of your arm, but still be behind your back. 

This is one inside plane, 'inside' a space created between your body and your arm (s). 

Obviously the staff has to be short enough to pass through this space, it can't be longer than twice your arm length, and usually has to be a good bit shorter. 

So we have one inside plane, what are the others? 

The buzzsaw plane is a sort of inside plane. But itstead of being between your body and your arm, it's between your arm and your other arm. Not quite the same, but definately inside a space created by you. 

When I talked above about a plane between your arms and your body, I was thinking about one between your arms pointed down, and your torso / legs. Both the plane in front and behind. But there is also a high inside plane, between your arms and your head. Obviously your head isn't as tall as your legs and torso combined, but when there's a staff coming toward my face, I take that plane pretty seriously. Also there is the BTB version of that plane, where the staff goes behind your head, but in front of your arms. 

There's also the wheel plane version of all of these planes, and if your into atomics... well even more then... :D 

Inside horizontal plane I hear you ask? Yes indeed, but only the buzzsaw plane and only in front, (unless your shoulders are very flexible...)


So that's all the planes, but that's no the whole story... wooooo, if it were only that easy! (it would be kinda dull if it were that easy.)

So when (for example) when your arms are pointing down, both the left and right arm have their own inside planes. So when the right hand's staff is going through the right arms inside plane, it can either be also going through the inside plane of the left arm also, or not, it can go in front of the left arm. Equally the right arm's staff might be in a normal 'outside plane in respect to the right arm, but using an inside plane of the left arm. Joys. You might want to see the pictures at this point. :D  



Unfortunately there are no inside planes at the sides of your body. It's a shame I know, you should console yourself with the fact that if you grew extra arms then you could have extra inside planes!


What about inside the legs? Well it's kind of inside, but not really, because your spinning the staffs with your arms, not with your legs. So between the legs is more like a space you put the staffs through, rather than an inside plane. And since I don't do much between the leg stuff, cos I don't like obscuring the pattern of my staffs with my own body, or bending over and showing my butt to the audience.  

yay! So, any form of spinning can use inside planes, anti-spin, isolation, weaves, butterfly, trammel, crossed arms, atomics, stickies, shotguns etc. Yeah! But also: shit, that's a lot of possibilities!



So why use inside planes?

Why indeed? You can only do inside planes with short (ish) staffs, they're quite technical and generally more prone to burning you. 

But! They open up a metric tonne more possibilities, so why not learn them, if you can? You have about 10 new planes to play with! Sweet! More importantly, using an inside plane can allow you NOT to go behind yourself when doing a figure eight, allowing the staff to stay (mostly) in front of you. (Which surely is more visual for the audience) and can get you out of some tight spots / make some beautiful patterns. 

Plus: it's really fun. And it'll get rid of those pesky armpit hairs. ;) 




Soooooo, cool. Let's get on to the moves!

Demonstrate one staff going inside. Inside isolation. inside weave? 

Demonstrate inside anti-spin. 

watermill
anti-spin inside. 
inside isolation. 
anti-spin isolation
translated watermill. 
vertical trammel / atomics. 
bfly weave with insides + bfly antispin with anti-spin. 
inversions. 
water-mills mess
high watermill and high anti-spin isolation
horizontal buzzsaw
stickies

Crossed arms. (wrists) ??

Inversions: Eurgh. ??