 When I was growing up, I was in the circus, and it was magic. I could be anyone I wanted to be in the circus, or I could just be myself. And I loved flipping and flying through the air, and I loved being upside down and standing on my hands, and I loved, more than anything, this pair of socks. It's true, out of all the amazing, cool, death-defying things you could do in the circus, I was enamored with this pair of socks. Now, you might not even recognize what they are, but they're actually poi, and they're one type of poi amongst many, because poi is practiced all over the world. So there's the Maori poi you may be familiar with, and that's where we think all poi came from. But there's also poi that glow, and poi that you can light on fire, and there's those unimpressive socks that I was introduced to when I was in the circus. Little did I know those socks were about to launch a lifetime's worth of work and research and discovery into orbit. For the next decade, I did everything with my poi. I practiced poi standing on top of shoulders, and I played poi in the sea. I opened a center for poi, where people came together to learn and to share and to play. I created a musical instrument, rooted in poi, that had accelerometers and gyroscopes inside of a container, which I turned into poi, and it sent data to a computer about where it was in its orbit and how fast it was going, and that data made music. And I wrote an entire master's thesis about that musical instrument. I've even given a TED talk about poi. Now, even after all that, there was one thing I never managed to do. And that was figure out why it felt so good to do poi. Like, why was I so obsessed with this thing? And I kind of knew why, for my own personal self, like I kind of knew why it felt good to me, and other people kind of knew why it felt good to them, but that's not what I was interested in. I wanted to know why, objectively, fundamentally, the act of taking a chord with a weight on the end of it and spinning it in a circle. Like, why did that feel so good? And that's when I realized there was no systematic scientific research on poi, none. And so, I dropped everything. I moved from the U.S. where I'm from, here to New Zealand. For the past two and a half years, I've been working between the Center for Brain Research and the Dance Department to conduct the first scientific study on poi. So I'm working with healthy older adults, people over 60 years old, and I'm actually measuring physical, cognitive, and emotional health, the effects of poi on those things. Now, even if you cannot imagine twirling a sock around you, and even if you are not over 60, this research still concerns you. Why? Because you're getting old. But don't worry, do not fret. You are not alone. Globally, the number of people over 60 is expected to more than double in the next 30 years. And the big reason for this is because we're living longer. But that does not mean we necessarily have good quality of life in our later years. Quality of life affects not only your individual life, but what you can contribute to your family, to your local community, to society at large. And it also is putting a huge burden on the health care system because more and more people are living longer and they're living with chronic disease and they're dependent on the health care system to treat and prevent that disease. Simple and effective strategies and affordable strategies for maintaining our health in old age are really urgently needed. So, how much can a sock help? Well, I put 79 participants to the test and I measured all sorts of physical, cognitive, and emotional things. Like the ones that you see here, you've got some upper limb range of motion, dexterity in the hand, coordination between the two hands, lower body strength. There's also cognitive and emotional things but they're really boring to look at because it was just someone sitting at a computer. So, I didn't include those, but they were there. I did two baseline measurements a month apart to establish that baseline and then my participants got to play. So they were randomly allocated to either practice poi or tai chi. The reason for having a group doing tai chi is because I need a control group. Something to compare poi to that's appropriate for healthy older adults and has scientific research proving its efficacy. So tai chi is certainly that. It's been proven to improve balance and cardiovascular function in healthy older adults. So my participants got to play for twice a week for one month and then they went back to the clinics and they repeated all those same tests over again. Now, when comparing the data from after the lessons to the data from before the lessons, both groups improve their balance, their grip strength, their memory, and their attention. The tai chi group also dropped their blood pressure. These are super-duper exciting results. First thing, they're consistent with previous research on tai chi and that's very important. If my tai chi group didn't improve their balance and their cardiovascular function, maybe something went wrong with my study because every other, well almost every other study on tai chi has proven this. So it's consistent with previous research on tai chi. But the really exciting thing is that poi improved right alongside. And when you think about these things, balance, grip strength, memory, and attention, they're so important for quality of life. Maintaining these things could be the difference between your independence and a nursing home. So not only did I gather all this great data, I was asking participants questions about how they felt all along the way as well. So one thing I did was after each and every lesson, I asked them to write down the words which best described how they were feeling. And I compiled these words. So here you see just the poi participants responses. The bigger words are the words that were said the most. So for the poi group, the three words that were said the most were relaxed, challenged, and happy. For the tai chi group, it was relaxed, calm, and peaceful. So this tells us not only about the participant's experience, but also some similarities and differences between poi and tai chi, which could be helpful for future research. And I was also asking some more in-depth questions all along the way. And I'll share just a few of those answers with you. So these are just from the poi participants. A lot of people mention a flexibility or looseness in their body. This person mentions their back and their shoulders and their neck. A lot of people mentioned the challenge of poi and how great it was to learn a new skill. This person said, I felt good learning a new skill. It was challenging, and I felt myself improving in some moves which I thought I'd never ever be able to do. I heard a lot of participants especially talk about being older. All my participants were over 60. Trying something new at that stage was really great for them and they really enjoyed the challenge. And lastly, a lot of people had fun, got a sense of enjoyment from it. So I've got all this great data about how people felt that supports this other data that I measured in those clinics. Now what? Well, you never do know where a spinning sock is going to take you but I do hope that this research will pave the way for future research on poi and health. I think this research could have huge implications for quality of life which will not only improve your individual life but what you can contribute to society and hopefully alleviate some of that pressure on the health care system. Poi is such a simple, inexpensive, fun, customizable tool I could imagine this research leading to all sorts of other research studies from youth to older adults I could imagine studying ADHD, depression, early onset dementia, stroke. I could also imagine this research having huge implications in maurydum not because I'm going to tell maury something they don't already know about poi but just to shed new light on one of their own tanga. I think this study is just the tip of a huge iceberg as Tom Robbins says, if you take any art, any activity, any skill, any discipline if you take it and push it as far as it will go push it to the wildest edge of edges then you force it into the realm of magic. When I was growing up and I was in the circus it was magic and to be honest with you I've never grown up I'm still following my dreams and chasing my passions and pushing poi as far as it will go and even though I hope to remain forever young at heart I know we're all growing older and simple and effective and affordable strategies for maintaining quality of life in old age are urgently needed I think it's time to put a new spin on aging and for the world to follow New Zealand back to the practice of poi and forward to a healthier future Thank you