Mastering Smoke Rings and Tricks

[Lord Dorian]

For me, one of the most enjoyable aspects of hookah smoking is the potential for smoke tricks. My next series of posts will adress the basic and more advanced aspects, as well as the physics behind smoke tricks. This first post will deal with the basics of ring blowing, the most common smoke trick. While there are many techniques for blowing rings that focus on the mouth, movement within the mouth, and jaw movement, I will ignore these in favor of the throat/lung method which I feel produces better sustain, size, and especially distance and speed.
Blowing your first rings: first, make sure you hookah is running optimally. Harshness will be the bane of your ring blowing since we will focus our technique on the throat. If you have problems with a harsh hookah, I have another post dedicated to troubleshooting this problem. Next, get in a room with zero, or as close as you can come to that airflow. Next, load up your favorite flavor and get ready to blow some Os. If you are new to hookah or on a budget (I was in my nascent hookah days) I would suggest nakhala peach shisha, the chemical taste is terrible, but it is the cheapest way to get large amounts of very thick white opaque smoke. Smoke a little bit until the bowl until you have a good stable burn going and get ready to atempt some rings. First, posture is key, hookah is very relaxing and most people like to lay back and enjoy it, however, this will make it harder to blow good rings. Sit up straight with your shoulders back, your goal is to open your lungs and elongate your trachea. Next, keep your head straight and drop your jaw, forming your mouth into as close to an "o", not an "O" shape as possible (you want a perfect circle). Also, keep your tongue down, contrary to popular belief the tongue plays no part in blowing rings. Next practice making a very, very light gutteral coughing sound, almost inaudible. Now take a nice rip (60% to 70% of your lungs) and do what you just practiced. It will take a lot of practice and adjusting the force and frequency of your cough before you get one ring. But don't give up, keep practicing and you'll eventually get it.
Below are some pictures of me blowing rings, they kind of suck because 1. rings are hard to photograph 2. I'm taking pictures of my self, which is hard to do without disrupting airflow 3. I just did them now
 
that's me with a couple decent rings

this shows that with practice, it's easy to shoot clean rings over four feet from your mouth

This one made it 5 feet from my mouth to the floor, it's decently sized compared to my size 12 foot, but because of uneven spin when I blew it the right side is starting to break.
well, thanks for reading, my next post will adress speed and spin control, how to do ring through ring and heart shaped rings.  

[yashman19]

Coultn't have put it better. People look at me crazy when I tell them you're not really "blowing" Os, but instead coughing. Of course you put it in a much clearer way.
In order to be able to blow solid Os, you need to have very strong control of your throat. Once you get the technique down, you will be able to blow Os like second nature.
Great post. Thanks

[Lord Dorian]

That's true. However, the better you get, the further down your respritory tract you can move the ring generating action. When I first started I blew from the top of my throat, the moved it lower and lower. Now when I what a lot of distance, the rings come solely from contracting my lungs, my throat remains stationary and there is no longer a coughing sound. This is also great because with the greater throat control from my early days in tandem with the lung contraction I can control whether I blow clean, discrete rings like in the 2nd photo or "comet" rings will long spiral tails. More picture will follow... 

[Lord Dorian]

This photo was meant to illustrate the difference between the clean rings (2nd photo first post) and the "comet" rings with sprial tails, the resolution is somewhat poor and the tails difficult to discern, Also I am holding the camera with my other hand and too lazy to re-attempt to get a better angle.  but you can still see the difference from the above photo. This is achieved through a combination of stalling a curtain of smoke in your mouth and throat while contracting your lungs to form the O, as opposed keeping all the smoke in your lungs as is the case with the clean rings in my first post. This process will be explained in depth in a later post 

[wyteboy]

just blew rings for the 1st time! LORD RULES!!!!!

[bcoll]

Awesome post. Another level of the "clean ring" trick, is to attempt to
blow one ring through another. With practice, you can let the duration
and intensity of that gutteral cough control the speed of the resulting
ring. Then you can blow a slow and a fast one in rapid succession and
attempt to thread on through the other 

Also, once it becomes second nature, you can impress your friends my
making a virtual chimney of rapid fire smoke rings. If you do them
quickly, they'll end up looking less clearly define, but its still a
neat trick

[wyteboy]

not that skilled yet

[POlarSource]

And after a couple years of practice... They get bigger.
[url="http://tylersmalley.com/wp-gal/folder/Hookah"]http://tylersmalley.com/wp-gal/folder/Hookah[/url]
[img]http://tylersmalley.com/images/sean_hookah.jpg[/img]

[Lord Dorian]

Blowing heart rings: You're going to want to get very comfortable with blowing regular rings before you attempt this (6 months to a year). In my opinion this is the most difficult smoke trick. First, postion your arm so it is straight in front of your head, as far away from it as possible, with your fingers facing your face. Next, blow a ring with a lot of spin on the edges so it holds together well. To do this, curl your lips in really hard, make sure they are wet and fire from deep in your throat or if you can lungs and aim for your hand. As soon as the ring leaves your mouth snap your fingers so that your index (or middle depending on how you snap) makes a line to the ground, then drop your arm out of the path of the ring. If done in one fluid motion, a heart will form when the ring hits the area where your snapping hand was.
this shows a heart below a regular ring, it was hard to photograph, and difficult to see against my white shirt. I'll try and get a better picture when I find the remote for my digital camera 

[hookaman]

omg thats freekin crazy. lol i wish i can do something like taht it seems pretty tough. It would be awesome if like you take your girlfriend/wife to a hooka bar and blow hearts to her. damn u know ur getting laid that night lol. hey everyone im sorry as i still cant start my own topics but i have a small suggestion. Please whenever someone reviews a tobacco, can you please also add what type of charcoal you used during that session. for example if your smoking al fakher strawberry specify if you smoked it with nour coals, or golden coals so it will be easier for us, or at least me to notice a difference. Thank you

[mikem]

awesome i actually blew a smoke ring that was like 3 feet from my face, cant do it again though

[Playboy]

I hear if you put your finger up to your lips like you're saying 'shh'
you can make double rings, even triple rings with two fingers. anybody
seen this/tried this?

[POlarSource]

[quote name='Playboy']I hear if you put your finger up to your lips like you're saying 'shh'
you can make double rings, even triple rings with two fingers. anybody
seen this/tried this?[/quote]

I can do it with a cigar in my mouth (or something the same diameter).
The rings are smaller but it makes two. I am not sure about the finger
thing. I guess I could always try it.

[jakescakes]

keep it goin

again

[Soup]

I've become the resident O expert in my group of hookah enthusiasts thanks to this thread.  Everytime we smoke, I try and teach them how.

[Esoj]

Hmmm definitely something I will try.  Can't hurt to add a little Pazzaz to the whole Hookah experience.

[ahwahoo2006]

Ive always found it impossible to actually teach people how to do rings, so thanks for the help Lord.  On a positive note, Ive finally figured out the ring-in-ring trick.  It actually helps to have a little bit of airflow in your face to keep the first ring stable.

[supachink]

how do you blow rings farther and really thick... i was once
smoking  with a kid i met in his car... not hookah... but he could
blow rings so thick and strong that he could blow a ring at the vent of
hte car when it had the AC on and it would get bigger and come back
towards him... it was probably one of hte most amazing things ive ever
seen.... that and my buddy blows some pretty big rings... 

[cypress]

That almost looks like a heart in the lower ring. 

[Sean]

Bravo bravo, thanks for the info

[dikydave]

awesome, after practicing for the last couple hours(finally cool enough
for me to turn my fans off) i can not only blow a smoke ring but i've
got it down so i can blow one big one and blow a smaller one through
it, awesome post, thanks alot!  ill get pics if i can, but that
sounds like it'll up the difficulty 10x.

[Lakemonster]

Nice.....
One I have worked on smoking a pipe is to blow the second thru the first with the least "disruption" on the first.
I aint braggin.. its a thousand thing for me. If I could master that.... it would be so visually impressive

[Marcus9638]

I was screwing around the other night while smoking some Romman Peach and took a couple of smoke ring pics.  The smoke density from the Romman was pretty good but from what I've read on this site I can't wait to try Al Fakher.  Anyway, here are a couple of smoke ring shots.[url="http://www.hookahforum.com/uploads/Marcus9638/files/2005-09-04_232305_ringavatar.zip"]2005-09-04_232305_ringavatar.zip[/url]

[Marcus9638]

Damn. How do you get the pictures to show up in the post?  I compressed two pictures into a zip file and loaded them, but now all you get is that hyperlink.  Can anyone help me out with any info on how to get the pics into the post itself?
Thanks in advance,
 
Marcus

[uselessdreamer1]

go to a free hosting site. and upload then use the picture button.