Barbary, Sdt22, and Flyboy, it sounds like you all have methods that work for you, and I'm thankfull to you for describing them. I had never heard of "flying the disc", and I want to play around with that. Would this just be flying the model relative to the disc?
Barbary, I like your suggestion to practice recovery drills. Being able to quickly restore normal flight would be a great skill to have. But in your first post here, were you backwards when you said "forward cyclic always pushes the nose toward the rotor disk, rear cyclic always pushes the nose away from the disk"? Or do you visualize the disc as being below the body rather than above? This is what made me think that I was incorrect in what I thought the disc was.
Other than that, I guess I should fly slow pirouettes, and make sure that I can control the helicopter through the entire 360º. Once I can recover from any problem at any point in the pirouette, then I should be ready to practice inverted hover.
And Flyboy, you don't have to worry me thinking too much. I've never done that before, and I doubt I ever will.