I’m really excited to share more of my passion for hula hooping with the world. Sometimes when I’m hooping, I think about all of the different parts and facets of myself that I am using, and it absolutely blows my mind.
I’d like to describe just a few of the beautiful ways that hooping makes my life better, and could possibly have the same impact on yours. In order to begin to understand the immense benefits I’ll divide them up into some categories…
A KICKASS WORKOUT
I get an amazing cardio workout from hooping. I put on a song with a beat thats impossible not to dance too and get myself moving inside my hoop. I run and jump in place with the hoop rocking around my hips, I do squats with the hoop around my shoulders, I swing the hoop around me and I see how many times and how quickly I can jump over it and through it, all to the beat of the music. I sweat, and at the same time I can’t help but smile.
MORE MOVEMENT BENEFITS
I dynamically move my body in so many ways while hooping. By observing the path of the hoop around my body I improve my proprioception - or my ability to know where my body is in space. At the same time the hoop gives me feedback about how I’m moving. If my hips are level or working at a tilt, if my ribcage is aligned with my pelvis, or if I can rotate further in one direction are all some examples of the hoop’s biofeedback. As I spiral the hoop up each vertebrae of my back I get circular mobilization of each part of my spine. I learn to move and stabilize the hoop at each of these points.
When I hoop around just my shoulders, my elbows or the crown of my head, the cells in this part of my body literally get smarter and more aware. As I hoop around my feet I see my toes begin to move seperately from one another, more conscious of their innate abilities to move and respond to force. I get to enjoy a whole-body cellular dance party while hooping.
Hooping has not only helped my whole body to be smarter and move more efficiently, but has also improved my hand-eye coordination, my balance, and my core strength, just to add a few more physical benefits.
EMOTIONAL AND MENTAL HEALTH
The hoop is a toy, and when we can take this attitude of pure play into our time with it, a childlike curiosity naturally gets to come out and play. As we explore and patterns of movement emerge, our brains can find a special state called flow, and all sorts of wonderful neurotransmitters move through us. Joy and increased capacity for human connection often feels like the emotional residue of hooping. Finding new patterns to move with the hoop nourishes creative expression. The pathways are endless.
While moving with the hoop is often joy-inducing, hooping is also a way I express a variety of my emotional experiences. I hoop my rage, my frustration, my sadness, my sexuality, my excitement and my desire to grow. There is room for all of these feelings within my hoop-dance. I feel each one, and experience what it might transform into.
The hoop gives me a tangible and visible experience of having personal boundaries. The hoop declares my personal bubble with non-disputable physical communication. Hooping gives me permission to take up space.
SPIRITUAL CONNECTION
So much goodness can happen even on the most simple and beginner level of hula hooping. We move our hips in perhaps a way that we almost never do, in a way that mimics wave-like circular movement inherent to the spirals of life. We connect with our bellies, the feminine, our fertile juiciness and our potential to create. As we turn with the hoop we begin to slow down time and create more space, and when we move against the current we learn to speed things up. Can the innate spiral movements of hooping help reconnect our bodyminds with our primordial cyclical, moon-influenced, seasonal existence? Maybe!
I get the sense that the hoop feeds and expands energetic wheels, or chakras, in my body. Hooping around my hips allows me to access my power, my groundedness and my sensuality. Hooping around my heart helps me to feel love. Making big spirals with the hoop around my entire body seems to open and magnify my entire energy field. My breath fills the spaces as I open and expand, I am in my body and my pleasure as my physical body connects heaven and earth. I root into my hips and hurl the hoop skyward.
Even dropping the hoop reveals new pathways as I continue to move and flow, I am reminded once again of the circularity of life as my endings enfold into new dances and beginnings.
CONCLUSION
My mind can relax into the present as I hoop. I bring my yoga into this practice by inviting breath, awareness, and subtleties of alignment into my exploration with the circle. Hooping connects me with my breath, my joy, my pleasure, my creativity, my boundaries, and my unique self-expression. Magically, it does all this while also mobilizing and strengthening my body in a fun and dynamic way. Hooping can remind us we live on a big round planet, with endless cycles and rhythms, repeating themselves again and again and again. Hooping can help call us HOME to ourselves!