Hula Hooping

Whenever I tell people I am a hula hooper and what I do without SHOWING them what it is, they look at me like with a puzzled look.

Many say things like "Oh! I used to do that when I was a kid!" or "I remember so and so from childhood who had one", but in reality, it is so much more than I could ever explain in just one sentence. It has been a journey, an amazing, long, insightful and soul building one.

Let's go back to when I was living in Tampa, Florida, and I was just about to go back to my native country, Mexico. My friends took me to a bar called skippers and the entire night, all i did was watch three girls who were dancing with their led hoops on the dance floor. I didn't talk to anyone, I barely touched my beer. All I could think of was “I want to do this”.

I bought my first hoop a couple of months later in Mexico and learned through youtube, then I realized there was an entire community thriving on Instagram, and that there were tons of girls obsessed with the hoop just like me. We connected and bonded through endless conversations through Instagram messaging, setting challenges and goals together.

The freedom of expression through hooping has no limits, and every single person flows differently, every flow is unique, covered in the person’s own style. It’s a journey to find your inner hooper.

As an amateur, you learn a couple of tricks and little by little you incorporate more moves until you are able to improvise on which trick you will do next, which combos will look cool or which tricks to pull off when the bass drops so on the outside it looks like a rehearsed choreography.

When you learn to hula hoop mind begins to use muscle memory, and it is truly incredible what the mind does to store memories of movements, of combos. Just the same way you remember to ride a bicycle even though you have not ridden one in ages. It's the same. Your mind remembers, and that’s part of its beauty, you are able to build it up.

The benefits are palpable, you build core strength, your balance improves, your arms and waist get toned and the more you practice the more agile and coordinate you become.

Your mind is working, you can feel it running fast, putting combos of tricks together...that’s the meditation right there! Your mind is so busy building up combos and your body is following the beat and the instruments….sometimes you dance following a harmony, or when the bass drops you push a fast trick, and it feels like you ARE the music. You feel in tune, you feel infused with the words, with the moment.

Leaving Tampa and moving to Mexico was one of the biggest adjustments I had to go through. I was in a very dark place when I found hooping, I had lost my life, a life I built for 5 years in a city I called home, left it all behind to go back to square one because of circumstances I had no control over.

I was also battling a mental health condition I knew nothing about, a mental condition that takes people's lives (way too many) every year; yet somehow, in the midst of the dark the hoop was a light that kept me alive.

I cried endless times while hooping, I would break down on the floor, sobbing like a little girl, holding my hoop as if I was holding on to dear life...because it was so healing to be able to feel and flow at the same time! After every session I felt exhausted, emotionally and physically it felt like I was purging all the bad, it was healing! The dopamine would kick in, I could feel it!

This became the first time ever I was able to transform my emotions into energy in such a rewarding and satisfying way. It helped me accept my fate, and my mental condition that later on I found what it is: Bipolar disorder, hypomania.

It has been 7 years since I started, and I can say I am alive because of hooping. I accepted my condition and welcomed treatment because of hooping. I found who I am because of hooping.

I lost that little girl that knew how to play, but I found her, and now we are best friends.