“I find spinning, both of the hoop and my body, to be deeply peaceful and centering,” reads a recent entry on the in-depth hula hooping blog and website, Hooping.org, a site “serving the underground hooping community.” This spiritual-sounding experience is a far cry from my own jerky attempts with my first hula hoop in the 1980s, a peppermint-scented, pink-and-white-striped plastic thing.

It’s all part of a full-blown, slightly ironic, hooping comeback––Canada’s Globe and Mail recently wrote a trend piece on the “web-fueled” phenomenon—you may even be able to take a class at your local YMCA. But this is not the lightweight hula hooping of yore. These hoops are bigger and heavier, which means they rotate more slowly and are better for tricks, according to Hooping.org. The site offers an entrée into this new sport/art/spiritual practice with spinning tips (“The easiest way to spin while hooping is to spin in the same direction that the hoop is spinning”); a guide to making your own hoop with irrigation tubing and electrical tape; and a selection of mini videos at the Hooping.org Film Festival.

Another site, BettyHoops.com evaluates the mind-body-spirit benefits of hooping, with before-and-after aura photos of a hooper. The Betty hoopers say it burns 100 calories in ten minutes, releases toxins, “makes one feel sexy,” and “unites breath with movement.” The only danger, it seems, are hooping bruises worn with pride by diehard hoopers. The reverent Hooping.org even quotes Rumi, a poet from the most twirling tradition of all: whirling dervishes: ” We came whirling/ out of nothingness/ scattering stars/ like dust/ the stars made a circle/ and in the middle/ we dance.…”

Photo: BettyHoops.com