Hoop Church Spins Up Community
February 29, 2012 in Community, Health and Spirit
Hoop Church
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by Philo Hagen
For The Love of Plus Size Hoopers Everywhere
February 27, 2012 in Community, Features
[Hooping.org columnist Shannon Herrington embraces hoopers of all sizes.]
Recently I was introducing myself and the woman I was talking to asked what I did for a living. When I told her that I was a hooper she responded, “You’re a big girl. That’d be a funny sight to see you hula hooping.” I was flabbergasted. While she is right, I am a bigger girl, should hooping only be for skinny people? I think not, though watching videos where most of the hoopers are toned and svelte, I’d be lying if I didn’t say that it sometimes feels that way. Many in and out of the hoop world struggle with issues of weight, identity, and self acceptance. Not everyone in the hooping community understands what being overweight is like. Recently, while perusing a hooping teacher group, I was astonished to hear instructors ask, “Can obese people hoop?” It hurts my heart when those who are spreading hoop love in their communities aren’t aware of just how much help they can be for people who may need hooping the most. The hoop is such a powerful, transformational tool to help all of us on our journey in embracing ourselves, no matter what our size.
Hooping isn’t all about weight loss for us either. Hooping is about simply finding yourself inside the hoop. No one should be afraid of giving it a spin, or being the big girl at the jam or in class. My hooping journey has helped me a great deal. As a result I finally felt good enough about myself to post a video and called it Big Girls Can Hoop, dedicating it to all the plus-size hoopers in the world. How was it received? The response has been phenomenal with over 1,500 views and beautiful comments like, “I seriously thought this was impossible till now. You’re amazing!”, “That was such a cute video! I was smiling throughout the whole thing!” and “Thanks for this video. It’s inspired me to do it too!” One girl told me she was inspired to start filming her hoop experiences too after watching my YouTube channel. And here I was afraid to post a video on YouTube, but by walking through my fear I not only found greater self acceptance, I found greater love and support. Which got me thinking, why don’t we see more videos from men and women of size? And how can we as a community be better in spreading acceptance of our selves and our larger friends inside the hoop? Here’s what we need to do: Read the rest of this entry →
by Philo Hagen
Rolling It Back
February 20, 2012 in Community, Features
[Hooping.org's Editor Philo Hagen puts it in reverse.]
by Philo Hagen
Over the years as I’ve watched the hooping movement rise from the music festivals and underground dance community events and spin it’s way into a more mainstream world, I’ve always been aware of the fact that there was an “us” and a “them”. For those who started hooping more recently the thought may not have even occurred to you. What am I talking about? The answer can be found in our very use of the word “hooping” in and of itself. A decade ago we created our own language and dropped the hula to instantaneously let people know this was something different. This wasn’t your Grandma’s hula hoop. The hoops of today were customized, adult-sized and so ready to roll that anyone, anywhere, could spin one up. And we discovered, quite by accident, that hooping was actually great exercise too. When the news about that started getting out more people joined us inside the circle in pursuit of fun and fitness.
In the last few years, however, the differentiating line began to blur. Old school circus hula hoopers like Mat Plendl, Miss Saturn and Marawa The Amazing became our friends. With the rising popularity of hooping too, new school circus performers caught the bug and even started putting their acrobatic spin on it. Poi spinners and other object manipulators, originally reluctant to hoop, discovered they liked it too and began shrinking our hoops into smaller, light-weight circles for weaving and what not, making it easier on their hands. Then someone decided hanging upside down from an aerial hoop was hooping too and soon the Cyr Wheel and mini-hoops came rolling our way. They’re both hoop shaped so they count too, right? And as things expanded further and further the luminaries from the fringes cheered it on saying, “We need to keep pushing it forward!” And today I whole heartedly disagree. While Hooping.org has followed the hoops for years, in whatever direction they were traveling, the time has come to say enough and roll it on back. Here’s why. Read the rest of this entry →
by Philo Hagen
Hooper Valentines Spread the Hoop Love Today
February 14, 2012 in Community, Features
Last week I announced our Hooper Valentine’s Day Celebration to spin up the hoop love in our hooping community for Valentine’s Day. Hoopers around the globe, in eight different countries, sent in their names and mailing addresses. I painstakingly numbered all of these, put them in a basket, then randomly drew a name and address and sent it to another hooper on the list, so they could send them some hooper valentine hoop love this year. The valentines could be hand-made or store-bought, something super extravagant or beautifully simple, the choice was entirely up to the sender. They just needed to pop it in the mail last Friday and while most domestic hooper valentine exchangers received their valentine early if not today, if yours hasn’t arrived yet keep an eye on your mailbox. It’s quite possible your name was given to a hooper in another country.
For me personally, being single on Valentine’s Day can be something of a drag, so when there was a knock on my door yesterday morning and I opened it to find my local mail woman holding a box covered in hearts and owls (how did my valentine know that I love owls???) saying “You have a valentine!”, it really made my Valentine’s Day before I even opened it. And my hoop love came from a total stranger, a hooper I had not previously crossed paths with online or off. Thank you sooo much Kaley! It was perfect! I love it all and I hope my valentine is enjoying their package too. So here’s wishing you all a very hoopy and Happy Valentine’s Day. And thank you all for participating in this and sharing the hoop love.
Six Degrees of Inspiration
February 10, 2012 in Community, Features, Hooposophy
[Hooping.org columnist Lara Eastburn connects the dots.]
So you’ve got 1,532 hooper friends from seven different countries in your Facebook feed. Or maybe you’ve got 23 from your own hometown. But how connected are we, really? It’s on my mind because I’m participating in Hooping.org’s Hooper Valentines and, today I’ll be mailing out a real-deal snail-mail envelope to an in-the-flesh hooper somewhere in the world. I am completely enamored by this. It has become a special “event” in my mind. I am crafting a heartfelt, genuine message. I am carefully decorating the envelope. I am imagining the recipient’s excitement at opening it. And it strikes me how smitten I am by it all, the thought of my little envelope of love traveling over hills and valleys to land in the hands of another hooping human being.
I can’t help but chuckle at how nostalgic and charming it all seems compared to my update-by-the-minute, status-liking, fly-on-the-wall online world. There, I’m grateful to be able to view, like, and comment on the photo of one of my fave hoopers, even if I haven’t actually seen or hugged them in over a year – or two. I love being able to let someone know in a split second on their page that I’m thinking about them. I love chatting with hoopers that I’ve not even met yet. I even dig being invited to 16 hoop jams a week that are 200 to 1000 miles away from me. I like to know everything that is happening. It makes me happy, giddy even, to feel the pulse of the global hooping world beating beneath my laptop’s scroll pad. Read the rest of this entry →
by Philo Hagen
Hooping Community: Making It Happen
January 30, 2012 in Community, Features
[Hooping.org's Editor Philo Hagen takes a spin at community.]
by Philo Hagen
When I relocated from San Francisco to Los Angeles two years ago, one of the first things on my list was to find the hoop community. After seven years of making Bay Area Hoopers happen every single Sunday, I was really looking forward to being a participant, a hooper among hoopers. I wasn’t quite sure what was in store for me though. A few years earlier as a visitor I’d attended a balmy Sunday afternoon hoopjam near the boardwalk that was run by a congenial blonde who ruled her boombox with an iron fist. Her lack of musical democracy (and taste according to some) was apparently responsible for that other Sunday afternoon hoopjam, the one that took place just a few hundred yards down the beach. While one group spun it up in the grass to the Top 40 favorites of yesteryear, the other devoured a steady diet of sand and hard driving techno. Which group would I align myself with? Neither actually. Both had ceased to exist. Local hoopers told me of other hoop groups with once exciting periods on the L.A. scene that had come and gone. In a city that undoubtedly has more hoopers per square mile than anywhere else in the world, I was really beginning to wonder what was up with Los Angeles.
It is interesting to note here, as well, that experts routinely use whatever societal ills are on the rise in L.A. as the American social barometer of what’s to come for the rest of the nation. Maybe it’s that the staggering size of the city and its 10 million inhabitants are such an easily viewable petri dish for the entertainment industry, who immediately translate whatever is going down into music, movies and television. I’m no sociologist, but when people pointed at L.A.’s rise in gang violence years ago, most everyone believed it was something that could only happen in L.A., until it happened where they lived too. Things just seem to happen here first and hooping is no exception.
When you follow nearly all of the roads of the modern hooping revolution as we know it, you ultimately land here in Tinseltown. Even if you want to go all 1950′s hula hoop fad about it, you’ll still wind up here in the Knerr family garage in South Pasadena. If Los Angeles really does have this ahead-of-the-pack foreshadowing nature though, could it be that what we are having for dinner is going to wind up on your menu soon? Perhaps our challenges have already arrived. When the largest hooping community in the world comes to a halt, what exactly happened and just what did we decide to do about it? Read the rest of this entry →
