Jessica Sund demonstrates one way to have fun beach hooping. Submitted photo by Dennis Best.

This summer, the North Coast area added two new activities for adults to enjoy on our beaches, at least for now only at Cannon Beach: dancing and hooping.

Hooping at the beach

I’ve been hula-hooping for years in the workshops I do for corporations, military spouse groups and wellness conferences. I share the idea (and the experience for those who want to try it) as a wonderful energy break from sitting at the computer too long as well as a fun way to relieve stress. I love to hula-hoop and have even managed to spin eight hoops at one time – and I’ve taught myself to hula-hoop in both directions, not a natural tendency. However, until I saw the mention of Aunt Jess’ Hoops and decided to do a bit of research, I had no idea of how big the world’s hooping community is.

Just take a quick look at the online hooping magazine, www.hooping.org, or watch the YouTube video at www.thehoopinglife.com and you might be as intrigued as I am.

It turns out that hooping predates the 1950s hula-hoop fad by several thousand years. In 1000 B.C., Egyptian children played with large hoops made of dried grapevines. In other parts of the world, hoops have been made of willow, rattan or stiff grass.

A wooden hoop was brought out in Australia in 1957 and the Wham-O company brought out the plastic Hula-Hoop here in the United States in 1958.

What’s new with hooping is doing it to music. It may have started with the Colorado band The String Cheese Incident. They started throwing out hula-hoops into the audience in the mid-1990s and “cheese heads” are known for swirling the hoops through several sets of music.

Jessica Sund of Aunt Jess’ Hoops of Cannon Beach has brought hooping to the Oregon Coast.

“I’ve researched extensively so that I can craft hoops and I’ve taken lessons with Candace Shutter of Hoopshine in Portland and joined groups there, where hooping is going strong,” says Sund.

Her hoops are handcrafted, in all sizes and colors, out of nontoxic irrigation tubing, decorated with latex-free, lead-free tape. The hoops are heavier than the store-bought ones. The bigger and heavier the hoop, the slower it rotates around the body and the easier it is to do.

The common response of an adult to hooping is “I can’t – I never could.” And then the laughter starts as they try.

“I am more likely to exercise if it is fun, and this is probably true of many people,” says Sund. “Current research supports this claim as well. So I try and incorporate lots of fun and laughter into my jams and try to get adults to play more and focus on how they feel rather than worrying about how silly they might think they look hooping in the beginning.”

Hooping provides a fun low-impact, fat-burning aerobic exercise. It’s so much fun you don’t think of it as exercise, in fact. It simply makes you smile.

You can hoop by yourself or you can join one of Sund’s free Hoop Jams, a gathering of hoopers to practice hooping together to music (with hoops available for you to borrow). One group gathers at Tapiola Park in Astoria at 5:30 p.m. Thursdays and another at Cannon Beach City Park at 5 p.m. Sundays through the end of September. Sund also does one-on-one or small group tutorials for a fee and will be adding workshops this winter. Contact Sund at (503) 318-8381 or e-mail auntjesshoops@q.com for information.

As reported at www.hooping.org magazine

Most hoops at one time: 105 hoops: Jin Linlin China, Oct. 28, 2007

Largest hoop: 11.5 foot hoop; Ashrita Furman (USA): 69-75 times in one minute

Longest underwater hooping: Ashrita Furman (USA): 2 min. 38 seconds; Aug. 1, 2007

Fastest 10 run/walk while hooping: 1 hour 43 min. 11 seconds; Betty (Shurin) Hoop (USA); May 30, 2005

Longest number of hours hooping without a break:

? Verified: 72 hours, Kym Coberly (USA), Oct. 17-20, 1984

? Unverifed: 88 hours; Tonya Lyn Mista (USA); July 9-11, 1986

Most simultaneous participants (Minimum time: 2 min): 2290 hoopers at Chung Cheng Stadium in Taiwan; Oct. 28, 2000

Sounds like we might want to set up a Most Simultaneous Hoopers on a Beach … in 2009.