The absurd joy of an adult Hula-Hoop retreat

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MASON, Mich. -- In a pastoral campground south of Lansing, many attendees at the Michigan Hoop Dance Retreat were hooping as if their hair was on fire. Then, Missy Cooke's hair caught fire.

Dancing with a torch in each hand, Cooke didn't flinch when her bun started to smolder. An audience member rushed the stage, extinguishing the fire with a towel.

"I thought I smelled something," said Cooke, the event's unflappable founder, after her incident at the Friday night talent showcase.

The first lesson you'll learn here: Hula-Hooping retreats are not child's play.

Pull an interest out of a hat and there's probably a retreat dedicated to it. In the wellness field, you can spend your vacation practicing yoga or meditating, microtripping on psychedelics, or succumbing to a state of stillness, silence or hunger. You can raise your consciousness by dwelling in darkness or trade in the psychotherapist for a swarm of apitherapy bees.

Every August for the past decade, Hula-Hoopers and other performers with props, known as "flow artists," have convened at a Michigan campground to practice a grown-up version of the youthful pastime. Over the long weekend, they twirl hoops on their arms, legs, necks and midriffs, sometimes while sliding sideways down a pole, balancing on one foot or standing on their head. All body parts are welcome to give it a twirl.

"I got one boob hoop revolution," Rachelle Emerling said triumphantly after taking a workshop with Nicole Raye that advertised "boob hooping."

Hula-Hooping is niche but growing, said Cooke, 43. People hoop at jam band concerts (String Cheese Incident sparked the craze in the early 2000s by throwing giant hoops into the crowd), flow arts festivals and, most recently, health and wellness retreats.

The retreats aren't peddling nostalgia or retro-hipster irony. The getaways are creative outlets with the sweat factor of an aerobic workout and the communal experience of a traveling circus troupe or latter-day Woodstock.

At Sunset Place Events, MHDR's home for the past nine years, the campers practice their craft, pick up new hula tricks and hoop as one.

"Everything is connected. Everything is a full circle," Mya Crampton, a 27-year-old retreat council member, blasted through the bullhorn on the first morning. "Have a great day hooping!"

Hoop retreats around the world

Costing $140 for a three-day pass, which includes a campsite, workshops and special activities, the Michigan retreat is one of the least expensive in the hooping category. With roughly 55 participants, it is also so tight-knit that participants frequently refer to each other as their "Michigan hoop family."

Elsewhere in the state, hoopers gather at Great Lakes Flow, which attracted about 450 people the weekend after MHDR. Two in September -- High Altitude Hoop Retreat in Colorado and Oasis Hoop Retreat in Costa Rica -- sold out. Tickets for the latter's next outing (May 2026, at the Goddess Garden Eco-Resort) are on sale from about $1,900, plus airfare. Groups also organize trips in Turkey, Bali and Australia, the birthplace of the modern-day Hula-Hoop.

Emerling, a 36-year-old automotive engineer with more than a dozen years under her hoop, has attended retreats in Costa Rica, Mexico and her home state of Michigan, including Spinsanity Flow Down, which she helped organize.

"It's my meditation," Emerling said. "I've never felt more myself when I am Hula-Hooping or with Hula-Hooping people. It doesn't feel like exercise."

But hooping is a workout, according to fitness experts. The Mayo Clinic's Orthopedics and Sports Medicine compares the aerobic activity to salsa, swing, belly or hula dancing. In addition to burning calories -- 165 or 200 calories per 30 minutes for women and men, respectively -- it can improve balance, strengthen the core and whittle the waist.

It has fringe benefits, too. Jenny "Wags" Wagemann, who founded and teaches YogaRound in the Lansing area and at the Michigan retreat, said it boosts confidence -- "You feel so sexy after Hula-Hooping for 20 minutes" -- and can help forge new friendships.

"It's definitely my friend finder," said Wagemann, 36. "I'll go out to events without a Hula-Hoop and be all nervous and then I'll come back with a Hula-Hoop and all of a sudden I have a thousand friends."

Over the long August weekend, participants exchanged Hula-Hoops, basically an outsize friendship bracelet.

Camping and hooping

On the first full day of the retreat, the air was thick with corn sweat from the surrounding fields. A crop duster buzzed overhead. Vultures circled. So did the Hula-Hoops.

I parked along the large grassy hexagon where all the activities -- the workshops, burner performances, camping and communing -- took place. Colleen DeLacy, the 48-year-old "cool camp aunt," left her position at the fuel depot to check me in at the Disco Den.

Cooke came over and gave me a bear hug, after first asking for consent.

I signed a waiver releasing the retreat from responsibility if I injured myself while engaging in "strenuous exercise" or "fire activities." Then, I received a necklace, my admission ticket for the weekend. Several charms dangled from the chain: a tree of life, an X for the 10-year anniversary, a tiny Hula-Hoop, two clovers (one to keep, one to give to someone who made me feel lucky) and a purple bead for showing up. Cooke said participants earn a colored bead for each of the roughly 50 workshops and events they attend, the most ambitious hoopers draped in ropes of beads.

Many campers had arrived the night before so they could set up their tents or recreation vehicles before the action began in full swing. (A few of us stayed indoors, sleeping at home or in a nearby hotel.) Tent City was a labyrinth of elaborate shelters, complete with vestibules for receiving guests, fluttering tapestries and merch tables selling homemade goods, such as herbs, jewelry and hoops. In past years, DeLacy had brought a hot tub. This summer, we had to resort to boiling in a plastic pool. On the edges of the campground, signs designated areas as quiet or sober.

The campground did not have cooking facilities, so campers filled coolers with snacks and dashed out to a Meijer supermarket when the cravings called. On Saturday afternoon, one of the few husbands in the group handed out ice cream sandwiches, causing a near full stop on hooping.

The outhouse was out of service, which no one minded. We all preferred the bathhouse, which came with sinks, toilets, showers and a dedicated volunteer who had no qualms about airing her friends' dirty laundry.

Creating a community of hoopers

Cooke's primary motive for establishing the retreat was to bring together Hula-Hoopers accustomed to hooping alone. Here, people age 18 and older, with different sexual orientations and gender identities, lifestyles and skill sets, could link up like interlocking rings.

"We were all living-room hoopers basically at that point. There was no connected community," said Cooke, who quit her job as an auto insurance adjuster and became a Hula-Hoop event planner. "I wished for a way we could all meet and hoop together in real life instead of looking at a video."

For the inaugural event, Cooke posted a message on Facebook about the gathering in Mackinaw City. About 50 people signed up. Many campers from the early years still attend and said they will continue to show up, even after their hip joints start to pop.

"I expect to come to this event every year until I die," said Mary Kryza, 57, who celebrated the retreat's 10th anniversary with a back tattoo of a fire hoop inscribed with "Flow Fam" and "MHDR Est. 2015."

Fire-eaters and flow arts

Copies of the packed schedule were scattered throughout the campground, or you could just walk over to a group and start twirling. No formalities here.

For hoop workshops, there were bun hooping, circus hooping, hoop tricks, hoop windmills, hoop fitness and fire hoops. Participants can experiment with other flow arts as well, such as juggling, rope darts and fire-eating. Cooke added self-empowering exercises, too.

"It's always been a hoop dance retreat," Cooke said, "but the community started wanting more than just hooping. I'm willing to say yes to anything as long as it fits the vibe."

The hoop still reigns, however. People unloaded car trunks and back seats packed with hoops in a range of sizes and sparkle. Near the Wisdom Circle, several campers dreamily twirled Hula-Hoops. I watched but didn't join them, too embarrassed by my hooping style, which was more like Elaine's cringey dancing on "Seinfeld" than their ethereal movements.

"If you take my Hula-Hoop, I could not dance in front of anybody. But if you give me the Hula-Hoop, I can get up in front of a lot of people and dance," Lauren Benda, 28, a grade-school teacher, confided. "It's a safety blanket.

Most classes are open to inexperienced hoopers. In "Hoop Fitness Beginner," Kay Rockafellow taught us two choreographed pieces. When we reached the waist-hooping portion of the routine, she said it wasn't a critical move, reassuring those of us whose hoops repeatedly knocked our knees.

"There are so many other things that you can do you with your Hula-Hoop," said Rockafellow, 27, a professional circus performer. "You can use it for fitness. You can use it for flowing and being more creative. You can walk the dog, play with it on the ground, spin it, walk around it."

In "Confidence Building: Dance It Out First," Nicole Goss provided me with private instruction while the rest of the group worked on a more advanced trick. She demonstrated three positions for waist hooping, and we both yippeed with joy when I nailed four rotations.

The classes ended by dinnertime, clearing the grass for the after-dark activities. LED hoopers emerged from their tents, illuminating the campground with flashing patterns and blinking lights, a rave party hosted by Mother Earth. Inside the Fire Circle, flames flickered off Hula-Hoops and rope darts. DeLacy floated in, wearing a pair of giant metal butterfly wings lit like candelabra.

Sitting a safe distance away in camp chairs, the spectators gasped and clapped. No one shouted "You're on a fire," which we learned in the fire safety course to only say if the person was actually on fire.