It Took Supriya Srivastav One Hula Hoop To Change Her Life

Excerpts From The Interview With Supriya Srivastav

Can you recall the time when you got your first spin with the hoop?

My love for hoops began by accident in 2015, and I have a certain Russian lady to thank for it.

During a trip to Goa, I was hanging out with other members of the hostel I was staying at when a Russian woman deemed Indian women to be 'too boring.' Feeling challenged, I took it upon myself to prove her wrong. There was a hoop in the room, so I decided to try it out. She wasn’t the only one surprised. This was the first time I was trying the hoop, and I couldn’t believe I could keep it spinning for as long as I did.

What transpired in your path that led you to pursue flow arts professionally?

The value I saw in just picking up hula hoops as my first flow prop was immense. I was working with Amazon back in 2015 and that’s when I found that I was not happy with the corporate environment and was taking too much work from home only to find myself spinning the hoop in between work calls or it would be something I would come back from work and pick it again. 

Just the sheer joy of playing the music that I want to, depending on the mood of the day and flowing with it helped me release a lot of stress and over some time, I started noticing the physical benefits of it also.

I felt deeply connected to the hoop within just one year and once I experienced that it is actually exercise in disguise and how it helped my hyperactive mind and body come to a sense of equilibrium.

Learning new things motivated me to focus on learning and getting better. Failing a hundred times while learning a trick taught me the importance of failures and being able to do a trick gave me sheer joy and a great dopamine hit. I became addicted and I refer to that as my  ‘hoop addict’ phase to my friends. 

I decided that this beautiful thing that I am experiencing, I want to share with the world. I come from a family where I was taught ‘Vidhya baatne se badhti hain’ which means knowledge shared is knowledge doubled so this came as the natural next step and I found my way of sharing this knowledge with people with my YouTube channel, via online and offline classes, by organising parties for the community and just inventing new possibilities with Hula Hoops. 

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How have you embraced challenges in your career, creatively or otherwise? 

Many so to speak. My first career setback was at the age of 21 when I was sexually harassed by my manager at work. He misused his space of authority to steal my power and I had to move back to Delhi with my folks. I reflected on my life for 6 months straight up and I realised what had happened. Dealing with a predator at the workplace was emotionally and mentally exhausting and shameful however I bounced back because of my family’s and friends' support. I questioned myself for getting myself in this situation and my sheer inability and helplessness to get out of it but that was the last time I ever had a career setback. 

I took full responsibility for what went wrong there and moved on to create a stable trajectory of growth. I started working with Myntra in 2012, and when Amazon entered the Indian market in 2015 I was hired to manage their social media account soon after I started my freelance marketing agency Purple Filter which I ran for seven years straight and I’ve stopped the operations by December 2023 to pursue flow arts more professionally to invent new ideas in the flow space. 

Is Hula Hooping a solitary experience? Does it help you reflect better and help with mental calmness?

Love this question! I would say in my case it did start as a solitary experience because there were hardly any hoopers I knew when I started hooping almost 10 years ago. You could name them on your fingers. Now, we have seen many in these years and it isn’t as solitary any more as people jam very often but the beauty of it is that it’s definitely a solitary companion.

It helps you reflect better and teaches you not just new tricks or flow but a lot about life in general. The biggest lessons of failure and success can be found when you are hooping alone. 

For those who cannot meditate or find it difficult, I feel it’s the best introduction to bring attention to yourself and your body because you're literally ‘your attention goes where your hoop goes.’  You cannot achieve the tricks otherwise and this helps you focus on what’s ‘now’, right here and right now. It brings your attention to the present. 

Do you have a signature hula move or a favourite one?

I wouldn't say it’s my signature but I love flaunting ‘Shoulder stand foot hula hooping’ or ‘upside down waist hula hooping’ or ‘ Big toe hoop spins’ which is something I have never seen anyone do. Quite often when I am in public and if I have a place to hang and show it off. This gets the crowd going 'woah' all the time.

What are some myths about hooping? Or any stereotypes attached to it that you’d like to address?

Many but a few that I would like to address here:

You need to be fit to be able to hoop. 

You don’t need to be young to hoop.

That hoop is not meant for bigger body types. 

Hoops don’t discriminate and hoop and, in fact, are customisable for any body type or size however you like to classify. There is a way you measure your size and get the right hoop for yourself depending on its dimension and weight. 

The stereotype is that Hula Hoops had found their way either via circus or as a kids or gymnastics activity prop and are often looked down upon as ‘not so serious; activity but I am on my way to breaking all those myths by taking the hoops out from circus to everyone's homes now. I have been working on marketing it as a ‘Flow prop’ and everyone can flow.

Any advice for those in the early stages of a professional flow arts career?

Focus on getting the foundations right. Your body posture, alignment, weight distribution, attention shifting behaviours- what comes naturally to you, what doesn’t, does looking at your hand movement bring in new insight or something more? I would just say more than the skill to deep dive more into exploring the connection, and understanding of planes and don’t just ‘do’ the trick. ‘Feel’ the trick and ‘observe’ and take inventory of how it connects with you. Don’t jump from one trick to another.

A simple waist-hooping trick has hundreds of things to teach other than just moving your hips from left to right or front and back and more importantly, so just don’t get into comparisons. It’s your ‘Hoop Journey’ and not a destination to reach. 

Tell me about Scooled. How are you building it as a Program Director?

As a Program Director with Scooled, I am building a new school of learning. This program is very close to my heart. As someone who grew up with a lot of learning difficulties at school, I couldn't understand why I was asked to fit in repeatedly into a structure of learning that my mind couldn’t comprehend.

It also makes me see the consequences of such a pressure-intensive environment of public schools. We introduced ‘Flow Verticals’ where we are trying to teach all kinds of flow props to students who are on a different spectrum of understanding as an experiment with TALC Alternative Learning School ( one of Scooled’s partners) where I am training coaches and helping them build a Flow Curriculum for schools. 

My idea is to bring in a seven-year plan for schools and hopefully, something that can find a structure in the public schools too as there is a lot that can be achieved from it. Currently, it’s been one year of intense learning and I am navigating through all the limitations and foreseeing many challenges and paths we can take to achieve this dream.

Our partner schools have seen a lot of value in the efforts of our coaches who have been teaching Hula Hooping and Dapostars. After last year’s success, we have also introduced Poi sessions from this year. 

I am particularly proud of the team who have believed in this vision and joined hands to teach kids to perform at the annual shows and even sports day activities. We are one year strong into setting up the foundations and there is a long road ahead of us but we are quite excited and passionate about bringing ‘Flow’ into the school spaces. 

Supriya, do you find an extension of you in the hoop? Did it help you work inward as an artist and a person? 

Absolutely. My most epiphany moment was when it brought me the understanding of how ‘ we are all one’ connected within a big circle and connected through a big circle. This is difficult to put in words as it’s something so personal for someone to experience. Spinning in circles, and vortexes, creating different shapes and patterns and feeling a sense of oneness with not just the prop but everything around you because of the prop has been a beautiful journey that has helped me come closer to my purpose, a better understanding on ‘who I am’ and what’s my role here basis my many skills that I already know and skills that are going to unfold at its own pace and time.