Nobody knows quite how badly they need a traveling hula hoop performer in their life until they experience one. Pinto Bella is such a performer. The 30-year-old traveling hula hoop artist and performer visited the Plumb Library on June 20 to teach kids (and parents) about the physical, emotional and spiritual benefits of hula hooping.

Participants of all ages learned how to become “SuperHoopers” using Bella’s own handmade hula hoops of various sizes. She also taught them about gravity and the physics involved with hula hooping.

“Different bodies do different things,” Bella said. “It’s all about the size of your hips and your center of balance.”

Younger kids typically started off with the smaller but heavier hoops.

“The bigger ones are harder,” said 7-seven year-old Calvin Payne.

After some practice, Payne was soon using two hoops and making it look easy. Nine-year-old Elise from Rochester was among the more advanced SuperHoopers and was promptly swinging three hoops without fail.

“I kind of forget when I even learned how to do it,” she said, “but the last time I tried it I almost hit the radio.”

Bella gave a brief performance in the beginning, combining yoga poses and hooping tricks while rock music and an acoustic cover of “Call Me Maybe” played in the background. Afterwards, she dedicated her time to teaching the fundamental rules of hula hooping to the more inexperienced hoopers.

Her ultimate message is more a more serious one than teaching people to hula hoop: “I like bringing out the child in everybody, and when you’re a child, exercise is a side effect of fun.”

Bella started hula hooping four years ago when, as a yoga instructor, she worked with a man who had broken his back and refused surgery. Instead, he healed himself through a combination of yoga and hula hooping, so she saw firsthand the therapeutic power of what is typically seen as a child’s play.

Over the course of three months, Bella lost roughly 50 pounds through yoga and hula hooping in her backyard. She decided to dedicate her life to these two activities and hat this is what she wanted to do with her life, to expose people to the healing powers of hula hooping.

“When you find balance in your hoop, you find balance in your life, physically, emotionally and spiritually,” she said.

“I’ve seen the healing power of laughter and hooping firsthand, and I go to places that performers traditionally wouldn’t go to because I want to expose that to people. Cities are nice, but it’s the small towns of five hundred people in the middle of Montana where I feel like I’m making the most impact.”

By August, Pinto Bella will have travelled to 43 states since January. She lives in her car and doesn’t always know where she’ll be sleeping the next week but is content nonetheless.

“I live a life that is so far out of the norm. I like to make other people’s dreams less scary. I want people to know that not everything has to be serious all the time – laughter is honestly the best medicine,” she said. “My life is always an adventure. I’m doing what I love.”

Pinto Bella’s performance was the kick-off to Plumb Library’s Summer Reading Program. More information can be found at www.sailsinc.org. More information on Pinto Bella can be found at her personal website, www.pintobella.com.