Guarding Your Hoola Hoop this Holiday Season

As we move toward Christmas, many of us feel the weight of a world that seems unsettled and uncertain. Our worldview has taken a few hits this year. For those of us who are healing, or supporting others who are healing, this season can feel even more overwhelming. That is why I often return to a simple image I use in my coaching and in my own life. The hula hoop.

Your hula hoop represents the space you can control and influence. Inside that circle is your self-care, your values, your needs, your self-respect, and the people you love. It is your personal boundary. Your safe place. Your reminder that not everything belongs in your energy field.

As we move through December, my suggestion is to walk within your hula hoop with intention. Inside that hoop, choose to cultivate a high frequency of love, compassion, understanding, and gratitude. Leave the low-frequency behaviour of the world outside. Leave the noise, the anger, the blame, the division, and the hostility that do not support your health or your peace.

When I come home from Costa Rica each winter, I am always jarred by the speed and sharpness that is growing in North America. The anger, lack of empathy, and quick reactions. To stay grounded, I do not watch the news or reels that feed fear and division. I guard my hula hoop with care. Doing so allows me to remain a loving human being, to stay connected to my values, and to heal in a non-toxic environment.

Conflict will always find a way into our hula hoops because we share life with children, partners, family, and friends. We will not always agree, and that is part of being human. The difference is that within your hoop, you can work through those moments with compassion and understanding, because the people within your circle matter to you. Outside of your hoop, in public spaces, you can choose patience. You can choose kindness.

Our bodies listen closely to our minds. I often imagine my mind as a garden. What I plant there will grow. Some thoughts become flowers. Some thoughts become weeds. During this time of year, when emotions can run high and our sense of safety can feel fragile, let us choose what we plant with even greater care.

Let us place loving hula hoops around ourselves, not to shut the world out, but to live with higher intention. Let us fill our circles with peace, tenderness, gratitude, and hope. Let us stay out of the weeds that surround us, and choose instead to grow the kind of life that nourishes us from the inside out.

As we move through the weeks ahead, may your hula hoop hold you steady. May it protect your healing. And may it guide you toward a season of gentleness, clarity, and love.