Not only does active hoola hooping get your heart rate going, it is a great workout for your other most important body part: your brain. Hoola hooping in a circle around your core activates both the left and right sides of your body, back and forth, over and over again. Due to this left & right sided body engagement, hooping simultaneously creates a stellar 2-sided brain workout. Dr. Lawrence Katz, a Neurobiologist from Duke University renowned for his research on brain development, states 3 factors that make an exercise “neurobic:” 1. It must involve one or more of your senses in a novel context, 2. It must engage your attention and stand out from everyday events, and 3. It must break a routine activity in an unexpected, nontrivial way. I’d say hooping does all three of these things quite well. So be sure to keep on hooping and keep your brain alert and alive in the process!