About Autumn Flow
Self-paced courses for complete beginners, experienced hoopers, and focused skill building.
Autumn Flow is a collection of detailed online hoop-dance courses designed to help you understand the movement—not simply imitate a finished trick. Start with the foundations or choose a focused course in on-body hooping, off-body doubles, creative flow, or stage performance. Every course is organized into approachable lessons you can pause, repeat, and practice at your own pace. Michele McCoy, Autumn Flow’s founder and lead instructor, guides Learn to Hoop Dance from beginner foundations into intermediate skills, then Refresh Your Flow from intermediate into more advanced combinations. Featured instructors Katie Sunshine, Caterina Suttin Holdbrook, and Hula Hooping Hannah each lead a focused course, sharing their own expertise in on-body hooping, off-body doubles, and stage performance.
Founder & Lead Instructor
Patient, detailed guidance for learning the movement—not just copying the trick
Michele McCoy discovered hoop dance as a new mom searching for a joyful way to exercise at home. Daily practice quickly became more than fitness: a creative outlet, moving meditation, and way to rebuild confidence and deepen her mind-body connection. After years of self-directed learning, attending workshops, teaching beginner classes, and leading hoop-dance workshops at retreats and events around the country, Michele founded Autumn Flow to make thoughtful online hoop dance instruction easier to access. As Autumn Flow’s founder and lead instructor, she is known for patient, detailed teaching that explains hand, body, and hoop placement—not just the finished trick. She leads Learn to Hoop Dance and Refresh Your Flow, helping students build strong foundations, creative flow, and a practice that feels like their own.
Where Autumn Flow began
In 2015, Michele shared an honest look at her first seven months of hooping—the breakthroughs, experiments, and bloopers along the way. More than half a million views later, the video remains an important part of the Autumn Flow story and a reminder that every hooper begins somewhere.
Featured instructors
Specialists who bring focused experience to the Autumn Flow course library.
The Autumn Flow course library brings together Michele McCoy’s foundation and creative-flow curriculum with three courses led by featured instructors. Katie Sunshine, Caterina Suttin Holdbrook, and Hula Hooping Hannah each share their own style and focused expertise in on-body control, off-body doubles, and stage-ready performance. Meet the hooper—and course—that fits the skill you want to build next.
Featured hooper
Focused instruction for stronger, more confident on-body hooping
Arkansas-based hoop dancer and instructor Katie Sunshine began hooping after being mesmerized by a performer at Harvest Music Festival in 2008. A video of her joyful hooping later went viral, helping turn a favorite hobby into professional performance work. Katie has appeared in music videos for Jerrod Niemann and The Record Company, performed a fire-hoop act on ABC’s The Gong Show, and taken her hooping from festivals across the country to the World Expo in Dubai. Her bright energy is matched by a practical, technique-first teaching style. In Intensive Core On-Body Hooping, Katie breaks down waist, chest, hip, knee, and angled hooping—along with recovery and movement drills—so students can build control, endurance, and confidence at their own pace.
Featured hooper
Creative, focused guidance for learning off-body doubles
Caterina Suttin Holdbrook is a hoop dance instructor, performer, and multidisciplinary artist with more than 15 years of experience. She has taught and performed in more than 10 countries, developing an inclusive style that blends technique, choreography, creative expression, and play. Her artistic curiosity extends beyond the hoop: Caterina is also a Central Texas–based wire artist and sculptor whose detailed handwork explores movement, rhythm, strength, and delicacy. In Off-Body Doubles, she guides hoopers from single-hoop familiarity into coordinated two-hoop movement through 30 focused tutorials. Her step-by-step instruction covers windmills, weaves, isolations, reels, extensions, anti-spins, and flowing transitions—helping students build smoother control while developing their own doubles style.
Featured hooper
Performance-focused guidance for more confident, expressive stage work
Hannah Stanton-Gockel, known professionally as Hula Hooping Hannah, is a Chicago-based performer and instructor with more than a decade in the entertainment industry. She specializes in hoop dance, fire hooping, and high-energy multi-hoop performance. Her career has included work with Cincinnati Circus Company, Circus Smirkus, and Pyrotechniq Productions, plus a 2018 appearance as “The Hooping Dead” on ABC’s The Gong Show. Across circus shows, festivals, private events, and stage productions, Hannah brings a sharp eye for the details that make a routine connect with an audience. In Hoop Dance Techniques for the Stage, she teaches musicality, character, posture, expression, and performance preparation—helping hoopers shape practiced skills into confident, intentional stage work.
Start with the foundations or choose the focused skill you want to build next.