To Spin Is to Remember

Love, Gravity, and the Whirling Physics of Mehr

There are some people who go to conferences to get inspired. Others go to get free snacks. I go because I enjoy people in flowy pants discussing the metaphysics of sunlight. This past weekend, I found myself at the second in a series of conferences on the mythos of Iran. The focus? Mehr—also known as Mithra—the Persian solar deity of light, love, and cosmic contracts. Also, possibly, the original inventor of the slow turn.

Now, you might be thinking, “Wait, isn’t spinning usually reserved for toddlers or malfunctioning Roombas?” Ah, but no. As I was reminded (by a dancer-mystic-acupuncturist hybrid with better posture than most saints), to spin is to remember.

The Persian mystic whirling practice known as Sama—from the Arabic word for “listening”—isn’t just interpretive dance meets cardio. It's a cosmological reenactment, a spiritual wifi signal boosting your connection to the divine. Each turn is a declaration: “I, human tornado, surrender to the gravity of Mehr.” One hand up, one hand down—receive the light, ground it in the earth, hope you don’t topple into the snack table.

Let’s Talk History (Don’t Worry, It’s Spicy)

Whirling as a spiritual practice didn’t start last Thursday at a yoga retreat in Topanga. No, friends, this goes back a long way. The whirling dervish tradition is most famously associated with the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi and the Mevlevi Sufi order, founded by his followers in Konya (modern-day Turkey). Rumi, grieving the loss of his beloved companion Shams of Tabriz, discovered that whirling helped him access the heart’s deepest truths. (Modern science might say this is vertigo. Rumi would disagree.)

But the Mevlevis weren’t the only ones to discover that spinning makes you feel like a holy lightbulb. Across Central Asia, shamans have spun in trances. In parts of East Africa, ritual possession involves circling dances that last for hours. Even the Hopi kachina dancers of the American Southwest whirl to invoke spirits. Apparently, if you’re looking to contact the divine, your best bet is to get dizzy.

Back to Iran: Long before Rumi spun his poetry into motion, Indo-Iranian priestly castes performed elaborate rituals involving the haoma plant—a sacred, mind-altering shrub that may or may not have been the ancient equivalent of double espresso ayahuasca. In those dawn ceremonies, repetition, chanting, and perhaps even turning helped the soul rehearse the creation of the world and its constant renewal.

So, the idea that spinning is sacred? It’s not just a poetic metaphor. It’s more like an ancient API call to divinity. Everything spins: electrons, DNA, the Earth, your Aunt Shirin when she’s dancing at weddings. To align yourself with this cosmic pirouette is to realign with Mehr, the great solar choreographer of love and law.

Of Suns and Selfhoods

In the talk that inspired this essay, choreographer and Dance of Oneness founder Banafsheh Sayyad (yes, related to the conference curator Maryam Sayyad—who I’ve known since we were both twelve and learning our lines backstage in the Persian Theater of Los Angeles), described whirling as a spiritual accelerator. It dissolves the crusty illusion of separateness and reveals the molten truth: you are light. You are motion. You are love in a surprisingly flattering skirt.

There’s something deeply irreverently sacred about it. Here’s how it works:

1. Extend one arm to the sky (receive cosmic light).

2. Extend the other arm toward Earth (deliver cosmic light, possibly to your cat).

3. Start spinning.

4. Try not to vomit.

5. Enter the eternal now.

The point isn’t to show off your balance (although, bonus points if you don’t stumble into a folding chair). The point is to remember. Remember what? That your soul has never been separate from the source. That you don’t have to earn love. That gravity is really just a love poem disguised as physics.

As Rumi might say, "Don’t worry if you lose yourself in the spin—you’re not losing anything real. You’re shedding everything false."

So here’s to Mehr, to motion, to metaphysical motion sickness. Let’s remember who we are—not by standing still, but by turning, always turning, toward the light.

Stay tuned. Or better yet, start spinning.