Sufism and spinning
Apr. 26th, 2008 07:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
twirlgrrlI read an article this week about whirling dervishes and Sufi. There are a couple of parts that I really like. The whole article can be found here:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/04/21/findrelig.DTL
I am not Sufi. But I have spent a lot of time in my life spinning, going around in circles, whirling, turning, whatever you want to call it. It is the way I typically dance to the Grateful Dead. I am out of practice now, but at the peak of my involvement I could spin for up to 45 minutes at a time.
I don't use any particular method or placement of my hands or feet the way the Sufis do, but there are similarities in what I have experienced and what the woman who wrote this article experiences.
I'll never forget the first spinners I saw. There was a group of people who spun together at Dead shows as a devotional practice; they were referred to as "the spinners" but the core group was actually part of a sort of mini-cult for a time that was called the Family of Unlimited Devotion. They lived together and worked a parcel of land in Northern California for a time. Not everyone who spun was a member of the Family, but the Family kids all spun together and had a certain method for doing so. They used to spin on the ground level of the Oakland Coliseum, between two staircases, in a sort of basement-like space. The Dead were very kind to their audience; not only was the sound system incredible inside the venue, but they also put speakers on stands in the outside halls so that the people who were shopping, getting food, going to the restroom, or dancing outside the doors could still hear the music. They also used to let people bring drums and flutes inside the venue so we could have a drum circle during set break, but that's a different story.
Anyway, the first time I saw the spinners down there in the Coliseum basement, I hung over the staircase railing and just stared and stared. They were so beautiful to watch. The women all wore long bell-shaped skirts, and everyone had scarves or chadors that flowed around them as they twirled. Watching them was hypnotic. There was one beautiful young girl, maybe 16 years old, with long blond hair wrapped in a braid. She spun with her eyes closed and with a ballerina's grace, and I couldn't take my eyes off of her. An older guy with dark curly hair and beard spun like a penitent, with arms out and eyes raised in supplication. Whenever the spinning music melted away, the dancers would drop to their knees and press their foreheads to the floor.
Later, I got to know several of the people who had been involved in the Family, including Joseph, the dark-haired man who had been in charge at one point, and Bhakta, a guy who lived there but was never under Joseph's sway. Bhakta made spinning dresses and baggy corduroy pants to sell on tour; he made several custom spinning dresses for me. I have other stories to tell about my experiences with those kids. But the Family is not the point of this story. I wanted to talk about the physical act of spinning.
Here's what the article says:
What happens when you are turning? I've read that the goal is to have a kind of out-of-body experience as a way of becoming one with the divine. Is that what it's like for you?
It's really a form of moving meditation. When we turn together, as we're completing each circular motion, we are all saying "Allah" in our hearts silently. So it's a kind of group prayer. And we're tuning in to the people around us ... If there's any goal, it's just opening up to what comes through you. Over time, God willing, it becomes no longer you doing the turning but rather something is turning you. So it's not an act of will but a practice of surrender.
Now, I don't consider spinning part of my spiritual practice. But it is transcendent, and the word "surrender" definitely applies for me. I'll never forget how amazing it was to discover this. I'd been twirling for short amounts of time--it's something that you build up to, physically--and one night there was this insane Truckin' that just went on forever. I kept spinning, faster and faster, and it was like my legs just... went away. I was no longer consciously turning my body or moving my feet; I felt like someone had spun me like a top and I was just riding along, floating on the rippling circle of my skirt like the flowers in Fantasia. Levitating. It was, and continues to be, absolute bliss. It definitely feels like a surrender, but to what? I think it's mostly a physical surrender, for me. I think it's akin to what musicians experience when they're so technically familiar with their instruments that they can turn off the processing part of their brain and plug their muscle memory directly into the creative flow. Dance is my creative expression of music; I play the music with my body rather than on a particular instrument (I can play piano, flute and a little guitar but never practiced enough to let muscle memory take over.) I use my hands a lot in that Deadhead way that people find so amusing. Dancing in this way feels like being part of the music, inside it, breathing it. Delicious!
I've thought a lot in the past few days about what my spiritual practice is and isn't, and how spinning is excluded or why it's related. My current conclusion is that spinning *supports* my spiritual practice but is not part of it. I don't know how to explain this succinctly but I'll try. For me, "spiritual practice" means prayer, praise, service and study. It's about understanding God, surrendering to God, glorifying God, and serving others, which means being a vessel for God's love and spreading it around. If I visualize this, it looks like light/love coming down into me from above, filling me and shining outward. When I visualize spinning, it's more like light is coiled in the spin and spirals up and out from my arms. It's up, up, up. As such, it's a solitary practice, not a group devotion like the Sufi version, and I'm not doing it for the purpose of glorifying God or spreading love outward. It's for the beauty and bliss of the experience itself. Now, experiencing that much beauty and happiness naturally turns my thoughts to God, and I spent much more time contemplating and working out my personal spirituality as a result of the time I spent spinning (and with the Grateful Dead in general.)
Spinning is also something I enjoy because it's one of the few physical skills I am actually good at--well, dancing in general, I guess. I was never an athletic kid, had grave distrust in and dislike for my body and its physical capabilities from early on, but dancing is something I've always been able to do. Spinning turned out to be one of my special skills. The times when I've had people circle me and smile, tell me they love to watch me, tell me I'm beautiful (what other time does *that* happen?!), thank me for "beaming love" or whatever, hug me after spinning with me, or heard really high people whisper "WOW" after watching me for a while, have been immensely gratifying. Deadheads are the BEST. Deadheadland is the ONLY place I've EVER felt comfortable in my own skin.
The other question from the article:
I have to ask, don't you get incredibly dizzy when you are turning?
No, not really. The dizziness, if it happens, occurs when you first start learning. But after you've been trained that generally goes away.
I just wanted to include this because I've been asked the same thing and I know people wonder. When I first started spinning, I would spin for a minute or two at a time, always to the left, and I would get dizzy. I would also end up with extreme headaches on one side, as if my brain was bruised from bouncing against that side of my skull. But starting with that one levitational Truckin' experience, I stopped getting dizzy and the headaches stopped too. Well, I don't feel dizzy *while* I'm dancing. But I can't just STOP suddenly and not feel any dizziness; I have to wind down slowly at the end of a song, and thankfully the Dead are experts at letting their listeners settle back down to the ground gently. They are tailor-made for spinning, I tell ya! Anyway, if I stop suddenly I do feel dizzy, but not nearly as much as I did normally before I started spinning, and I can stay upright with no problem. If I wind down more slowly, say over 10 or 15 seconds, I don't really feel dizzy at all.
I don't spin much anymore; I don't have much opportunity, I'm deconditioned and I'm getting old. But it's part of my identity. It's something I cherish. And, if you got this far, now you know a lot more about the origins of my username.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/04/21/findrelig.DTL
I am not Sufi. But I have spent a lot of time in my life spinning, going around in circles, whirling, turning, whatever you want to call it. It is the way I typically dance to the Grateful Dead. I am out of practice now, but at the peak of my involvement I could spin for up to 45 minutes at a time.
I don't use any particular method or placement of my hands or feet the way the Sufis do, but there are similarities in what I have experienced and what the woman who wrote this article experiences.
I'll never forget the first spinners I saw. There was a group of people who spun together at Dead shows as a devotional practice; they were referred to as "the spinners" but the core group was actually part of a sort of mini-cult for a time that was called the Family of Unlimited Devotion. They lived together and worked a parcel of land in Northern California for a time. Not everyone who spun was a member of the Family, but the Family kids all spun together and had a certain method for doing so. They used to spin on the ground level of the Oakland Coliseum, between two staircases, in a sort of basement-like space. The Dead were very kind to their audience; not only was the sound system incredible inside the venue, but they also put speakers on stands in the outside halls so that the people who were shopping, getting food, going to the restroom, or dancing outside the doors could still hear the music. They also used to let people bring drums and flutes inside the venue so we could have a drum circle during set break, but that's a different story.
Anyway, the first time I saw the spinners down there in the Coliseum basement, I hung over the staircase railing and just stared and stared. They were so beautiful to watch. The women all wore long bell-shaped skirts, and everyone had scarves or chadors that flowed around them as they twirled. Watching them was hypnotic. There was one beautiful young girl, maybe 16 years old, with long blond hair wrapped in a braid. She spun with her eyes closed and with a ballerina's grace, and I couldn't take my eyes off of her. An older guy with dark curly hair and beard spun like a penitent, with arms out and eyes raised in supplication. Whenever the spinning music melted away, the dancers would drop to their knees and press their foreheads to the floor.
Later, I got to know several of the people who had been involved in the Family, including Joseph, the dark-haired man who had been in charge at one point, and Bhakta, a guy who lived there but was never under Joseph's sway. Bhakta made spinning dresses and baggy corduroy pants to sell on tour; he made several custom spinning dresses for me. I have other stories to tell about my experiences with those kids. But the Family is not the point of this story. I wanted to talk about the physical act of spinning.
Here's what the article says:
What happens when you are turning? I've read that the goal is to have a kind of out-of-body experience as a way of becoming one with the divine. Is that what it's like for you?
It's really a form of moving meditation. When we turn together, as we're completing each circular motion, we are all saying "Allah" in our hearts silently. So it's a kind of group prayer. And we're tuning in to the people around us ... If there's any goal, it's just opening up to what comes through you. Over time, God willing, it becomes no longer you doing the turning but rather something is turning you. So it's not an act of will but a practice of surrender.
Now, I don't consider spinning part of my spiritual practice. But it is transcendent, and the word "surrender" definitely applies for me. I'll never forget how amazing it was to discover this. I'd been twirling for short amounts of time--it's something that you build up to, physically--and one night there was this insane Truckin' that just went on forever. I kept spinning, faster and faster, and it was like my legs just... went away. I was no longer consciously turning my body or moving my feet; I felt like someone had spun me like a top and I was just riding along, floating on the rippling circle of my skirt like the flowers in Fantasia. Levitating. It was, and continues to be, absolute bliss. It definitely feels like a surrender, but to what? I think it's mostly a physical surrender, for me. I think it's akin to what musicians experience when they're so technically familiar with their instruments that they can turn off the processing part of their brain and plug their muscle memory directly into the creative flow. Dance is my creative expression of music; I play the music with my body rather than on a particular instrument (I can play piano, flute and a little guitar but never practiced enough to let muscle memory take over.) I use my hands a lot in that Deadhead way that people find so amusing. Dancing in this way feels like being part of the music, inside it, breathing it. Delicious!
I've thought a lot in the past few days about what my spiritual practice is and isn't, and how spinning is excluded or why it's related. My current conclusion is that spinning *supports* my spiritual practice but is not part of it. I don't know how to explain this succinctly but I'll try. For me, "spiritual practice" means prayer, praise, service and study. It's about understanding God, surrendering to God, glorifying God, and serving others, which means being a vessel for God's love and spreading it around. If I visualize this, it looks like light/love coming down into me from above, filling me and shining outward. When I visualize spinning, it's more like light is coiled in the spin and spirals up and out from my arms. It's up, up, up. As such, it's a solitary practice, not a group devotion like the Sufi version, and I'm not doing it for the purpose of glorifying God or spreading love outward. It's for the beauty and bliss of the experience itself. Now, experiencing that much beauty and happiness naturally turns my thoughts to God, and I spent much more time contemplating and working out my personal spirituality as a result of the time I spent spinning (and with the Grateful Dead in general.)
Spinning is also something I enjoy because it's one of the few physical skills I am actually good at--well, dancing in general, I guess. I was never an athletic kid, had grave distrust in and dislike for my body and its physical capabilities from early on, but dancing is something I've always been able to do. Spinning turned out to be one of my special skills. The times when I've had people circle me and smile, tell me they love to watch me, tell me I'm beautiful (what other time does *that* happen?!), thank me for "beaming love" or whatever, hug me after spinning with me, or heard really high people whisper "WOW" after watching me for a while, have been immensely gratifying. Deadheads are the BEST. Deadheadland is the ONLY place I've EVER felt comfortable in my own skin.
The other question from the article:
I have to ask, don't you get incredibly dizzy when you are turning?
No, not really. The dizziness, if it happens, occurs when you first start learning. But after you've been trained that generally goes away.
I just wanted to include this because I've been asked the same thing and I know people wonder. When I first started spinning, I would spin for a minute or two at a time, always to the left, and I would get dizzy. I would also end up with extreme headaches on one side, as if my brain was bruised from bouncing against that side of my skull. But starting with that one levitational Truckin' experience, I stopped getting dizzy and the headaches stopped too. Well, I don't feel dizzy *while* I'm dancing. But I can't just STOP suddenly and not feel any dizziness; I have to wind down slowly at the end of a song, and thankfully the Dead are experts at letting their listeners settle back down to the ground gently. They are tailor-made for spinning, I tell ya! Anyway, if I stop suddenly I do feel dizzy, but not nearly as much as I did normally before I started spinning, and I can stay upright with no problem. If I wind down more slowly, say over 10 or 15 seconds, I don't really feel dizzy at all.
I don't spin much anymore; I don't have much opportunity, I'm deconditioned and I'm getting old. But it's part of my identity. It's something I cherish. And, if you got this far, now you know a lot more about the origins of my username.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-04-26 02:37 pm (UTC)Good post, something I have always been curious about!
I had wondered about your username before...I thought it was cute, and never thought to ask you about the meaning of it. (my two LJs are painfully obvious, no?!!)
no subject
Date: 2008-04-26 02:53 pm (UTC)Your other LJ is painfully obvious but I'm not sure I know exactly why you chose this name, unless it's as simple as you liking to look like a cute kitty with that little kitty-ears headband on.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-26 02:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-26 02:51 pm (UTC):)
no subject
Date: 2008-04-26 02:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-27 12:42 am (UTC)it is always nice to know the meaning of usernames.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-02 02:23 am (UTC)What the meaning of yours?
no subject
Date: 2008-05-02 04:12 am (UTC)a couple of years later, a new spouse, a new baby, well it seemed time to change my name. i wanted a name that reflected how i was changing and who i want to be. purple has always been my favorite color but it is bold and outspoken. i wanted to become something a little softer, a little calmer, i felt like i was on the eve of a new me. the last four years has brought more change than i could have imagined and i still feel like i am discovering myself, lavender_eve suits me.
on another note, i am ever so grateful to the strangers who reached out to me through livejournal and became my friends when i had no one. i was so lucky to have found so many good people that day when i went online.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-27 05:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-02 02:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-27 08:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-02 02:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-02 02:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-02 02:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-02 03:01 am (UTC)