Whirling Lifedance
The Joys of Trying Something New
Whirling Arts Intensive Workshop, August 24-25th, 2024
Back just before Kosmos Festival 2024, I was looking at the performing artists from the Kosmos Circus and became acquainted with Safa Solati via her interesting and insightful life stories. After seeing her perform at the circus, she invited me to come try her intensive whirling lifedance class, which was taking place on August 24th-25th, 2024. I was able to make it work with my schedule, so I definitely wanted to come try it out… after all, I do believe that trying new things is what life is all about.
Photo by Auvo Takkinen
On the first day, our group of six gathered around a spherical skirt that had a book of Rumi poetry in the center as Safa welcomed us and gave us the introduction to the workshop. As I understood it, this is Safa’s interpretation of whirling arts, or “life dance,” based off ancient Zoroastrian rituals, as well as sufi dance. Safa’s got a background in music therapy and Persian dance, bringing both into the workshop. It’s worth mentioning what a wonderful group we had—everyone felt extremely warm and open-minded, which is a rare and wonderful treat.
We started the session by talking about how our mornings went and what we had eaten before she passed around a glass of water with a spoon in it and ultimately showed us what happens if you spin vigorously (water splashes everywhere), explaining that spinning can likewise be used to get the excesses out of ourselves as well. Eventually, she asked if anyone who hasn’t spun before would volunteer to try first. It was my first time and I’m generally pretty accustomed to being the one to break the ice in Finland, so I offered myself up as tribute. I’m glad I did, too, as she used me as a model to show the basics of foot movement, which I may have had a harder time picking up if she hadn’t been right there showing me how it’s done.
Apparently sufi dance helps to move energy through the chakras in a sort figure-8 and you can feel some blocks in your chakras at times. There’s a focus on breath-work as well, which suits my current state very well, as I’ve been focusing a lot on breathing since reading Breath by James Nestor. Inhaling deeply and exhaling deeply helped me to stop registering what my eyes were picking up, which is necessary to prevent the dizziness. I’m very impressed to say that despite spinning for minutes on end multiple times over the weekend, I never felt dizzy at any point (nausea, however, was a different beast, but I’ll get to that when I get to the 25th). Safa explained a bit about the electrical energy, as well as magnetic energies between us and the earth, as well as our connection to the sun, and that one hand is often raised, palm-up, to the sun and the other is palm-down to the earth. Then, she simply pushed my hands to get me to speed up and I found myself spinning in a rather rapid circle for a while, and then eventually (and quite slowly) returning to a stop. If I took the necessary time to slow down, it was hardly like I had been spinning at all, which was a wild and very cool sensation.
After my demonstration, which left me feeling quite invigorated, we reconnected to our youth by roleplaying being a baby, learning to move, stand, and walk, and then everyone was able to do their first spins. On my second or third try, I found a bunch of my grief rose up to the surface and began to pour out of me a bit, though I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that grief is at the top of the things that need spinning out of my system. It felt a bit like I had been put through a centrifuge, spinning the unnecessary parts out of me, much like Safa had shown us with the glass of water at the beginning.
Towards the end, she then explained the skirt and how breaking circles/patterns helps us heal and move on from patterns in our lives. It brought a certain song to mind, come to think of it…
We did our final spins of the day in the skirts—mine was very heavy as it had chains sewn into the bottom hem, but that made for an interesting spin, as the skirt became more and more weightless as I went, though I do think the weight of the chain (and the fact that I just have very wee short legs) was the reason that at some point I stepped on the skirt and fell over. It wasn’t the first time I fell over either though, but I do like to normalize the fact that this is something that happens and it is not any sort of failure. Rather, the only thing that’s a bummer about falling is that it takes just as long to come down from the spin, if not a bit longer, than if you just slow your spin to a stop. I have rather poor constitution on the whole these days, so I did suspect that I would be a bit susceptible to feeling ill and I was amazed that both times I fell down, I just had to plant all four limbs on the ground and close my eyes, and I was able to recalibrate quickly enough.
We ended the session by each flipping to a random page in the Rumi poetry book and reading whichever poem we felt drawn to, which was a very gentle and warm way to wrap things up for the day.
On the Sunday, we once again gathered around a white skirt, dressed ourselves in as much white as was possible, for the second day was meant to be celebratory (the first was about connecting to our inner child).
Now, I mentioned nausea before. It’s worth mentioning that I had noticed the previous day that when I spun in a clockwise direction, I felt much worse after spinning than when I had when I was turning to the left. Safa explained that this was because the counterclockwise spin opens the heart, while the clockwise spin sort of pushes the heart into the ribcage. From here on out, I stuck with the counterclockwise spin, though during our first big whirling session, I fully lost my footing and fell over and was hit by a pretty bad wave of nausea. I do, fortunately, know some pressure points that help, but it left me feeling pretty ill and I had to skip the next dance, which was based off of Zoroastrian dance prayers (though I did get to participate again later on). This was a simple enough choreography that was, if I recall correctly, meant to bring us together as a group, since the previous day’s dances had been much more individual. I had a small and slow bit of something to eat and then made my best effort to rejoin the group during the next whirl, though I did wait to join in for a good while.
It’s worth mentioning as well, how wonderful it is to watch people whirl—this was the silver lining to me getting sick. It seemed as though our entire group was having varying degrees of transcendental experiences, with some people having deep spiritual moments and others feeling free and full of joy. Everyone’s face was different and it was beautiful to watch. I won’t share anyone’s stories, since many of them were very personal, but suffice to say that it was extremely lovely to get to hear the other dancers’ stories and how the dance was affecting them.
The final day had, as well, the second group dance session that I mentioned I did join in, and we had a drummer and photographer present to help us capture the workshop. Of course, we finished once again with poems from the Rumi book, which remained a nice way to wind down.
It was, all-in-all, a really cool experience and I’m glad to have these opportunities to expand my horizons and try something new. If you’re local to Helsinki and interested in giving it a whirl (pun extremely intended), Whirling Arts Ry is having a free trial session on September 10th, 2024. Check out their website for more information!
