Turning: A Human Practice

24° · The cosmos

The ground under you is turning

Sitting still on Earth, you are moving up to 1,000 miles an hour as the planet spins on its axis, and about 67,000 miles an hour as it circles the Sun. The Sun, carrying us with it, circles the center of the Milky Way roughly once every 230 million years.

Everything you have ever done, you have done while turning.

Source ↗: NASA, facts about Earth (opens in a new tab)

Illustration: the points of light swirl into a spiral galaxy. A small marker, about halfway out, shows where the Sun sits. The Milky Way is about 100,000 light-years across.

48° · The cell

Turning, all the way down

Zoom in far enough and you find turning inside you. Inside the mitochondria of nearly every type of cell in your body, a protein called ATP synthase works as a rotary motor: a ring of eight parts spins as it builds ATP, the molecule that powers the cell.

The drawing here is poetic. The rotor is real.

Source ↗: human ATP synthase, PNAS 2018 (opens in a new tab)

Illustration: a cell with a glowing nucleus. A magnified inset shows an eight-part ring spinning. A human cell is about 0.02 mm across.

72° · Before birth

We are born turning

Before birth, a baby stretches, rolls, and turns, and most settle head-down in the final weeks. Birth itself is a sequence of turns: to pass through the pelvis, the baby’s head and shoulders rotate in steps that midwives and obstetricians call the cardinal movements.

Your sense of turning starts early too. The vestibular system, the inner-ear organ that senses rotation and balance, is one of the first senses to form.

Source ↗: NCBI, normal labor and the cardinal movements (opens in a new tab)

Illustration: a small figure of light, curled and slowly turning inside a soft, warm circle. A baby at birth is about 50 cm long.

96° · Play

Joy before technique

No one has to teach a child to spin. Arms out, head back, around and around until the room tilts and everyone falls down laughing. Playgrounds are full of turning: merry-go-rounds, swings, cartwheels, rolling down a hill.

That dizzy delight is the inner ear at work, and play is one of the ways children develop it. Turning is joy long before it becomes technique.

Illustration: the figure of light stands up, arms wide, and spins, its hands tracing circles of light. A child, arms out, is about 1.2 m across.

120° · Skill

Then turning becomes skill

With practice, the same motion becomes strategy, beauty, and power. Every movement culture has its turns. Choose one:

Physics you can feel. Pull your arms in during a spin and you speed up. Figure skaters use this (conservation of angular momentum) on every spin.

Illustration: the figure of light turns in the chosen move, a soccer pivot, a pirouette, or a spinning kick, with rings of light at feet, hips, and hands. An athlete mid-turn is about 1.7 m tall.

144° · Inward

When does a turn become something more?

The same spin can be a game, a drill, a performance, or a prayer. The body may move the same way each time. What changes is intention, repetition, rhythm, setting, and community.

Sometimes turning is practice rather than display, with attention drawn inward instead of outward. This is what people mean by meditation in motion, or embodied meditation: inner stillness found through outer motion.

Illustration: the figure stands still with arms crossed over the chest. A line of light runs through it from crown to floor while a ring circles slowly at heart height.

168° · Why turn?

Three circles, one center

People who practice turning describe what it gives them in three overlapping circles.

Illustration: three rings of light around a small figure, the outer ring for body, the middle for mind, the inner for spirit. The chosen ring glows.

192° · Turning for the spirit

Sufi turning

بشنو این نی چون شکایت می‌کنداز جدایی‌ها حکایت می‌کند

Listen to this reed as it laments, telling the tale of separations.

Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207–1273) was an Iranian poet and scholar. He was born in Khorasan, in the eastern part of the Iranian world (most accounts say Balkh, now in Afghanistan), wrote in Persian, and spent most of his life in Konya, in present-day Turkey.

His followers founded the Mevlevi order in Konya in 1273. Its ceremony, the Sema (the Turkish form of the Arabic sama, “listening”), developed over centuries into one of the world’s best-known forms of devotional turning.

Reading the Sema

In traditional Mevlevi interpretation:

• The turners, called semazens, begin with arms crossed over the chest, a sign of God’s oneness.
• As the arms open, the right palm faces up to receive and the left palm faces down to pass the gift on.
• They turn right to left, around the heart, pivoting on the left foot.
• The tall felt hat (sikke) is likened to the tombstone of the ego, and the white skirt (tennure) to its shroud.
• Each semazen turns on their own axis while the whole circle revolves together, an image often compared to planets around the sun.

About this practice

This page introduces the Sema; it does not teach the ceremony. In the Sufi tradition I practice, formal teaching requires permission (dastur) from a sheikh.

Source ↗: UNESCO, Mevlevi Sema ceremony (opens in a new tab)

Illustration: the figure of light turns with the right hand raised and the left lowered, a wide bell-shaped skirt of light spinning around it, while smaller points of light circle the floor.

216° · Turning for strength

Charkh in the Iranian zurkhaneh

توانا بود هر که دانا بودز دانش دل پیر برنا بود

Whoever is wise is strong; through knowledge, an old heart grows young.

Zurkhaneh (also transliterated zoorkhaneh) means “house of strength.” Its training tradition is called Pahlavani, from pahlavan, “champion.” Athletes train together in a sunken, many-sided pit called the gowd. From a raised seat, a drummer and chanter, today called the morshed (guide), keeps time on a goblet drum, the zarb, and recites epic and mystical poetry.

The zurkhaneh carries layers of Iranian heroic, martial, ethical, and spiritual tradition. Practitioners have long connected it to older Iranian warrior culture and pre-Islamic beliefs, while the form we recognize today developed over many centuries.

Training combines calisthenics, swinging heavy wooden clubs (meel), wrestling, music, and an ethic called javanmardi: generosity, courage, and humility. The doorway is traditionally built low, so everyone who enters has to bow.

A note on history

Its precise institutional origins are difficult to date, but its modern form brings together Iranian heroic culture, Islamic devotion, chivalric ethics, poetry, music, and athletic training. UNESCO added it to its list of intangible cultural heritage in 2010, as “Pahlevani and Zoorkhanei rituals” (UNESCO’s spelling).

A story about strength

Pahlavan Mahmud of Khwarazm, remembered as Pouriya-ye Vali, was a 14th-century wrestler and poet, and many zurkhanehs are named for him. A popular legend says that before a great match he overheard his young opponent’s mother praying for her son, and chose to lose. The story is still told to show that a champion’s strength is meant to serve others.

Source ↗: UNESCO, Pahlevani and Zoorkhanei rituals (opens in a new tab)

Illustration: the figure of light spins fast with arms out above an eight-sided floor pattern, while rings pulse outward like drumbeats.

240° · Meaning

A turn is never just a turn.

The same movement can mean play, competition, prayer, discipline, celebration, or devotion. Meaning comes from everything around it.

Illustration: four clusters of light around a small figure, labeled space, rhythm, people, and intention. The chosen one glows brightest.

264° · Everyone turns

How do you turn?

You’ve been turning your whole life.

Maybe it’s a move from a sport you played, a dance you love, a game from childhood, a turn from a ritual or celebration in your family, or just the way you spin a chair while you think. Find it, and try a small, slow version of it on your own.

Then ask yourself where you learned it and what it means to you. Ask the people around you for theirs. Put a few side by side and you’ll see what this page has been saying: turning is everywhere.

If moving isn’t right for you today, or you have a vestibular or balance condition, a recent concussion, or have been advised to avoid spinning, picture your turn or trace it with your hands. That counts too. Before you try anything that spins, read Turn with care.

Need an idea?

Illustration: a small figure of light stands with open arms inside a circle of twelve lights that brighten one after another, like people taking turns around a circle.

288° · Find your axis

Your turn

One slow revolution in about a minute. Standing or seated is fine; seated, turn your head and shoulders only as far as is comfortable. Nothing here asks you to spin. With sound on, a soft tone marks each quarter and each breath.

Illustration: a figure of light stands on a vertical line of light inside a circle of light that fills a quarter at a time as the figure turns, then settles into a single still point.

312° · Turn with care

Stopping is part of the practice

Build up gradually, in short rounds, with time to ground in between. Do not push through dizziness.

• Start slow and small.Short turns first; let your body adjust.
• Breathe normally.Don’t hold your breath.
• Keep your head upright.Chin level or slightly lifted, gaze soft.
• Stop early.Stop before dizziness gets strong, not after.
• Land on purpose.Feet planted, hands to heart, breathe. Touch the floor if it helps.
• Every choice counts.Walking, swaying, watching, or stepping out are always welcome.

If you feel faint, nauseated, strongly disoriented, or unstable, stop immediately, sit or lie down somewhere safe, and let yourself fully reorient.

Before you turn, clear some space away from furniture, keep water nearby, and wear clothes you can move in. If you have a vestibular or balance condition, are recovering from a concussion, or have been advised to avoid rotational movement, try imagining the movement, tracing it with your hands, walking, swaying, observing, or stepping out.

Illustration: a figure of light stands calmly with one hand on the heart and one on the belly, feet planted on a softly glowing floor.