 Hi Farima. Hi. How are you doing? I'm good, thank you. Thanks for beginning to do this. Oh, it's a pleasure. I'm so excited. I think it should be fun, no? Yeah? Very fun. I mentioned, I did a little intro and I mentioned that we met last year. Our mutual friend Cathy had told me a lot about your dance. And she, Cathy really doesn't build up too much, but she was really building up your dance and just talking magnificently about it. Just incredibly. And then this year I had the chance to come and see you perform at the festival. And everything that Cathy said wasn't enough. No really, it blew me away. Thank you. It blew me away because for me when I was watching it, just the symmetry of the dance, I didn't realize it was the patterns that were created. I've seen some Sufi dance before, just looking at history and stuff. And the twirling, they go around in circles, circles, circles. And it looks incredible. At some point maybe I'll try it out. I'll try to try it out. I should try it out. I should be taking lessons from you. But the way you did it with the costumes and the arm movements, because I hadn't seen arm movements before and it was just incredible. So, and then you told me there was mathematics layer and on top of this thing, or the code behind it, whichever way you want to look at it, because who knows if this came first or that came first, right, the chicken or the egg. So, I think I'm interested in this anyway, so I think other people will be as well. Hopefully anyway. I hope so. If they're interested in either twirling or mathematics and try to combine the two. So, who are you? Seriously, why did you get into this? I've never even seen a video of a woman twirling. Every video that I've seen, I've never seen a female twirl, a woman twirl. No, it's true. It's very rare. Very rare woman whirlers. What we do, we hope that more women start to whirl. Whirl, not twirl. Whirling. But it's okay. Whirling is the same thing. They're both spiral. But we hope that more women can whirl. And because that was what the ancient people did, women whirlers. It was a ritual. It was a shamanic ritual. It was done for healing. Whirling goes back to many thousands and thousands of years, like 12,000 years ago. 12,000 years ago. From Mesopotamian and Indo-Iranian rituals, ancient rituals. Doing whirling for the sun god or goddess, Mitra. Mitra, okay. Was this female and male? It was mainly done by females. It was my female and it was mostly made within the female energy. Okay. And because it was considered a pagan ritual, then the male energy coming in with religion, then of course it was taken away from the power of the woman. And so it was, credit was given to the man by woman. So this was how long ago? Oh, many years ago. I mean, a couple of thousand. There are books written by Aristotle that it actually states in Book 7 of Aristotle, if you read it, that he goes into the, he doesn't specifically say Iran, but he says that I traveled the east and Mesopotamia and Babylonia and while doing his research and he encountered a tribe of a woman with long hair, and he describes it in Book 7 and he said that they started to whirl around the big bull and the bull was a representation of Mitra. The bull was the sacred animal of Mitra for the Mesopotamians and the Iranians. And we don't know where this was. This was either the Iranians, it's in the east. So we are, many scholars are assuming that it's part of the Mesopotamian or the Indo-Iranian land. But he describes it like traveling to the east and seeing a group of women whirling around the bull and they start to fall into a sort, some kind of an ecstasy. It's a trance. Trance and they start to scream and they start to toss their hair and as they do it, more women start to come in. While they're whirling. While they're whirling. So this is what we see today in the Sufi tradition or in the Shamanic rituals where people, as they're whirling, they fall into a state of drunkenness which we call, there's a Farsi word called mast. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's not really drunk. It's not drunk. It's a trance. It's a trance. It's a drunk of being with the divine. It's letting go of yourself. And so there's a lot of Persian poetry that says this word mast. Mastan. The drunken. I've heard some of it. So these are the drunken women. These were the drunken. Oh, okay. I just assume it meant drunk but it doesn't. No, no, no. The word drunken, yeah, it means basically being in trance. That's the word. But also in the Buddhist tradition you have about, you know, there are documentations, a new search done in the Buddhist tradition dating back thousands of years ago and still that contains moving meditation. And the moving meditation was to whirl around an axis. They would start to walk and as they start to walk, this walk became faster and faster and so they started to basically hug themselves and they started to turn. So this tradition is actually in the Buddhist tradition as well. And the Buddhist tradition was in China or in China? Yeah, in the East. In the East. That's the other thing. We don't know whether Aristotle was talking about. Well, because at that time there weren't borders anywhere. There was no country because it was just everybody. And that region, that whole Eastern region, were also influenced by each other. And so, you know, it all comes from there. So it has a very long history. It's not something new. It has a very long history. But unfortunately it's been gone for so many years because of politics and wars and, you know, man and woman and equality. Yeah, exactly. So it's nice to see it coming back, that energy is coming back. And whirling, you know, has, it's hugely influenced by science, by math. You told us. Yeah, it's a great healing. I mean, we use it to cure depression. We use it to cure addiction. I work with cancer patients. Really? Yeah, I have, back in the U.S. I work with some cancer patients. I have students who had cancer and they're whirling. We use, you know, these, we're bringing back, I'm actually doing some shamanic rituals. Indo-Iranian shamanic rituals as a healing medicine to be able to bring these back. So, but talking about all of these, it's all connected. It's very fascinating how all of these are connected with physics and science and math. Yeah, that's what it's really true. It's very exciting for me to work with you because it's, or tell you about this, because it's all connected. It's all connected with the planets and everything with nature and the elements. And what are the planets associated with this? Well, the sun, the moon, the Venus, Earth. So these are all... Because they're all twirl. Yeah, they're all on the planets, you know. There's a funny thing that we say that if you're standing in one axis and you're whirling, you're a planet. And you start to go around your comet. That's what you say when you say it. We try to train people to become planets rather than comets because, you know, planets don't like comets. They hit them, so we train people to become... Chaotic. Well, it's not chaotic. Well, I guess it could be. But everything within... When you're whirling, then you realize that everything within you is whirling. Everything within the body has spirals. Our DNA is spirals. And the strands of DNA is connected with the way you whirl. The stars is connected with the way you whirl. So you have a Sufi dance that's connected with the spiral of the... Absolutely, absolutely. We have whirling that we are creating the spirals of DNA. We have whirling that is, especially in the Indo-Iranian whirlings, which you are connected with the eight-pointed star, or you are connected... But number three, number seven, eight, and nine... And ninety-nine is very important in the spiritual tradition and also in the Sufi tradition. Yeah, three, I know for engineering, the tripod, like the camera is on the tripod, three is stable. So are there reasons for this? Three, seven, eight, nine, and ninety-nine. Yeah, I mean, there's three in the... For example, the Rumi would always say that there's the three souls, or the spiritual tradition, maybe the third eye, that the human has the spiritual and the internal, the outside, but also the sense, which is the third eye. And it goes into the Judeo-Christian with the father, son, Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost, so the... So mythology goes back. The three. Yeah, the three, number three is very special because even in ancient Iranian tradition, for example, they say that Ahura Mazda, the son God, was born of... He's the father, the light, and the Holy Ghost. Oh, really? Okay. So the three is very important. Okay. And this three also within the whirling becomes important. Seven is very important because in ancient, again, in the Iranian tradition, it was believed that to be one with the divine, we don't know what this divine is, but to be one with the divine, that one must contain the seven sacred elements of the universe. Oh, okay. And once you are connected with the seven sacred elements, then you are to that one access point, which we point. So that's the eighth star? That's the eighth star. So the seven builds up to the eighth? Eight, yeah. Okay, so the seven put together connects up to the eighth. That's like in physics, there's... In mathematics, I guess, there's a whole concept of string theory where I think it's 10 dimensions that connect up to make the 11th dimension. I haven't read this for a while, so don't quote me on this. But in physics as well, in mathematics, there's a whole concept of M theory where all the dimensions connect up into one dimension, which makes it 12 dimensions or 11 dimensions. I should... I didn't know you were going to talk about this. I would have read up on this theory. And the three in mathematics, just going back to the three, just talking about circles, circular motion, trigonometry is a shape with three angles, but that's what we learn with trigonometry from grade eight or whatever you learn about triangles. But triangles directly connects with circles, where you have your triangle, trigonometry going into really circular motion, cyclic functions, which goes to... So it's interesting, we talked a little bit about this before, but I stalked you because I said, I really want to ask, would you do this? And you said, okay. And I said, okay, don't tell me anymore, because I sort of want to learn this as I go. I want to put it together as in one coherent... And of course, the number one, which is oneness, is one of the key points, because you are standing in that oneness position, and that is your axis point. The center of the circle. The center of the circle. So you have to be centered. And as you are centered, then you come out of that, which we call in the Sufi tradition, for example, we call it bal, or the word of God, or the breath of God, who? But as you are in that center position, then that's when you start to go into the circle. You come out slowly, going into that spiral, or sacred spiral as you could call it, and you come out, and then you are in that big circle. And that's the shell you talked about, you mentioned. Exactly, so it's the shell you're opening up. Yeah, and that's connected to the Fubunuchi sequence and the golden ratio, where people follow the mathematics videos with an artist's friend of mine. He's an amazing artist. When I first saw his art, I just saw mathematics, and that's one thing I saw with your performance a couple of days ago, well, two or three days ago, both your performances, you mentioned that you guys go into a sort of hypnotic trance state, Masti, and I can't even imagine what that's like when you're doing it, but for me, when I was watching you dance, when you had the costume set up, and the circular pattern that I was making, it hypnotized me. I was watching this thing, this pattern, mathematical pattern, occur. And that's one thing with my friend that creates art. His art is very grid-oriented. He's got two different types of art. One is chaos, and the other one is grid-oriented. When we started, he agreed to do some math videos as well, and we started doing some math videos, and then throughout the process, I learned that he's embedding the golden ratio in his drawings, and we put a couple of videos together and we created the golden rectangle. Yeah, I showed it to you, and he creates it from the outside in, and I created it from the inside out with the Fibonacci sequence, and he does it by measurements and using the golden ratio, and you guys do it through dance. You create the golden ratio through dance, and you spiral out, spiral out, spiral out. And you make that big circle. Right now, the tradition is that you go to the left, you're coming out and you're going to the left, but also it's also because that's a male energy. And the ancient and the Iranian tradition, they would also go and go back and to the right. And the right is a female energy. The right is a female energy. This connects to Shamanism a lot. Exactly, yeah. The male and the female planets, you have the male and the female planets, so the energies of the womb. So now both are accepted, we say clockwise and counterclockwise. So you can go, but that is the tradition of the sacred spiral, is that you go out and then you come back in. And then you come back in. So you start from the center, you spiral your way out, creating the golden rectangle. And it used to be that you would go back inside. And then you go, so you create both the male and the female. Or the male and the female, the right as a female. The other important thing is also the body. And maybe you noticed when I was dancing, I was bringing my hands up and going out. Yeah, that was insane. No, really, that was like, and it was a huge pattern. I couldn't figure out the pattern for sure. So there's a couple of reasons for that. One is that basically we are creating the tree of life. And there is a root. So when we are pointed on the axis, it is believed that part of us is the roots. So you're grounded. So it goes into martial arts as well. Yeah, so we are grounded. And as we are turning, we are starting to create that spiral and then the skirt gets higher and higher and higher. And the skirt starts to create that wave. And that is the wave of the DNA. So we are actually doing the DNA. And the DNA is known to be the tree of life because then the hands come out. These are the branches of the tree of life. My hands are creating this. So we are making that. And the spiral within the DNA is known to be the tree of life because that is what we are built on upon the human race. So the other reason also is because with my hands I am also manifesting the seven sacred elements. So I am creating water waves. I am creating fires. So all the hand symbols you are doing represent that meaning because it was beautiful. It was very wavy. Everything you did had waves associated. When you were doing your arms, you could see the waves were starting from the tip of your fingers coming all the way. It was beautiful basically in mathematics. And the wave of... Trigonometry. It connected to the circle. And once you take the circle... Which is a storm. Which we are creating a storm. We are creating a huge wave of wind, or whirlwinds. We are creating a storm. So it's referred to a storm. And that's actually the word Sufiha. Sufiha is a meaning of a storm. You are creating a storm. And you become this wind. So Sufi means storm. Sufiha is the word meaning... So Sufism is derived from Sufiha. But it goes back. The word Sufi has many meanings. It has many meanings. It actually comes from a Sufi dynasty of Iran. The word Sufi is not... It's fairly during the Renaissance of Iran. It's not an ancient word. It's not an ancient word. But they were called many other things before whirling. So Sufi comes from an order of a dynasty. The word Sufi. But Sufiha is basically a storm. You're creating a storm. Samah, which is what we do. It's a Farsi word meaning to listen to your heart. It's a melody. The melody of the heart. The word Samah means melody of the heart. So how is that related to whirling? Whirling? Samah means melody of the heart. So it used to be that you had to listen to your heart as you start to whirl. That's when you start to communicate with the heart, with the soul. So when you're whirling, you're trying to get to a state where you're listening to your heart. Or are you starting off that way? No, you have to go into a state where you're no longer human. You are now the soul. And that's when you connect with the heart. So there's a focal point. You're trying to focus on something. I know with Tai Chi, there is a certain stance. A very little friend that does a lot of Tai Chi. There's a stance that, you know, a lot of meditative stances that you can try to focus either on a specific point, on a specific object, or specific thought, or whatever it is, right? The other important thing about also whirling, especially in the Turkish whirling, the Iranian whirling and Turkish whirlings are a bit different because the Iranian whirlers, they're using their hands a lot where in the Turkish whirling they're very stable and they only have their right hand up. Oh, it's like this? It's also very important because the point of the right hand, which I have heard is that it's very important in physics. The right hand is very important because it describes the fall and the down, the fall and the up. Oh, the magnetic field. For sure, the right hand is very important because when we are whirling, most of the time it's the right hand pointing up or the right palm is out. This is the magnetic field which is receiving the energy and then giving away the energy. So giving away from the left hand? You're receiving the energy and then you're giving it from the left hand, but the right is very important. This becomes your important part of the body and this is in physics, I know. Yeah, there's a right hand, there's two rules. There's a rule of the right hand. There's one where if the current is going along your thumb, your thumb points this way and the magnetic field, any moving charge creates magnetic field and the magnetic field is spiral. This is cool and there's another one where if the magnetic field is going this way, I haven't done the physics stuff for a while. And you're also creating the waterfall of that. In Iranian whirling tradition, we often move our hands like this and when you do that or when you're bowing, you're creating this waterfall and so the energy comes in and then the water comes up back to the body and it goes back into the roots. So this is how the tree of life is growing and you're creating that water going back to your body. And you're twirling at the same time. So you're creating a torus. Is it called a torus? So you're going like this and it's going along a central point. Yeah, we need water in our human because again in Anglo-Iranian water was essential. We needed water. So the water gives life to the tree of life and so the tree of life starts to grow and as the tree of life starts to grow, you start to whirl and you become one with the planet, you become one with the universe and that is your focal point of becoming one with the unknown. So you're constantly bowing or moving in a sense that the flow is going towards the center which you're feeding the roots for the tree of life. Yes, so the roots and this whole thing it literally creates the DNA. So you become one with your DNA. You become one with the spiral of life, which we call. You have to have that. You need to be connected with your spirals of life and every human we believe that is connected with their spirals of life or with their DNA. You just have to find it and that's when you start to whirl because then now you're connected. So that's how you started off. That's where you're going to focus the energy. That's why you're constantly going around the circle creating a storm to feed the root. But that's just one example of where again we saw many different styles. We have whirlings where we come in and go out. We create the sacred geometries of the universe. We have whirlings where we create the 8-pointed star. And we went we took a tangent which is okay but we went 3, 7, 8 right? So 3 is magic number everywhere right? Stable religion. 7 also it's very sacred in the world. So 7 points you ate the pointing star to the top. How does a 9 come to play? So 9 is a very interesting story behind it. There are some research actually if you can do some research. The number 9 is a mysterious number because they say that it was created by a shamanic ritual number because we didn't have 9 and there's many research done of how this 9 which is if you turn 9 it used to be written like this and again if you look at it it creates that sacred spiral. So the 9 means basically that spiral of life. So if you look at it and it creates that shape it's the spiral of life. So that would be more related to more recent thought. Even though it's ancient that's the recent researchers that have been doing. And also the word 9 is very universal. We got to know in Farsi 9 and English 9 and they contained it. But the word 9 is very universal because it's a new discovery that they realize that not new but it is embedded somewhere that they brought in these sacred numbers to get in and they created, they realized the human body, soul is the 9. So there's a special dance with a 9. There is really not a particular special dance within the 9. It's believed that what anything you do it is that 9 and within the Sufi tradition or even in the Islamic tradition the number 9 becomes very important because they say 9 days of whirling and or 99 days of passing the soul. So there's such a saying called 9 days of whirling? Like people specifically go out to do 9 days of whirling? Yes they do. But the number 9 it becomes very important. So there are some sacred numbers within the spiritual texts. I know there is an Avesta which is a Zartushian holy book and the Bible I've read it, number 7 for example in the Quran and the Torah. So they all have that secret number. But then there's also that number 9 which 9 becomes, it's not part of the religious texts it becomes part of the spiritual texts. Number 9 is part of the spiritual texts. So it's all connected with yeah. That's cool. So that's a lot of info. That's a lot of info. It's really interesting just the way it's connecting and just you doing the dance I noticed when you were dancing when you had the costume on you had a few different costumes on but one of them you had on was a costume there were lights at the end of the skirt and when you started twirling as soon as you started twirling loves you as soon as you started twirling the lights at the end of the skirt started creating a sine wave that was going in a circular pattern and I didn't really I noticed it but it didn't really register until you said it creates a wave and that's embedded within the circle. That's incredible. I tried to within my whirling to really show the connection between the sacred geometry and to really show that science has a lot to do with this or man has a lot to do with this because we are all within this universal life. There's a reason why we are connected with the universe so everything is within our body like I said it's a spiral it's our sacred geometry there's a way we have to show it outside and the way we show it outside is by showing it through whirling or through dancing when I teach regular dance it's all connected with the science and the numbers just human evolution when you mention you take the energy from the right and you release it through left and tai chi there's one stance you do where you're standing up your knees are a little bent it's like that and you are taking the energy, you're creating a spiral within your circle which is super cool I love to see some of these I saw two of your performances which was incredible but I think what we're going to do Firema has agreed we're going to go into the dance studio and she's going to show us some of these dance these patterns and what we're going to try to do is shoot the video and see the pattern hopefully we can get from the side for sure you can see the pattern happening from the side but there's one angle we're going to try to shoot from the top to see if we can capture the spiral and see where we go from there would that be cool? we'll go and check it out it's a fascinating field and fascinating discovery to be connected with the world and numbers we'll see what we can do to sort of see how the mathematics is laid on that I'm not sure, I've got to do some research to figure out my thing is not geometry even though I know it I like numbers and pattern recognition and there's a lot of pattern in your thing but there's a lot of geometry from what you've done and what I saw and we'll try to look into that and see where the mathematics connects up awesome, thanks a lot see you guys in the next video one thing I forgot to ask you when we were talking was you mentioned to some people world for hours yeah well, there is a saying world for 72 hours wow really yeah, people you can world for 24 hours and once you're into that state of ecstasy you're in sleep mode so it could be dangerous because you can fall into that sleep mode so someone has to wake you up but you have to also train your brain to wake up because once you go into that sleep mode you can go on and on so people do world for hours wow 4-5 hours is nothing 4 hours is nothing people world for like I said 12 hours, 24 hours wow, incredible what's the longest you've done the longest I've done is 4 and a half hours 4 and a half hours straight like I would take a break for 10 minutes come back or wait for 5 minutes and I went on for almost 12 hours but straight without stopping 4 and a half hours what was it like when you came out of that it's very different sometimes you cry you're very emotional when you come out of it sometimes you're very happy it really depends on what you start to see images you start to hear things everything just becomes you're completely I can't explain it's like being high and you come out of being high I'm in this reality and I don't like it you're bearing your soul all your guards are down in the Sufi tradition they do say it's like death you're dead you have to come back and sometimes dead people don't like to come back they don't like to come back they like what they see there so it's a state of being so sometimes I get very emotional and I just cry or sometimes people have said that I was screaming while I was whirling some people said that I've been laughing when I was whirling and I don't know any of this but there are videos of me that I'm clapping and dancing while I'm whirling and I don't remember any of it there's like I said that people said you were screaming and saying names so you're in a sleep mode that's cool that's where the shamanistic aspect comes from and spiritual all spiritual mythology and contemporary religions I forgot to tell you about the head but we can do that later and then the line of the head connected with the heart and going oh yeah cause I've seen that's some of the ones I've seen the head is one of the most important part of the body that actually makes you go into trance