If you regularly ignored a playground’s monkey bars, seesaw and slide — and instead made a beeline straight to the merry-go-round — you’re likely familiar with the intoxicatingly dizzy feeling that accompanies a good spin session.
The light-headedness may come with a touch of vertigo, causing the world to tilt around you, or even bring on feelings of sudden elation. Sufi whirling dervishes take advantage of these effects, in fact, as a form of meditation and to induce spiritual experiences.
Others undergo extensive training to suppress dizziness while spinning: Professional ballet dancers complete countless pirouettes with ease, for example, and circus performers often dangle gracefully from ropes dozens of feet in the air.
There’s no doubt that humans have found many creative ways to incorporate spinning into our everyday lives. But at what point in our evolution did we begin spinning to induce that characteristic altered mental state? And what ...
