Nice phrasing: how did it go again - was it "fresh clean, beautiful air through the rotor system" - well put! Do you moonlight as a poet?
Nice too about lever down, cyclic fwd-- not unlike unstalling an aeroplane in fact. Which brings me to: VRS.
She was heavy, high, perhaps distracted, and down she goes. VRS starts like that for sure. But VRS does not make you spin either way and your RRPM does not decay.
So: VRS or not; there were other elements at play here. What made her spin, what decreased the RRPM?
thekite