Sweat Lodge

This is a picture of a place similar to where I was on saturday morning. Working with juveniledelinquents, we participate in a lot of activities that allow the kids to release anger, gain coping skills and properly communicate. We take them to a sweat lodge once a month. This was my first time being able to go. I was a little nervous since I didn't know what to expect. I imagined my contacts melting to my eyeballs, my skin dripping off my body and having some weird experience. Knowing it would probably last for about 2 hours didn't help either - I thought for sure it was impossible to spend so much time in a room that was so short you couldn't even stand, crammed in there with about 30 other people and glowing red hot rocks.

We started by meeting in a teepe and talking about what to expect and stating our purpose for entering the sweat lodge. Many stated things like peace, happiness, understanding, comfort, and why we wanted these things. We entered the sweat lodge and the ceremony began. I was amazed by the things I was able to hear the kids express - kids who struggle in communicating without a fight beginning and swear words involved - being able to express in clarity the emotions they were dealing with, where they were coming from and find peace and forgiveness. There were four stages to the ceremony with different topics. The first topic was about women, second about men, then ancestors, and last was forgiveness.

While inside, it is completely dark inside - the only thing you can see are the red hot rocks. As the water is put on them the whole room is filled with steam. Black licorice, cedar, bear root and other things were used on the stones as part of the ceremony and represented different things. One of the greatest parts of the "sweat" was while discussing the last topic, forgiveness. I laid down for most of the "sweat", since heat rises, it was cooler on the floor. I had my leg bent so my toes wouldn't end up resting and burning themselves on the rocks and had one leg crossed over the other. During this last part the leader intensified the heat to the point where I couldn't stand having my leg crossed anymore since my big toe (the part of my body the was highest up in the air) felt like it was about to melt off my body. He had all of us sit up so that we could feel the intensity of the heat. As we felt the heat - and believe me, we felt it! - he told the kids: now when you are out on the street and one of your friends says to you, "here, do this..." (drugs, bad things, etc...) remind yourself of the intense heat you are feeling right now - don't put yourself in those situations again. So.....typing that out it doesn't really seem to make sense, but it makes sense to me - I guess if you want to understand, you can go to a sweat lodge yourself, which I would recommend. Preferrably go to a clothed sweat (not all of them will let you wear your clothes).