My understanding of the Sweat Lodge

Last Updated on August 5, 2015

The Sweat Lodge is an ancient tradition — one that I have experience a number of times over the last 12 years, and have had explained to me in various ways. For me there is some deep symbology in the Sweat Lodge. For the benefit of my fellow men involved in MKP I would like to elaborate on what the Sweat Lodge means to me. I do this because I know that it was through my appreciation of it’s symbology that the experience of Sweat lodge was intensified and enriched.

How accurately my interpretation of the Sweat lodge resembles the traditional Native American view on it I can not say. I’ve never looked into it or studied it in any way, so I have no way of known. Hence, take from this what you like. If it inspires interest within you then please by all means do some research on the net and look into this some more.

There are a number of components to a Sweat lodge:

1. Water
2. Wood
3. Fire
4. Rocks
5. Darkness
6. The Lodge
7. The Circle
8. Sage, sweet grass, and other forms of incense

The lodge represents the womb. We enter the womb through a small orifice. This whole is very low, both to keep the heat in but also to instil a sense of humility as we enter on our hands and knees. We go naked into the lodge, stripped of our worldly possessions and image — like a child in the womb of the Mother.

There is a direct energetic link between the Fire and the Lodge. To me this is the balance of the Masculine and Feminine archetypes that are present within the this dualistic world in which we live. The Father principles provides the heat for the rocks. This rocks are not unlike the many hot sperm that enter the Mother in order to create a new born child. The Mother aspect — the Womb or the Lodge — is a dark, moist, primal place. It is here in this dark place that the Child is born — where the lodge participants are renewed and emerged clean and purified.

In Native Medicine, Medicine Grizzly-Bear Lake writes about reasons people go unclothe in the sweat bath: “We prefer to go into the sacred sweat lodge stripped of all our clothes, symbols, badges of education, status and wealth, camouflages or other coverings which feed the human ego. We go naked as a newborn into the womb of our Mother Earth; humble, pure, innocent and prepared for nurturing. We try to strip ourselves of [defining] human qualities, desires and characteristics in order to become m ore spirit-like; we shed our human image and physical attributes in order to discover our soul and its spiritual nature. And, in most cases we come out reborn and re-created.”

The first lodge I participated in we followed quite specific protocol with regard to how we entered the lodge. The participants stood in a semi-circle around the back side of the fire. The from the left side (facing the lodge) we filed clockwise around the fire, crossed over to the right side of the lodge, circled around the lodge in an anticlockwise fashion, and then once back at the entrance to the lodge we entered to the right and again circled around inside the lodge (on hands and knees) in an anticlockwise direction. The first participant in would then site to the left of the door as the other members filed in and around from the right side. These circles again are symbolic of the cyclical and spiralic nature of Creation. All things manifest through spiralic energy patterns, that can be observed throughout the natural world and universe.

There within the dark womb we physically sweat out impurities from the body so that it may be renewed.
Then, through the process of clear intent — and anchored by prayer, ritual, and thousands of years of tradition — we also cleanse the spirit. I have found that my most power lodge experiences have been the hottest ones. For me it is in the intense heat, steam and darkness that I get to face my fear of pain, suffering and ultimately death. When the heat reaches that point where I feel I can go no further, that is where I get to make a choice and perhaps face any habitual choices around how I relate to my capacity to remain alive and well in the face of apparent adversity. I can either choose to react, thinking “I must get out. I can’t take this any more”, or I can surrender, let go, and sink into the place where “the world can do me no harm, for I am the Eternal Self that is God”. This has nothing to do with being physically strong or macho. Far from it — for trying to face the heat with physical strength and machoism will only throw the participants into opposition with the heat. With opposition a fight then arises and that fight is going to result in any but surrender and letting go.

No, the type of surrender I am talking about is a surrender into the spiritual nature of Self. From that place the heat does me no harm. From that place I can simple soften and let go. For the newly formed child in a womb has no resistance to the world. It knows not the fear of death, pain and suffering. It lives quite contently in its dark, warm world of the Mother’s womb.

In the centre of each sweat lodge a small shallow pit is dug. It is here the heated rocks are placed as they are brought into the lodge. This hole is deeply symbolic, even holy; within Plains Indian tradition this hole represents the centre of the universe. Dirt from this centre is used to form a small altar mound in front of the lodge entrance. On this altar, participants can place special things that may help them in the sweat. The altar is always on an east-west axis between the fire at the east end and the lodge at the west end of the line. To some, this is an avenue of power while others call it an energy exchange. The fire is special in many respects. For Creeks, Fire is a piece of the sun, perfect symbol of Creator; through Fire One Above, the Creator, finds expression.

Early Finnish sauna bathers believed fire was heaven sent. If the sweat fire was fuelled by choice firewood and tended with appropriate ritual, disease and evil influences could be warded off. Treated disrespectfully, fire could (and would eventually) engulf and destroy the bather.

As we make the sweat fire, after gathering all the appropriate and needed materials, we are also preparing propitiations between mind, body, spirit and soul–a conciliatory reckoning to restore balance and harmony between these four elements. To show this intent while building the fire, fire makers offer constant prayers of thanksgiving for all the purposes at hand, especially prayers for participants that they may be cleansed in all these four parts and experience renewal. The purifying heat to come forth from the fire is also acknowledged and thanked for its help: heat, light and strength. The visible conclusion to all Native American prayers is the gift of tobacco to Creator. A fire maker often places tobacco into the structure of the fire as he or she sets the wood in place; tobacco is always carefully and tenderly placed into the newly ignited fire after it has caught sufficiently. Many fire tenders offer participants tobacco to place in the fire with their own special prayers and thanksgivings. It is not unusual for knowledgeable participants to bring tobacco with them for that purpose and to share with their sweat leader or fire maker. — quotes from Bobby Woods, Lakota (Sioux) sweat leader (http://welcomehome.org/rob/sweat/sweat_lodge.html)

In the tradition of Sweat that I was first introduced there was also the protocol that each component of the lodge must be used to its completion. This, to me, is about maintaining and following through on each and every intention that is set. Therefore, all the wood that is brought for the fire is used and burnt — for that was the intention the motivate collecting the wood in the first instance. The fire keepers roll is not complete until he has watched over the completion of that. Also, all the water that is taken into the lodge during each round is completely used up during that particular round. If people are finding it too much to bare then patiently we wait in the dark until the group is ready to follow through on the intention with which that water entered the lodge.

For me there is also symbology in the water being applied to the hot rocks. Water is symbolic of emotion. The bright glowing hot rocks are symbolic of the seeds of inspiration that come from the Divine Father. Their heat is their power to consume, transform, and renew. The waters of emotion and pour out upon these hot seeds of light and fire. There the emotion is cleansed and transformed — from it’s dense watery state into that of steam. This is not unlike the process of transforming our inner emotional patterns and states with the Light and Heat of Truth. They then vaporise into a powerful cleansing substance that opens the lungs (through which we breath in life) and the skin (representative of the boundary between individual self and the world and the relationship thereof).

So that, my friends, is a quite look at what the Sweat Lodge means to me. I trust that having now read this you too might gain an even deeper and more powerful experience of the Tradition called Sweat Lodge.

With love and blessings,

Jonathan

Further reading:

Whilst writing this article I did a quite search on the net to see if I could find a few key quotes to include above. I looked at one page located at http://welcomehome.org/rob/sweat/sweat_lodge.html. If this article I have put together (quite quickly) then I highly recommend you visit that page and read what the author has to say as it will give you an even deeper appreciation of what I have only just touched on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_lodge — Wikipedia, as usual, have useful info on this usbject