“Speaks For Me”: Our Experience at an Earth Day Purification Sweat Lodge

We celebrated Earth Day by spending Saturday night in a tent with a dozen half-naked sweaty people, and as odd as that may sound, we thought it was one of the more transformative experiences of our lives.

We drove out into the hills to a rainbow-painted mailbox at the end of a long driveway through the woods. Outbuildings painted with animals greeted us as we made our way up to a three-story house on a hill with a full-length second-floor balcony. The view from that balcony is limitless.

Everything about the space asked us to retreat into reflection. We did.

First, we smudged ourselves and had a circle discussing our intentions for the sweat; everyone shared where they were in life, the questions they were asking, what they wanted to refocus on or let go. We were all at transitional points in our lives–spring does that to people–so it made for a lot of openness. There were tears. (I may or may not have started that). Often, hippie-dippie circles are depicted in entertainment as having a lot of pretension and no sense of humor, but in reality, there is a lot of realness and a lot of jokes. Is it a bit woo-woo? Sure. But vulnerable emotions are woo-woo.

Malbeca has been wanting us to go to a sweat lodge for years, but we have always been too busy working on the weekends. She discovered this sweat lodge through a women’s group we went to during graduate school roughly four years ago. She’s attended many sweats and a women’s retreat by the woman who runs the lodge, whose traditions are mainly Native American-based.

Next, we changed for the sweat and headed out to the tent, which was made up with those thick yoga blankets–inside and out. There were four rounds: Prayer for Self, Prayers for Others, Give-Aways and Sharing our Light, and the Dream round. In between rounds, they opened the tent flap (whew!)

The first round was the longest–we thought almost forty-five minutes–and the most bizarre because the heat and the darkness mess with you until you adjust. When the sweat started really pouring, I remember thinking, “Holy crap, my face is melting off!” In the darkness, I wasn’t sure if I had my eyes open or closed, which made me hallucinate a bit. At some point, I was sweating so much, I couldn’t even feel it–almost like I was swimming in a hot tub (and the air is so saturated, it is almost like swimming). At certain points, when they brought in new stones to the pit, I sort of felt like I was a fire-breathing dragon (which I thought most people would feel, too…but apparently, that was just me…)

Many people who had been before said it was the hottest sweat they had ever been in.

I do not do well with heat, so I imagined that I would get cranky and sit completely still, but in fact, the opposite happened. I moved a lot, just swaying and changing positions, stretching. Parts of my body even remained cool; maybe it was one of those things where it’s so hot, it feels cooler on some level. Either way, by the end, I had a lot more trust in my body than I did before. And afterward, my skin felt fantastically smooth.

One thing that most surprised us (and you may be wondering about) was the fact that it did not smell. They burned herbs at the beginning and that must have helped; plus, all the bacteria that makes body odor was probably flushed out after the first fifteen minutes. Or maybe it is so hot that olfactory glands cease to function. Who knows, doesn’t matter.

We could have been anywhere on the planet or off of it. I’ve never felt so vulnerable and powerful at the same time.

It’s difficult to write about it today because the experience was so other-worldly.

Afterward, we had a closing circle and a delicious potluck. In one evening, we laughed, cried, sat around naked, experienced an altered state of consciousness, ate a lot of good food, and spoke our truths. That’s a lot of humanness in six hours.

Now, I feel emptied, washed clean inside and out, and my mind is quiet.

For information on the lodge we went to, check it out here.