Sweating it all out

Yesterday I went to a full day of a sweat lodge, my first experience of such a thing. Saunas are chicken feed compared to the intensity of this experience. It was challenging, to the extent that I asked to be let out part way through the first stage, but went back in for the second and third stages, an allowance being made for us all as first-timers. Normally if you leave, you are out and cannot go back. I am glad this was allowed for me however. I would not have missed the rest for the world.

Let me go back a few steps.

This was a Celtic sweat lodge, not a North American native tradition. The Celts once lived right across Europe, covering many countries and last week I was in Romania experiencing some remaining Celtic ways of life at a place called Viscri, which immediately gave me a deeper sense of connection with this tradition.

The framework of the lodge is made of many young hazel saplings bent over each other, anchored into the ground in a circle, and tied and woven together into a dome. This is covered in many blankets, though traditionally they are made of stone and mosses and grass used to make them solid. But this was a temporary structure and the blankets kept out the light just as well as anything. It was then covered with a tarpaulin, anchored by logs and smaller stones.

The lodge is the centre point of a three point ceremony. To the west is a fire pit and to the east is a mound of earth, west is where the sun sets and represents death, east is where the sun rises and represents being reborn.

During the ceremony we are told the story of how Taliesin purified himself and we are going to take the same path, to die to our current selves and to be reborn as a free human — free from all the agendas and labels we adopt and are given, which come with burdens and agendas that hold us back from our deeper selves. We are expertly led through this by Tim Jago, a Celtic shaman who has led many hundreds of such ceremonies. We are told Taliesin’s story and how he was led by self discovery but also by Ceridwen, the goddess of transformation and inspiration. We were invited to take these same steps.

The more shamanic side of my spiritual path has always taken rather a back seat, but now I am re-exploring it more deeply. Shamanism and Animism overlap in many ways and there is much Animism underpinning early Tibetan Buddhism, which was my first introduction to mindfulness approaches to life, until I found Thich Nhat Hanh. So it has always been there within me.

The following are the initial stages of ceremony we went through.

1. we are given instructions on how to prepare ourselves for the experience and a little about what will happen. We must drink a lot of water in small sips so we are fully hydrated.
2. we each pick a stone and place a prayer into it for someone else, then place the stones into the centre of the as yet unlit external fire pit. Then the fire is lit and we continue to prepare ourselves by contemplating some questions, what regrets do we have in our lives and what do we want our legacy to be to future generations and also to our own future reincarnation.
3. when the stones are ready we are each smudged with smouldering sage branches to cleanse our energy fields so we do not bring dark energy into the lodge.
4. we crawl into the sweat lodge on all fours as the door is very low, and seat ourselves very close to each other around the edge of a central pit.
5. the fire-heated stones are introduced to the central pit, each stone placed individually and sprinkled with I think finely ground sage
6. once enough stones are introduced the doors are closed and all light excluded.

The initial experience of the sweat lodge itself is of complete darkness, once the doors are closed by the fire keeper, which doesn’t bother me at all. I like darkness. I am used to it, being insomniac. But then the heat got ramped up very quickly by adding water to the stones. I felt ok until I didn’t. The heat intensity had gone up too quickly for my body to cope and post-menopausal I don’t manage heat very well at all. It felt physically claustrophobic to me, not emotionally, and I needed to get out and re-acclimatise myself. we were being told the story of Taliesin. Two of us left at that point and were invited to stay close to the lodge and listen to the rest of the ceremony until the first break came. Everyone came out and took five minutes to simply lie on the grass at the fire pit western doorway, but were not allowed to drink yet.

The second part started when we all went back in, myself included and we were taken through round upon round of releasing our layers of identity so that we are dying to this self. Our names, our self-identity, our bodies, our stories and agendas imposed upon us, our relationships, our expectations and dreams, our hopes and schemes, each layer, and more, were given to us to release in our own words. Then the doors were opened and we were asked to scream out our suffering and all the debris we had accumulated and acknowledged. That was powerful. Some people were louder than others and some went on for longer, but it felt that a lot of letting go was taking place. We all stayed inside but a little heat was released then too.

Then the door was closed once more so we could experience ourselves released in the darkness whilst the story of Taliesin was continued. I found the darkness very comforting. Then we were all released and we all crawled out on all fours back into the western fire side of the lodge, and lay on the grass once more for another five minutes, to experience our non-being, our death of the human ego self.

The third round was the being reborn stages. First additional stones were brought in and each one was welcomed as before, because they held all our prayers, then sprinkled with herbs but at this point I could not get my legs far enough away from the hot stones in the pit and as new ones had now been placed on top, they were also higher up. My shins were burning and my right knee got very scalded. I found myself with my head pushing out under the blankets to try and give my legs room to withdraw from. There was no other direction or space possible for me to find. And I had to take final part in this stage of the ceremony.

We were taken backwards to fifteen yrs. old, then younger, and younger in stages until we reached the point of birth. The darkness was the womb re-entered. we are reborn. What is a newborn child aware of? We could only imagine. But it was an interesting concept and my imagination was loving it. I found myself going back briefly to my own point of birth and wondering if I had any idea what awaited me, if I did indeed know what I had chosen to experience in this life. Of course we shall probably not know.

Everything we released through the process was asked to be taken into the earth and turned into food for something to live on, including the energy and ashes from the fire too. The point about reincarnation being taken to the smallest detail. I liked that a lot. Nothing is to be wasted, it is all taken into account.

When we finally left the lodge on the earth mound side, to the east, symbolic of the sunrise and our new birth, did I feel any different? I was extremely glad I had been allowed to go back in. I had needed more adjustment time to the heat. I did find two issues which I am sort of aware of that I need to challenge in myself and resolve. I worked on them both during this process, but are they fully gone yet? I cannot ignore them now, that is for sure. Acknowledging something needs to change is always the hardest part of letting go of one’s agendas, but had it taken place?

I had said all the words, held the right intentions, made all the thoughts in my head go in the right direction, done what I was asked to do. But I think there was a part of me not quite ready to let it go fully.

They are old and deep wounds, I know them well. They also affect many others, not just me. As I write this though I am aware that I do want to let them go. But I am also aware that I feel anxious about what might come and take their place. What might I be letting myself in for? That is what holds me back. Yet I know I can create strong boundaries. I did that recently with another historic and deeply troubling scenario. I just needed the time to recognise this all within myself and to make that understanding as self-recognition becomes more material. Letting go without self-awareness or mindful consciousness can leave you too vulnerable. It can do more harm than good.

I am so glad I put myself through this and was allowed to return after the first round. Writing it up has helped me to recognise that. I would do it again with better understanding of what is needed for me to selfcare during the process. In some ways I would like it to be a process over a few days with the same people so that we can all better bond and support each other. I felt very apart from the others even though we had all been jammed right up against each other in the dark. I also needed to go through the stages of healing once more, once I had had enough time to understand what I was going to choose to release, so that I could fully release it.

There was a fourth stage, a gratitude stage for the stones themselves, for the fire and for the whole process. Most people went back in but I couldn’t face it. That was completed by loud singing of gratitude and joyful power songs, which I was able to acknowledge in my heart from the outside. Thank you stones, fire, lodge, and shaman, for all that it was.

And my red right knee has returned to normal colours.