Inside the Lodge

To all our relations!

Last week I told you how I was inducted into the Sweat Lodge community and this week I describe what it is like inside the lodge.

To enter the lodge feels like a Stone Age burrow: there is a damp-earth smell, and the ground feels slippery underhand. We crawl in following the path of the sun. It is too dark to see and far too cramped to stand. Women arrange themselves shoulder-to-shoulder on one side, while men pack in equally tightly on the other, the whole group forming a circle around a central, shallow pit. In the half-light, faces acquire a primordial cast, as if everyone has somehow stepped outside time. Forms blur in this curious shapeshifting. There is a beauty here.

Silhouetted near the doorway, Mike calls out to the Fire Keepers, who use a garden fork to bring in the first of the grandfathers. About the size of half-bricks, the stones have turned so rippling red hot that they appear translucent: it is as if you could see right through the grainy surface and into their lava-like interior. You can feel their heat on your flesh.

As the rocks pile higher, people mutter “Thank you, Grandfathers” under their breath. At Mike’s command, a heavy drape is furled over the door, snuffing out any trace of daylight. Kaz tells us that in dark we are all equal. Somebody splashes water over the glowing stones, which hiss ferociously, and the furnace heat becomes almost unbearable. In the stifling, womb-like darkness, an animal hide drum begins to beat, and a ragged but full-throated song erupts in the language of the Blackfoot. The drumbeat, I am informed, is the heartbeat of Mother Earth and it certainly feels like that. The rocks are blessed with herbs and grasses which creates a beautiful aroma in the lodge. Sweet grass is my favourite. We smudge ourselves with the smoke.

Though the atmosphere is friendly, the proceedings are conducted with heartfelt respect, supervised by Mike, Darren, and Kaz, who have spent years immersed in the Blackfoot tradition, faithfully followed here at Wind Spirit since the start of the millennium. They are some ways down this path.

The heat of the grandfathers brings different emotions to the surface for everyone, but the singing and drumming leave no doubt that this is a team effort: nobody was facing their demons alone. Each round has a theme. The water vapor rises the heat, and one can feel oneself going ‘within’, I am used to this as a meditator, but this is a slightly different experience, and the mind fears the temperature rise. Just when you think you cannot cope the drumbeat begins and then another song, which scrambles the conscious mind and allows me to endure the heat and volume of water cascading down my body. This is a total detox. One is left with one’s will and a space that thought is unable to enter.

Eventually, silence falls, and there is an achingly long pause, before Mike shouts: “Dooooor!” The drape is lifted, daylight pours in, and the temperature eases just a touch. Staggering outside, drenched in sweat, several participants crumple into the grass and lie still their attire steaming.

Admittedly, this is not a standard Saturday afternoon in the country, but the people who attend the Wind Spirit gatherings at Braziers Park, a residential community about 10 miles outside Reading, are in search of something beyond the banal. Each month, Wind Spirit holds a Native American ‘sweat lodge’ ceremony – a purification ritual handed down by Morris Crow, or Last Tail Feathers, an elder from the Blood Tribe First Nations Reserve in Alberta, Canada to Mike.

“Every time you go into the sweat lodge you have a chance to be reborn,” we are told, “You can say: ‘This is the first day of my life.’ You can be whatever you want when you come out.” This is a rebirthing and a womb-like experience.

Unfolding over several hours, these kinds of sacraments seem to switch off the inner chatter generated by the everyday, analytical part of the mind and allow a more creative, intuitive state to shine through. For some, this can lead to remarkable breakthroughs.

“When you go into the ceremony, you’re stepping out of what we consider to be ordinary life: there’s a distinction that we have now moved into something different,” says Kaz who is 45, and works as a behavioural change facilitator at Sofea, an Oxfordshire charity that provides training for young people. “We can access the subconscious through it – which is the part that needs to heal.”

Kaz and Darren are certainly persuaded that sweat lodges can harness powerful forces. Growing up in Oxford, they spent most of their teens and twenties battling alcohol and drug addictions. Kaz tells me that the turning point occurred at his first ceremony about 16 years ago, held by a visiting Native American healer. After he emerged from the lodge, the elder took a hard look at him and said: “You’re full of holes.” He sent Kaz back inside.

That night, Kaz says that he dreamt he was standing alone under a flawless sky. Two dots appeared, rapidly morphing into an eagle and a hawk. The birds swooped and began tearing at his skin with talons and beaks, rapidly picking his skeleton clean. When he awoke, he felt as if the raptors had devoured a lifetime of emotional pain.

“I didn’t fully understand what had happened, but I knew there’d been a massive shift. I just had a sense inside me that I wasn’t going to use drugs again,” Kaz said. “I’ll keep it simple: I had a spiritual awakening which allowed me to leave my old self behind.”

This was my first time and I loved it, and I did not experience quite such a profound experience as Kaz. The Lodge has four rounds, and I forget now all their themes and names; the love round always seems most powerful, and before the grandfathers enter we go round the lodge in the dark and say what we are grateful for. It is a powerful and humbling experience. Between rounds, we are drinking water to rehydrate. It is a powerful medicine. After the final sweating round, we leave the lodge and all hug outside one by one. This is a powerful moment, and we all feel we have been through something inexplicable and powerful together, even if we cannot articulate it. We stare into each other’s eyes like lovers and I realise there is not a thought in my head. It is like the most profound meditation I have ever had; just an absolutely clear perception.

Once dressed and dry we return to the lodge where the pipes are smoked. We do not take the smoke down but blow it out over ourselves as a final smoke bath or smudge. It seals the ceremony. The stone bowl of the pipe represents the mountains, the wooden stem the forests or woods and the tobacco is a most sacred herb that when smoked unites the earth with the heavens and man with Great Creator. I learned to love this round after a while and came to value it’s deeper meaning. Finally, we sing a final song that will ensure our journey home is a safe one.

We then retire for a feast, but first, a spirit plate is assembled and everyone contributes a piece of food and the plate is then put outside for the spirits. We then tuck in.

Wearily, but strangely refreshed, with my headtorch ablaze I make my way back to the car through the fields and the farm gates. I feel completely clean, inside and out. This thoughtless state lasts for several days and I find myself online the next day signing up for the next monthly lodge and paying my fee. I feel amazing and my heart is completely open.

Little did I realise that my next encounter would be a Warrior Lodge – another experience altogether.

I shall write about that next time.

Thanks for reading.

David

#thebrazieroftruth