The Sweat Lodge :: essays research papers fc

The sweat lodge is a key healing and spiritual practice of most, if not all, Native American cultures. A variant of the sweat lodge is seen in those cultures from the artic to South America. It can be seen as a form of water therapy as it uses extreme heat and water to produce its effects. Specifically I will explain my face-to-face journey and experience as a participant of a Mohawk sweat lodge. Each tribe has its give unique way of performing the sweat even if they all share the same base upon which to individualise it. The Mohawk sweat lodge that I attended on Thanksgiving last October is an experience I will not soon forget. It was an interesting fit of people coming together to share in a sacred experience for the spiritual healing of a friend. My friend is Mohawk and he collected his five closest friends to join him all of us Caucasians, the shaman/medicine man, the shamans wife (a medicine woman in here own right), the fire keeper and the woman in Hudson who graciously a llowed us to use her land for this occasion. Names have purposely been omitted for the sake of anonymity as the lineament of sweat was one of personal healing and not a general sweat.The externalises in the sweat are the shaman who directs and explains the procedure of the sweat and conducts it. The next figure is the fire keeper who tends the fire on which the stones for the sweat are heated and transfers them with the help of a pitchfork which he hands to the person closest to the penetration of the lodge as he does not enter the lodge. The final figure is the person being healed, in this case my friend.As this sweat was a personal healing we all had to be intimately involved in the preparations, we did not have to build the lodge only cover it with skins and tarps. The frame of the lodge had been make for a previous sweat. Before we could cover the lodge we had to lay down cedar on the floor of the lodge in an intricate manner ground on the traditional beliefs of the Mohawk. This task is normally done by the women and those men who are attuned with their feminine energy, as such I was asked to join in this task. put down the cedar branches that have been cut into small pieces was a very calming exercise it also provided me with a chance to learn about somewhat herbal lore from the other women.