Sweat Lodge: A Review
This past weekend my good friend Luke sent me a wake up call, asking if I would like to go with him to a sweet lodge. I thought to myself, “Yikes, this is going to severely interfere with my Saturday afternoon calisthenics routine down by the sound,” but then I thought “Aw heck, I’ll go anyway. After all, this sweet lodge sounds pretty sweet.” Twenty minutes and an orange later, I was in Luke’s hotrod, on my way to the sweet lodge. Little did I know, I was in for one of the sweatiest days of my life.
Why was my day sweat-drenched? It all comes down to a simple mis-communication. I thought that Luke, who has a very strong and noticeable Staten Island accent, said SWEET lodge, but in reality he had said SWEAT lodge. Though the difference here is only one letter (that letter being A) the implications are significant. What did I expect? I imagined a lovely gingerbread house, with candy cane gutters, a twizzler garden hose and a gumball compost pile out back. I pictured a nice little candy lodge, something straight out of Hansel and Gretel. Well, the experience was like Hansel and Gretel…in the sense that I felt trapped in an oven for two hours.
A sweat lodge is just that: a lodge whose primary purpose is to make its inhabitants sweat like pigs. Its secondary purpose is to fuel people’s homoeroticism. Its tertiary purpose is to brainwash me into becoming some psuedo-wiccan-pagan-native american wacko. Its quaternary purpose is to give me a cold. And I will be the first to say that the sweat lodge succeeded in all the aforementioned purposes with flying colors.
Upon arrival, Luke and I paid the nominal “sweat-fee.” Paying fifteen bucks so that I could sweat? I already felt a change in myself! We were then assigned our “sweat-names.” The people who ran the sweat lodge, two “partners” named Crow and Bear-Paw Big Heart, were obviously very, very in-tune with nature. Clearly, names like “Luke” and “Roy” were not natural enough. Our new names helped us to fit in much easier: “Fluke Rainbow” and “Royal Moon.” After we drenched ourselves in mud and watched a ceremonial yonic massage, we were ready to begin waiting to go in the sweat lodge.
During the 45 minutes wait Fluke Rainbow and I alternated between drinking lots of water and trying to get any and all shit out of our systems. The reasoning behind this was, 1) we wanted to make sure we were hydrated, 2) shitting in an already hot tent would be embarrassing, even for people who were now answering to the names Fluke Rainbow and Royal Moon.
The group sacrificed a new born calf, shot seven dogwood arrows eastward, wove a string of prayer flags and then announced that we would be entering the lodge. The lodge was roughly four feet high at its center and about twenty feet in diameter. Try to picture those dimensions in your mind. Now picture 50 people squeezing inside. I bet you’re starting to sweat already!
Before we entered we had to strip down. Bow Chica Bow Wow! Finally! Oh wait, before we stripped down we had to separate into two groups, boys and girls. Bow Chica Weep Womp… I stood next to Fluke Rainbow, wearing only my shorts, surrounded by lots of senior citizens with wolf tattoos and wrinkled waistlines, and I thought to myself, “Royal Moon, what have we gotten ourselves into?” I was soon able to answer that question: I had gotten myself into a pitch-black tent, with 120 degree temperatures and lots and lots of half-naked dudes.
I realize at points throughout this review I have “stretched the truth.” For example, it only cost twelve dollars to go, not fifteen, but this paragraph is completely true. Scout’s honor. The women entered the tent first, followed by the men. Before entering we were sprayed with incense, shook our bare-feet over burning sage, touched our heads to the ground, were told to repeat “To All My Relations,” were tapped with an eagle’s feather, stroked with a condor feather and allowed to enter the tent. That’s true.
Inside (and this paragraph is also completely truthful) we had to squeeze as tightly as possible, forming a circle around a center pit. The quarters were too close to even sit Indian-style. I had my knees pulled up to my chest. My body was pinched between one person’s ambiguous loins and another person’s mature rattail. Once everyone was inside and all of the delicious oxygen had been filtered out, the priest spoke up to begin the ceremony. The first prayer was dedicated to a naked baby named Icanu with a gigantic penis. Yes, there was a baby in the sweat lodge, but, as far as I know, his gigantic penis was unharmed. Please note, that I am still not lying.
I may or may not now begin exaggerating again. The sweat lodge process is divided into four rounds: you sweat for twenty minutes, take a ten minute break, then sweat again. As many of you know this process, which allows for the body to rapid switch between burning hot and freezing cold, is terrific for the immune system. Already the sweat lodge had accomplished its fourth goal: giving me a cold.
Inside the lodge, things were really heating up. The tent is warmed by a bunch of red hot stones that are placed in the center. Water is then drizzled over them and, like broccoli, we are steamed. This was relaxing in a locked-car-in-an-August-parking-lot sort of way, until the priest began singing. Or shall I say chanting? Or shall I say incoherently annoying me? The first tune was, as expected, a song of praise to the bison mother. I transcribed the lyrics:
Wawa wai ha ha tanka ton ton waaaaa
Wawa wai ha ha tanka ton ton waaaaa
Wawa wai ha ha tanka ton ton waaaaa
Wawa wai ha ha tanka ton ton waaaaa
Guyhai doo guyhai doo shan shan wai ohh
Guyhai doo guyhai doo shan shan wai ohh
Those lyrics were then, of course, repeated four thousand times to the metronomic cadence of a tiny hand drum. The only thing better than the sound of droning, sweaty adults all around you? Not being able to sing along because the song is in a made up language. Nevertheless, I praised the bison mother pretty good.
The priest made the executive decision to cancel the break between sessions one and two. So, I trudged on through the heat balancing on the verge of death. I don’t think I’m a good enough writer to describe how insurmountably hot it was. The air was literally too hot to inhale. Breathing-in burnt my throat as if I were drinking a cup of scorching tea, mixed with scorching soup, mixed with butane and a match. In order to breathe I had to resort to pockets of “crotch air” as I later dubbed it. “Crotch air” is similar to regular air, in as far as its breathable; however, crotch air is only found in the tiny area around my crotch. I was able to breathe the crotch air because it was tucked away between so many naked thighs that it was a little less burning than the air around and above my nipples. So, every time I needed to breathe I had to spelunk down between my legs, driving my nose as close as possible to my own genitalia. Only then would I get a gorgeous sip of barely tolerable, rank, crotch air. As you know breathing tends to happen fairly regularly when you are a living human-being and all this crotch diving was cutting in on my meditation time significantly.
The best part of the experience was getting to leave that tent after the second round. It really does make you appreciate actual air, so mission accomplished as far as that is concerned. The third and fourth rounds were a bit more doable. I nestled myself along a back wall, so at least one quarter of my body was not rubbing against another human furnace. In the end, did I come away a changed man? Maybe. Can I now bend fire, send messages through the wind and predict world events by looking at tree bark? Yes, but that has nothing to do with the sweat lodge.
I’ll end this post with a comparison, using some video footage. First, I’ll present my expectations. When I saw all these hippie gurus talking about equality and enlightenment and self-actualization, I anticipated the sweat lodge to end in a celebration similar to this. In reality, the whole experience was more akin to this. Still, it was a fun time.
A fun time that I will never ever subject myself to again.
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