Swompdonkey

SWEATLODGE

Just spent a week in St-Donat, in the wilds of northern Quebec, on a work-related retreat. It was actually the final course of the four-year management trainee program, designed to help with participants' transitions into permanent positions within the Public Service of Canada.

It was one of those-touchy feely courses, all about getting back to nature and getting in touch with your inner self. Normally, I don't go in for that kind of stuff, but I had an upbeat attitude going into the course, and was determined to get something useful out of it. If nothing else, it offered me a week away from work --just what the doctor ordered.

I knew that the course integrated elements of traditional first nations teachings, and having already taken an aboriginal awareness course three years ago, I was interested to see how the "native" angle was going to play out.

As it turned out, I had a truly amazing experience on the third day of the course, when I participated in a Algonquin sweatlodge, led by a local elder. I made an entry in my journal shortly after the "sweat", which I am transcribing here now:

I went for a run this morning. Needed a bit of a kickstart for the day and it felt good to breath some fresh mountain air into my lungs. After a hearty breakfast, we headed out to the site and split into several groups. While the women left to perform some traditional duties (gathering pine bows for the sacred area, and other stuff like that) the men broke into two units. The first group built the lodge out of birch poles and heavy tarps, the second group, the one I was in, built the sacred fire.

After gathering the "grandfathers", thirty-three football-sized stones, in a pile in the middle of the pit, we began piling the logs with care, building a sort of wood wall around them. I reflected on the fact that these stones represented our ancestors, and that their presence inside the lodge would symbolize the idea that our ancestors were in there with us. Denis, the Mohawk warrior and drug addict-turned spiritual guide, spoke to us as we worked, providing us with many fascinating teachings. I really enjoyed the morning we spent together, even though I was thinking about the coming ordeal the whole time.

After lunch, we made our final preparations for the sweat. My own preparation had begun two days before, as I had been thinking and writing alot leading up to moment I would enter the lodge's embrace. Having already gone through a sweatlodge ceremony three years before, I knew what to expect. Most of the others didn't, and it showed in the worried expressions on their faces. We stripped down to bathing suits and bandanas, which all men are required to wear for the ceremony, and walked down to the lodge, towels in hand. After purification with burnt sage, I made an offering of tobacco to the fire next to the lodge that we had built that morning, and that was now a roaring blaze heating the stones until they glowed. I also consigned a roll of birch bark upon which I had written some personal things to the flames. Then, I said a short prayer, crossed myself, and crawled through the small opening.

The heat of that small space is almost unbearable when you first enter. I greeted the ancestors ("Mushums") and crawled over my colleagues to get to my spot near the pit in the centre. A sweatlodge is not very roomy --maybe five feet high and 10 feet in diameter. I was one of the last to come in, and the enclosed space was packed with over twenty people, and pitch black.

To my dismay, I realized that I would be sitting nearest to the stones, so I wrapped my towel around my bare legs and tried to stay as far from the pit in the middle of the lodge as I could. Dominque, the Algonquin elder, spoke a few words, some of which none of us understood because they were in Algonquin, and handed us his medecine pouch, and a couple of other sacred objects. I myself held my own medicine pouch clenched tightly in my left hand. Then, one by one, ten stones, glowing red-hot, were handled into the lodge using a metal shovel and placed in the centre of the pit. With each stone, the temperature rose, and already, some people were gasping and chuckling nervously as we greeted them with the cry of "Kwe Mushum!" or "hello Grandfather!". Then, the flap of the door came down, and the dark, hot space was plunged into darkness.

Almost immediately, two individuals spoke up, asking to be let out of the lodge. Once the shaken participants had made their hasty exit, we settled in for a good sweat. I was actually quite surprised, but at least the sudden departures had made a bit of room for the rst of us, and I took the opportunity to slink to the back of the lodge, away from the glow of the mushums, where I rested my back against the warm canvas of the already-stuffy tent.

The first of the four "doors" was hard on me --a sweat is broken into four doors of varying lengths, between which the lodge is opened, aired out, and more stones are brought in. I felt, to my suprise, a fair bit of anxiety. It took me several minutes to get control of my breathing. From the sounds around me, I could tell, however, that other participants were going through the same struggle I was, and that gave me comfort. Gradually, I felt my chest begin to loosen as I grew accustomed to the suffocating heat. Dominique's words were a faint drone to me, but somehow, I felt like I was taking them in, and taking comfort in them, too. I gripped my medicine pouch ever more tightly as the sweat poured off my body. Water was poured onto the rocks, making them hiss, and causing a great cloud of steam that made the lodge even hotter. Just when I thought I couldn't take it anymore, Dominique cried "DOOR!" and light flooded into the dark space as an opening appeared in the side of the lodge and some of the heat escaped. This was the end of the first door.

Then, the exodus. Alot of my colleagues had been shocked by the heat, and disconcerted by the darkness. I'm sure that more than a couple of them also had a bit of difficulty in dealing with what was happening inside that lodge and inside of them--something indescribeable that you could say was of a spiritual nature. Unlike my first lodge three years ago, those who elected to tough it out for the next door stayed inside the lodge... no smokebreaks on this job!

The second door, which brought ten more grandfathers into the lodge to join the ten that were already keeping us company, was also a terrible ordeal, and I realized at some point that I was weeping. I could also feel something raw inside me being scraped away, scoured away in that heat. I guess I was taking care of some stuff that needed to be taken care of... and that realization made me want to tough it out all the more. Dominique began chanting, and soon, many of us had joined him, singing in a language we didn't know, but feeling the meaning all the same. Others were moaning and a few cried out in anguish, probably suffering more, emotionally, if not physically and mentally, than they ever had before. Dominique spoke to us of his life, his beliefs, and the teachings of his fathers. He used a spruce branch to douse us with water, then he doused the grandfathers, and the dreaded steam engulfed us again. Then, just as before, at the moment I was ready to pack it in, the door flung open, and light flooded in.

By the beginning of the third door, when eight more mushums made their presence known, I felt as weak as a kitten. I drank a cedar potion between doors, and didn't mind the taste at all. If the natives say this stuff is good for ya, well... I needed all the help I could get! I was in pain, inside and out, but this was a good kind of pain, a cleansing pain. I though about the suffering of Jesus Christ, and the legion of martyrs who suffered in his name. I tried to imagine their torment, and all things considered, supposed that mine simply wasn't that bad after all. In the healing heat, I think I may just have seen my ancestors. For a minute, I felt like my grandfathers and other people I care about were in there with me, and the thought brought me comfort. I also took solace in the fact that I was with my colleagues, and that we had the support of people outside the lodge, who responded to our cries of "tabac!" by echoing the shout. Tabac was something we had been told to shout when we felt like we could not hold on anymore, and surprisingly enough, hearing the word shouted back to us outside the lodge was a real tonic.

The final five stones joined us in the lodge, which, after several more departures, was starting to get positively roomy. There were only about a dozen of us left when the fourth door began. I had annointed myself with bear grease, which felt great, between the third and fourth door, and I found that this stage, while difficult, was not nearly as hard as the first three had been. As I held hands with the persons to the left and right of me, I started to feel peaceful and even a bit euphoric. Sweat was now bubbling out of my skin and pouring to the floor of pine branches in audible drips as I listened to Dominique's teachings, and as he painted a vivid image of a vision, I saw it all.

To everyone's surprise, at the end of the fourth door, Dominique announced a "warrior" door, and as the flap came back down, he doused us and the thirty-three grandfathers with cedar water,which opened up my lungs and felt wonderful. I was now leaning unselfconsciously on Abder, who was sitting to my right, for support. We both grinned as the door came up a final time, and laughed with relief, bringing the ordeal to a satisfying conclusion. I had squeezed my medecine bag so tight that sweat had soaked it through, and was now pouring through the bottom. The palm of my hand was stained brown from the leather.

As I crawled out of the lodge, I embraced the elder and thanked him for being with us in the lodge. My feeling of euphoria was dampened a bit, when I saw the faces of some of my colleagues who had fled before the end, and now regretted their hasty decision. But, as we were told, we had all been there together, and those outside had allowed those within to stay there by their support and their presence, which had given us strength. I found out that at the very end, they had been physically embracing the outside of the lodge to give us their energy. Truly, a generous act.

After sitting by the sacred fire for a few minutes in quiet contemplation, I went down to the lake to bathe in the cool waters. My skin felt like that of a newborn. Water never felt so good to me. I was reinvigorated, revitalized, and content.

On the way back past the lodge, I thanked Dennis, who had tended the sacred fire throughout the afternoon, for all of his teachings. He smiled at me. I was calm, content, and serene. What an incredible gift we had shared.


Later, we discussed the length of the sweatlodge. No one was sure. According to one of my colleagues who had stayed outside and had their watch with them, the whole thing lasted three hours. I wouldn't have been surprised if someone had told me it had lasted 30 minutes --or 13 hours for that matter. Inside the lodge, time did not seem to exist. It was only when we emerged, like newborns out of mother earth's womb, that the strange wonderful dream ended, and we went back to being what we were: Ottawa bureaucrats on a retreat in the wilds of Northern Quebec