Sweat, Spirit and Community: The Native American Sweat Lodge

From The Native American Sweat Lodge to Custom Nordic Suanas

Some of my most meaningful childhood experiences were spent under a teepee joining members of the Native American Church in Peyote Meetings in the Pacific Northwest and Hawai’i. Peyote is a small spineless cactus found throughout Mexico and the American Southwest containing hallucinogenic properties known as mescaline. Only the adults are permitted to consume the peyote “button” during these meetings, so I always felt like my participation in the meeting was limited as a child.

Where my being a child did not limit me was at the sweat lodge. Like all of my elders, I crawled into the sweat lodge on my hands and knees, sat around the hot stone pit, chanted songs, prayed, breathed in the cedar smoke-filled air, and poured sweat out of my body. Like my elders, I staggered out of the darkness covered in dirt and sweat and headed for the creek nearby for a cold plunge and to clean off. And just like my elders, I enjoyed a deep sense of community, belonging, and spiritual and physical health after a few rounds in the sweat lodge together.

As a toddler in my first Peyote Meeting, my mother recounts me mirroring the chief elder as he stood and delivered his opening prayer for the group. My mother tried to get me to sit down, but apparently, the elder was tickled by my active participation and told her to let me finish the prayer with him. I am not Native American. Sure, I have a tiny amount of Cherokee blood like many others in the US, but my inclusion in these sacred ceremonies was never questioned. I have cherished memories of Native American elders encouraging me to join in and teaching me about the significance of certain sacraments. I also remember many other young men and women who looked like me who received this same open invitation. I can’t speak for why this was. It just was. I like to believe that they wanted us to learn about their culture because they were proud of it and because they felt that it had real value. As I regularly practice traditional Sauna and cold plunge with Hälsa Saunas, I am reminded of that value.

Of course, there are many health benefits to the practice of sauna and cold plunge, but the Lakota term for sweat lodge is “Inípi”, which means “to live again.” That sounds hyperbolic, but the belief that religious ceremony brings renewal and rebirth is not entirely unfamiliar to a predominantly Judeo-Christian society. The Native American sweat lodge is a religious ceremony first and carries with it measurable health benefits second. According to Michael Tlanusta Garrett, PhD., author and professor of counselor education at the University of North Carolina - Charlotte:

“Traditional Native peoples have always believed that healing and transformation should take place in the presence of a person's support network (i.e., family, clan, community) as a way of drawing on the natural support and understanding that exist within these relationships. In this way, the sweat lodge ceremony serves a sacred purpose through the ritual healing or cleansing of body, mind, and spirit while bringing people together to honor the energy of life. Each person enters the lodge with his or her concerns, and together, participants seek both individual and group harmony and balance by sweating, praying, singing, talking, and sometimes just sitting together in silence” (Garrett, et al. 2011).

These beliefs around “healing and transformation” occurring alongside your friends and family are the same ones shared by Hälsa Nordic Saunas. True healthy living cannot be achieved in total isolation. This could mean Hälsa building you a 2-person indoor or outdoor custom sauna, or a custom sauna for all your friends and family.

My family’s involvement in the Native American Church waned as I got older, but whenever a Native American Pow Wow came through town, we would make a day of it. This often led to a reunion with old friends, and before long, I was back under an animal skin or canvas-covered dome, sitting around glowing rocks, smudged with cedar and sage, sweating, and living again.

Otha Graham