Native American Sweat Lodge
The sweat lodge is kind of “ceremonial” sauna, used by the first settlers in
A lodge was a wooden structure built on earth, made of pliable tree branches, arching in a dome shaped form. This wooden structure was then covered, usually with blankets or animal skins. Sometimes, if the lodges were “permanent”, they were sheathed with soil or mud. The lodge doors are in the east faces sacred fire. The stones were heated at the exterior fire, outside the lodge, brought on forked poles into the lodge, and then placed in the pit in the ground at the centre.
Purpose of the Lodge
For Native Americans sweat lodge had several functions: to purify the body, but also the mind and spirit, to connect the physical with the spiritual and to reconnect with the nature and the earth. The sweat lodge ceremony and its preparation were conducted by the medicine man. It was often connected with the god and creations, or reconnection with the Mother Earth. The ceremony was accompanied with spiritual songs and prayers, or dancing. Rituals were different from tribe to tribe, but the purifying of body, mind and soul was at the heart of the every sweat lodge ceremony. The end of the ceremony differed from tribe to tribe. Some tribes after the ceremony cooled off by rolling in the snow and others have plunged into the lakes or rivers.
Some Indian tribes and Alaskan Eskimos were building lodges heated directly by the fire. The lodge was large enough to receive a dozen of men (women could enter the lodge just during some particular ceremonies when lodge actually haven’t had its original purpose of “bathing”)
Popularity: 19% [?]
