April 2, 2002
The Women's Sweat
By Loba
Each summer we host a Wild Women's Gathering on a magical river in the Gila Mountains of S.W. New Mexico. Wild as in "self willed", not "out of control." Natural women. Feeling Women. Of our many events and circles none is more powerful than the medicine sweat. The sweat lodge has served as a tool of connection and purification for ages, from Nordic stone pits to the willow lodges of Native American tribes. For the women of the Earth, it is more than a cleansing, it's a way of returning home.
Every stick we pick up, every log we carry, we impress with our energies and intentions, feeling our prayers pass through our hands into the wood, and then into the fire. Each rock we gather is filled with our thanks, before being stacked next to the pit. A night of stirring the coals, hushing our busy thoughts, and quieting our noisy mind. Spirits dance around the circle of light, running from tree to tree just beyond our sight. In that darkest hour right before dawn, wild women stand naked before the sacred cliffs, and each speak our intentions out loud. We use old antlers, lifting the glowing rocks to the lodge. We reenter the willow-framed womb, pull the door tightly closed, and begin pouring the water on the stones. The sudden hiss is Mother Earth "shushing!" us, demanding our complete attention. The steam stings at first, and then embraces us in its heaviness. The heart of the Mother Earth is molten and soon her heat is our heat.
Transformation is the wild woman's dance˜ and our stage is the cauldron of change. We willingly step into the fire of experience and emotion again and again, its flames stirring our presence and passion. The energies of bad relationships, of smothering habits, or past mistakes, are reduced to a light ash that‚s quickly blown away in the canyon wind. We bathe in these fires until nothing else remains but the absolute essence of our native self, our core being, our essential womaness: who we really ˜fully˜ are. Each time we step back out enlivened, and made healed and whole once more!
And so we sweat. Sweat the salt of the seas, the fluids of the womb. Sweat fear, sweat lust, sweat struggle and childbirth. The sweat of generations. The sweat of work, and the sweat of play.
We are welcomed by the lodge, the heat, the spirits. We are of this Earth. We are never unclean, not even in our moon-time.
Here is the safe place to surrender, surrender to authentic self, to emotion and need, to Earth and Spirit. It's not just our toughness that makes us strong, but our willingness to be vulnerable, our readiness to reenter the hearth of intense feeling.... and intense heat. To grow, to risk and shed. To age, and evolve. To die, and be reborn.
Both the orgasm and the sweat lodge are sometimes called "the little death," and for a reason, because done right, we come out its sacred womb born again into our genuine selves, free of pretense, knowing how to use our fears to empower our movement forward. We bravely face more heat and steam than we think we can stand, picturing we are hurt and burned. We panic, thinking we can't breathe, or that we can‚t take it anymore.... but we do. We press our heads close to the ground and breathe slow and deep, like the Earth itself. We hear how our heartbeats echo the heartbeat of Gaia, and how she will never let us go. We add still more water to the rock, and in this way, we exceed our imagined limitations. Then, no matter what walls or limits we ever seem to face, we know we have the power to get past them and keep going.... in the direction our hearts set, and in glad service to our most meaningful purpose.
After each round of steam, we rush to the river to be held and cooled. We can feel the heat of the lodge in our skin, even completely submerged in the cool, cool water. We feel the borders between us and the canyon dissolve. We are one with all that is, all that was, and all that can ever be.
Loba teaches, cooks, plays and celebrates on a wilderness sanctuary and ancient place of power that she helps care for. She hosts women for quests, wildfoods gathering and preparation, and special resident apprenticeships. Loba‚s next Wild Women‚s Gathering in the Gila will be July 20-27. Contact: The Earthen Spirituality Project, Box 516, Reserve, NM 87830 <earthway@concentric.net> <www.concentric.net/~earthway>.