h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

A sweatlodge is a Native American cleansing thing - like a steam room/sauna, but more involved.
I think that the idea is to cleanse the body through sweat - cleansing the body and the spirit.


The one that I did was at a festival - there had been a massive fire all day, with some rocks placed inside to heat up. A small tent like structure was made with loads of tarps on the outside to keep the heat in. When the evening came, the rocks were removed from the fire and placed inside the tent structure....clothes were removed and people filed into the tent and sat down in the pitch black. Some herbs were thrown on the rocks (probably sage) , and a ritual cleansing ensued - with people saying the things that they wanted to cleanse from their life, things they wnated to bring into their life and so on.

Every 20 minutes or so, we would all file out of the tent and douse ourselves with freezing cold water to bring our body temperature down before heading back in again

Is that where you find your spirit guide?

Not this time, LSF.

I went with my six year old and it was the wrong time for us, although I've done a sweat lodge before. I was Keeper of the North and in our sweat lodge we didn't go out between rounds.

We may well do one next year. Lots of small children did the first two rounds which weren't as hot as the last three.

We did Mongolian overtoning, though and that was . I found I could do it fairly well, although there was one technique that I definitiely need to practice.

SOunds warm..

It was! The first round(East) was quite cool and I though I could easily do this. It got warmer in the second (South) round, the third (West) was blistering and i thought i couldn't stand it. Luckliy we got water passed round to drink and some kind soul poured some over me. The last was also hot, but as I had an active role, somehow it didn't seem nearly so bad and I rather enjoyed the north role. Came out of it with a definite sense of achievement.

sounds cool

Some people are addicted to these things. Me, I liked the sense of companionship and shared experience, but I'm not addicted. We were later told that we could have gone in and out between rounds and that it really wasn't an endurance test. However, I'd been told that First Americans didn't go out, so ...

You're not addicted: you can give up any time you want