See You In The Sweat Lodge?

The sweat lodge is one of the most powerful, humbling and transformative ceremonies I have experienced. My first was thirty years ago, during my training as a curandero (Maya healer) in the highlands of Chiapas. After many years of sweat lodging across Mexico, Guatemala, Europe, India, Bali and beyond, its healing wisdom continues to guide my path and deepen my connection with all things sacred and beneficent. It offers a space for myself and others to come together to cleanse, surrender, release, transform and heal.

Essentially, it is a ceremonial natural steam bath, and its main purpose is purification. It relieves stress, cleanses toxins from the body, supports recovery from illness, helps process emotions, transmutes negativity and revitalises one’s life force. According to the mythology of the highland Maya of Chiapas, the sweat lodge came into being when the sun banished the moon from the sky after a quarrel and sent her down to earth. The stars, their children, built the moon a home, which became the sweat lodge. Many traditions preserve the practice of entering the lodge on full and new moons to connect with her divine female medicine. Universally, she is known as the womb of the earth — associated with fertility, rebirth and rejuvenation.

There are as many different types of sweat lodge as there are native traditions, with regional variations depending on local materials, climate and customs. The North American Indians typically use a hemispherical structure made from willow boughs, covered with blankets. Volcanic rocks heated on an external fire are then brought into the lodge and sprinkled with water and herbs, filling the space with steam. Further south, the Aztecs and Mayans built more elaborate rectangular sweat houses from rock or adobe, with a fire chamber inside and a chimney to allow the smoke out. In both cases, a shaman or elder presides over the ceremony, mediating between the human and spirit worlds. The sweat lodge is both a homage to the earth and its ancient guardian spirits, and a sacred space of prayer and healing where participants are encouraged to look within and process layers of trauma, often carried through ancestral lineages.

The dark space of the sweat lodge represents the cosmos, where the elements of earth, fire, water and wind dance and clash together, bringing the world into being through their raw natural energy. When we sit inside the lodge, we experience these sacred elements reorganising themselves within us. We surrender parts of ourselves — fear, false identities, anger, sickness — and give birth to new aspects: creativity, acceptance, forgiveness. In this way, obstacles transform into opportunities for growth.

The earth becomes the strength of our bodies and the equanimity of our minds; the water, our bloodstream; the fire, our life force; and the wind, our breath. As we sit in the heat and the darkness, breathing in the medicinal steam from the herbs and the minerals released by the basalt rocks, we create a space where things can be as they are — opening to the deep karmic processes unravelling within us. After four or five rounds of prayer, silence, song and cleansing, we emerge into the light once more: reborn, renewed, and ready to face life’s challenges.

The sweat lodge is an interface between the physical and non-physical worlds. Here, we can repair the ruptures between them, retrieve our elemental essences, and remember who we came into this world to be. It is a place of truth, where we let go of resistance and masks, face what is present in us, and process our trauma with loving kindness. Above all, it is a place of rebirth — a space to wake up, to grow, and to embody the fully realised versions of ourselves our ancestors dreamed of, many moons ago.