Thought some of you may find this interesting.
http://www.vcstar.com/news/2010/mar/06/sweat-lodge-ceremonies-still-held-locally-sinceWater hisses as it splatters in a glowing pit of lava rock at an avocado field outside Ventura. Steam rises. The air in an already sweltering shelter grows thicker, hotter.
Inside that cocoon — a 5-foot-tall lodge made of willow branches and covered with four layers of blankets and tarpaulin — 20 people sit cross-legged on the dirt in absolute darkness. They chant tribal songs. They pray for everything from direction in their lives to a good score in a coming law test.
And they sweat. So much perspiration streams down their bodies that the earth at their feet becomes a muddy puddle. Shorts and T-shirts look as if they’ve been left outside in a thunderstorm.
Last month, entrepreneurial self-help guru James Arthur Ray was charged with manslaughter because of an October sweat lodge tragedy in Sedona, Ariz., where nearly two dozen people suffered dehydration, burns and other injuries. Three people died.
End of five-day retreat
The sweat ceremony came at the end of Ray’s five-day spiritual retreat for which participants were charged $9,000. Survivors said people were vomiting and collapsing in the lodge but were urged to stay in the heat. Ray pleaded not guilty and on Feb. 25, his bail was reduced from $5 million to $525,000.
The deaths have shaded perceptions about sweat lodges everywhere, including the half-dozen in Ventura County that perform the ancient tribal ceremony. Operators of a sweat ritual held in an earthen structure at the Ojai Foundation have discussed making participants sign legal waivers. Two lodges at Lake Cachuma in Santa Barbara County closed because of safety and liability concerns.
But in the avocado field, little has changed. About 40 people stand around a raging fire built over rocks collected from the Mojave Desert and used to turn two small lodges into spiritual saunas. There’s a schoolteacher, a real estate agent, a holistic doctor and two men in their 20s with tattoos on their chests.
They come here to commune with each other in what they refer to as Mother Earth’s womb. They use buffalo skulls and sage in carefully regimented ceremonies. They enter the lodge on their knees, moving clockwise and saying “all my relations” as they enter.
There are no waivers to sign, no mention of liability. And if someone asks for water or to leave the heat for fresh air, there are no protests.
“What happened in Arizona is a separate reality from what we do,” said Moses Mora, a 60-year-old artist and community activist who has been leading sweat lodges for more than 20 years. “That was more of a new age, moneymaking enterprise that has nothing to do with what we do.”
Worried about liability
Sweat lodges in Ventura County range from an American Indian retreat in the Cuyama Valley to backyard shelters in Oxnard, Ventura and Box Canyon outside of Simi Valley. The Ojai Foundation holds but doesn’t advertise an open ceremony once a month. So does Mora.
Most of the operators say the Sedona tragedy couldn’t happen to them because they take precautions. Some question participants to see if they have heart conditions that can make them more vulnerable to heat. All say they offer water or allow people to leave if needed.
“My teacher taught me if you want endurance, join the Marines,” said Josie Salinas, a retired corrections officer who leads weekly sweat lodges for inmates at California Youth Authority in Camarillo. She praises people who ask for water or a break. “I say ‘good for you.’ You know how to speak up.”
The Los Angeles Council of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, a spiritual humanitarian group, runs a camp for disadvantaged kids on Lake Cachuma in the mountains above Santa Barbara. When leaders of the group learned in November that an adult organization that rents the facility was planning on a sweat lodge, with rumors that nudity was somehow involved, they shut it down.
“It was just the concerns of health issues,” said David Fields, the council’s deputy executive director, pointing to the Arizona tragedy as justification for the closure. “We definitely did the right thing.”
Paul Perrotta of Simi Valley operated a sweat lodge at Lake Cachuma’s Camp Whittier. He said camp leaders told him to dismantle the lodge because of worries over the liability that would accompany any kind of accident.
He said similar worries are causing other lodges to close.
“They don’t understand why it happened,” he said of the Sedona tragedy. “It happened because of a man who is now up for manslaughter, not because of the lodge. ... It’s not the gun that’s dangerous, it’s one who uses it.”
Perrotta, who went through his first sweat 35 years ago, also runs a lodge that is used for youth retreats and other events at the Ojai Foundation retreat center in the Upper Ojai Valley. He said foundation leaders haven’t talked about ending the lodges but have broached the possibility of legal waivers.
Sweat lodge operators debate the training needed to run a lodge, with some arguing that it’s necessary to go through a tribal process that includes prayer, four days of fasting and, often, piercing. They argue over money, too, with many suggesting that even recommending a specific donation is wrong.
But they agree lodges should be seen in purely spiritual terms, as a place to pray. They say it’s a way to clear barriers that block people from their full potential. Addicts use ceremonies to gain strength for recovery. Others claim to have visions or even out-of-body experiences.
“I was taught that the lodge is alive, a living being,” said Perrotta, sitting in the dirt in the lodge he built outside his home in Box Canyon. “No matter how we come in, she loves us just the same.”
‘It’s church’
On a cold February Saturday in the avocado field, 20 people sit in two circles — one inside the other — in a lodge so enclosed there is not a sliver of light. Seven red-hot lava stones are placed in a fire pit in a ritual that will be repeated three more times in the next two hours. Water is poured over the rocks.
Leaders of the lodge won’t allow photographs or video of the ceremonies before or after the sweat because they say it is a spiritual experience. When a journalist tries to record the sounds of a chant inside the lodge, the tape recorder is confiscated and later returned. In the dark, a man worries that if any of the prayers are shared with the outside world, they won’t be answered.
The prayers, drumming and chants come in a steady stream. People ask for permission to speak and then talk about challenges in their lives.
“It’s church in a different form,” said Darrell Geer, a 51-year-old entertainment production worker from Glendale who has been doing sweats since 1986. “The difference in the native tradition is that everywhere is a church, everywhere is a place to worship.”
Others say the ceremony helps them feel connected to the world. Velia Soto, an Oxnard teacher for special needs students, said the ceremony makes her feel completely relaxed and at peace.
The heat is intense but not unbearable. At the end of each of four rounds, the lodge’s front flap opens, allowing outside air to enter, and the leader asks participants if they’re OK.
Near the end of the two hours, one woman leaves the lodge briefly for air and then returns. Geer said there’s a feeling in some lodges that if you’re uncomfortable with the heat, you’re not praying hard enough.
But he said being uncomfortable with the heat is different than being in medical danger — vomiting or being on the verge of unconsciousness. Most people who run lodges understand the difference, and those who don’t need to change.
“It’s that fine line between praying harder and being stupid,” he said.
