Reveling in ‘a good sweat,’ which helps clear your mind and lift the weight of the world off your shoulders

A good sweat, you know, the kind that sets your chest and face ablaze with heat that comes in unrelenting waves, like an ocean of fire-breaking shore. The kind of sweat that through some hideous alchemy transforms your mouth into an incendiary spout capable of blowing swirling pillars of flame.

You know, a really good sweat (perhaps illustrated by the public domain painting above, titled “Preparing For The Medicine Sweat,” by Joseph Henry Sharp, as posted on wikimedia commons) like that, it’s the ultimate meditation. You might crawl into a sweat like that with the weight of the world on your shoulders.

You might “mitakuyasin” and take your place next to the pit with your mind racing to untangle the myriad problems that lay at your feet. Your heart might be heavy, the fear thick upon you as the door closes and the darkness descends. 

But it’s in that moment, when you’re truly separated from the world outside, when there’s no looking back, no way except through unimaginable shame to extricate yourself from this utter blackness that you’ve chosen to experience. It’s in that moment, as the ikche wichasa calls for that first song and the heartbeat of the drum reverberates into your very bones, when the first ladle of water splashes onto the glowing red rocks, sending steam at your face like a stranger’s slap.

It’s in that moment that all your troubles, all the tribulations you brought with you, simply evaporate. And before you even realize that it has happened, your mind is clear. And all that remains, as you lie as flat on the earth as you can to escape the heat, is a thought as persistent as the pain attacking your every nerve: “Please, please don’t let me say mitakuyasin but let the guy beside me say it.”

You could spend a year on a mountain in Tibet learning from the wisest monks how to meditate, how to let slip away the material concerns of this life. None of it would be as effective at depriving you of your earthly worries as placing your body in an oven and turning it on high.

Thank you Beau Bordeaux and thank you Linda Sue White Eyes for helping me recenter myself, to be in the moment again. Thank you for another good sweat.

Kevin Abourezk is the deputy managing editor of Indian Country Today and an award-winning film producer who has spent his 24-year career in journalism documenting the lives, accomplishments and tragedies of Native American people. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of South Dakota and a master’s in journalism from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.