How are the 4 rounds of sweat lodge ceremony connect to the rhythm of Forrest Yoga?
Both yoga and lodge ceremony starts with lighting smudge. Smudge is powerfully cleansing! We enter our sweat lodge ceremony with a clear intent to release something, heal, and bring balance to our Life and to our Relations. My nomadic Ancestors used this method to pray and get centered, native and indigenous people and those who adopted this way across the Planet have been using this ceremony. It is a wonderful way to connect to the healing powers of our environment, and cultivate compassion, truly healing our world through healing our relations to our environment and our Tribes. Both in Forrest Yoga and in sweat lodge ceremony we set a clear intent. The process of the intensely sacred yoga and lodge experience carries our intent and prayers to the Sacred Ones. The more open we are to the possibilities the more powerful both our yoga and lodge ceremony gets. In my experience 90 percent of our experience depends on our mental mind set.
Water and hot rocks sizzle, heat is building inside the lodge. With our ‘hot part’ of yoga practice on a lucky day (in well heated room:) we break into sweat and our old patterns get challenged. The building heat of the Lodge and our Forrest Yoga practice challenge us. You need to uncover, engage and poke at your dysfunctional parts to transform them. And that is uncomfortable. Sitting in the heat is uncomfortable. But prayers, the intent and the asana carries you into evolution. In our Lakota lodge lead by my elder Grandmother Sarah, the third round is the Warriors’ round where you are encouraged to stand strong in the storm like the buffalo. Warriors’ round is also a releasing round. In your yoga practice you are given choices of what you do with what comes up, face it like the buffalo, transform it with self compassion, standing in power or run away. You make your warrior’s choice.
And finally we arrive in the final round, the round of Gratitude. People in lodge lay down (if there is room) to receive messages and visions, answers to their Prayers. In our yoga practice we arrived to savasana or corpse pose. This is an important part of our practice where we need to quietly pay attention to the whispers of our Spirit and integrate our practice so that we can carry on with our Life in a renewed way.
Check out my video on SWEAT LODGE CEREMONIES with one of Hungary’s spiritual leader Sólyomfi Zoltán.
Learn about my upcoming Nomadic Yoga Retreat !! To grab a spot in this special retreat message me !!
