Mitakuye Oyasin
By Corey Ann | October 12, 2009
Sanskrit? Nope.
Lakota? Ding! Ding! Ding!
Today, I went to Laughing Winds and had the incredible honor of participating in a sweat lodge. (Please don’t roll your eyes, I promise I am not completely granola.) Basically a sweat lodge is a spiritual version of a really hot sauna (around 140 degrees) that started with Native Americans. We spent about 20 minutes in the hut, with red hot rocks, praying, chanting, and listening. Then there’s a break, and we do another 20 minutes. There are 4 rotations (one for each direction). “Mitakuye Oyasin” translates to “all my relations” or “we are all related” and is what you say before you enter the sweat lodge.
Anyway, it’s something I’d wanted to do for a while, and a coworker at New Life Lodge invited me to this one and I jumped at the opportunity. I got a little nervous, so I kept reading in my Yoga Anatomy book about breathing. Supposedly some people can get overwhelmed with how hot it is and they feel like they can’t breathe. I did not want to do that. So I read, and read. And found this.
“It is interesting to note that in spite of how it feels when you inhale, you are not pulling air into the body. On the contrary, air is pushed into the body by atmospheric pressure that always surrounds you. The actual force that gets air into the lungs is outside of the body. The energy you expend in breathing produces a shape change that lowers the pressure in your chest cavity and permits the air to be pushed into the body by the weight of the planet’s atmosphere.”
I don’t know about you, but that definitely threw me for a loop. I tried to explain it to my brother and mother and we had a nice chat about it. (Imagine Aaron doing different breathing styles saying - what about this one! and this one!)
However, this concept was incredibly important for me to learn before the sweat lodge. Because when things got rough - and they got a little rough towards the end - I kept repeating two things to myself. 1) You’re ok, trust your body. 2) Just let the atmosphere do its job.
Yeah, leaning towards crunchy granola.
Anyway I know this doesn’t have THAT much to do with yoga, but it’s a teaching from yoga that did help me and will help me in my life.
Also, during the third of the four rounds in the sweat lodge today they talked about giving thanks and remembrance and connecting with all the mothers and grandmothers and women of the world. Thank goodness we were in complete darkness because I had both sweat and tears pouring down my body. I am completely overwhelmed when I think of the strength of women. When I think of women I’ve never met, of the women before me, and of my family and of my friends. Strength power strength power.
And during the last round the leader sang this song to us, and then everyone who knew it sang it very loudly. I wanted to share it because it was so touching. And I know this is just typing, but I don’t think we hear these things often enough.
How could anyone ever tell you
You were anything less than beautiful
How could anyone ever tell you
You were less than whole,
You could anyone fail to notice
That your loving is a miracle,
How deeply you’re connected to my soul.
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