Serenity in Canyon de Chelly

A guest at a Navajo sweat lodge ceremony discovers inner peace through this timeless ritual.

My welcoming Navajo host Winnie Many Horses puts her hand on my shoulder and whispers, “Behave as you would in your white man’s church.”

Participation in a sweat lodge ceremony is not something to be taken casually. The experience can last up to four hours, and temperatures inside the lodge soar above 100ºF. Going to church seems a lot easier.

It is a hot July afternoon, and I have come to Arizona’s Canyon de Chelly to sweat with Winnie and four of her relatives. Standing against the canyon wall, the lodge is a dome made of willow twigs covered with canvas and topped with red Arizona earth. The opening faces east to greet the dawn.

A log fire blazes a few feet away. Winnie’s granddaughters toss in volcanic rocks from the nearby Chuska Mountains. When they glow red, Winnie signals me to take the pitchfork and lay them in the pit inside. She strips off her clothes and crawls into the lodge, sitting alone until the temperature is right before calling us in for the first of four sessions that will honor the spirits of earth, air, and water – the spiritual boundaries of Dinetah, or Navajo Land.

Symbolizing a return to the womb of Mother Earth and the innocence of childhood, the ceremony is meant to purify body, mind, and spirit. For the Navajo, the sweat lodge is a place of spiritual refuge and mental and physical healing, a place to get answers and guidance by asking the Creator and Mother Earth for wisdom and power.

I am the last to enter the lodge. In the sudden blackness I cannot see a thing other than the glowing red rocks, but my other senses sharpen immediately.
 
Navajo spiritual guide Winnie Many Horses meditates beforecommencing a
sweat lodge ceremony in Canyon de Chelly
 

smell the cedar bark we sit on and feel the obsessive heat and the touch of the sweaty shoulders of the other women pressed against me.

In her melodic Navajo tongue, Winnie begins her first song – for the Spirit of Canyon de Chelly, Spider Woman. The relatives join, and after a while I sing along with words I did not know I knew.

Between songs, the silence is broken by a raven’s shriek bouncing off the canyon walls outside. Winnie sprinkles sage and cedar needles on the red rocks, followed by water. My breath instantly goes shallow from the searing steam, but I start to relax as I inhale the sweet smell of cedar. Winnie gathers her strength for the last song of this session. Afterward, the blanket over the doorway flaps up like an eyelid and we crawl out, dripping and exposed, into the hot bright air.

We take refuge under a shady piñon tree. The sun feels dry and hostile. I rub sage all over my body, which is rejuvenating. Later we burrow back into the sweat lodge for three more sessions. Winnie blesses me so that no harm will befall me while traveling home. At the end of the final session, she remains behind.

“She is singing a prayer of thanks to the spirits of Canyon de Chelly,” explains a granddaughter.

We have a final sage bath, dress, and stroll away arm-in-arm as sisters.