106 ICE placement #11

Cedar bath ceremony day.

Part 1: Beth, Lisa and I went out to get out cedar. Now I need to build an image of how the three of us looked. Lisa was wearing jeans, sneakers and a light coat. Beth was wearing, legging with knee high socks, another pair of pants over this, as many shirts, rubber boots, coat, gloves, toque and coat. I had put on panty hose, socks, pants, a tank top tucked into the hose, a shirt, my rubber boots, my coat with the hood on and tied tight. All of this to prevent any ticks from getting on us. So we went to the area with the cedar, gave our tobacco donations, picked our cedar and came back home. Once home, I basically stripped down to my underwear and had Beth inspect he and my hair for ticks. I’m apparently am in the clear, although at the very moment I’m itchy in all sorts of spots, only because I’m thinking of ticks and I’m paranoid that there is one on me despite my militant efforts. (I have serious tick issues).

Part 2: Beth and I went and sat in the room that was being used for the ceremony. Beth went first. When it was my turn, I gave my gift and my tobacco tie to the healer. The helpers had already taken my cedar, added it to a big copper pot with boiling hot water and let it steep for 10 minutes. Then I got up on the table, and the two helpers covered me in a blanket. Then the healer took my glasses and placed my hair in the “right spot”. Then the healer and her two helpers began. First the healer healer took two wash clothes (by the way, all the wet wash clothes are coming from the basin with the cedar water, hence cedar bath). She washed my face and my hair. Then she held two balled wash clothes on my eyes (telling me that she was asking the grandmothers to the taken away any negative feelings/energies I’ve picked up from things I’ve seen in my life time). Then she put two on my ears (she took the other wash clothes off by the way) and it was basically the same idea as the eye thing, but this time it was dealing with things that I had heard. Then, after she took those two off, she put one on my forehead (my third eye), taking away any negativity that was in my soul. Then she took that off, and placed one cloth on my eyes for the rest of the ceremony. The helpers then placed like 9 wet washcloths  on my chest, and the healer, with her hands on my shoulders, instructed me to breath deeply. With every deep breath out, the helpers moved the clothes down slowly down my body until they reached my feet… This is where I was asked to take a very deep breath and to exhale hard while the healer pushed on my shoulders (sort of pushing the badness out), while the helpers kind of cathartically pulled away all of the washcloths. Then one of the helpers smudged me (using the smoke from burning sage and sweet grass and fanning me with bird feathers…I think it was eagle). Then they all ran their hands over my body, but keeping them about 1/4 -1/2 away from actually touching me. This is how they sense underlying issues, they can somehow feel it. We went through this whole process one more time and then we were done. At the end, the healer told me that they sensed two areas with “problems” (this wasn’t her wording… she said it in a much better way)… anyhow, she basically indicated two problems that there’s no way she could have known about… not in a million years.

It was pretty fantastic experience actually. After I was done, I felt relaxed and a little lighter even… but then one of the helpers told that this feeling shouldn’t last too long and that I would end up feeling heavy and tired… and I certainly did. In the end Beth and I couldn’t stay in the cedar bath past 1pm (the other people in the room stay and play shakers with the music and chant).. but with all of the smoke in that room, I ended up just needing to take the rest of the day off of cedar bathing… They continued on for another 4 hours, we’d been at it since 8:30 ourselves.

I wasn’t too sure what to expect… but I went into it with an open mind, and in the end I was really rather surprised and impressed. They were spot on, even with Beth too (I feel being the new outsiders, that we were good test subjects in that they did not know very much about us). It’s quite interesting, and totally unexplainable by any science I know, but I guess it offered me some personal proof that there is a place in life for spirituality (what ever it may be)… and you just need to find what is meaningful to you. I needed to come to peace with myself about that. This cedar bath ceremony taught me this, and the fact that there’s a reason that traditional medicine has lasted so long… because it seems to work!

I am so glad I ended up going to NOSM and going on this placement.