Oct 23 (THAINDIAN NEWS) The sweat lodge, or it is also known as the sweathouse, medicine lodge, and medicine house is a ceremonial sauna and is an important ritual used by some of the North American First Nations or Native American cultures.

There are several styles of sweat lodges for this purpose, that include a oblong hut similar to a wickiup, or even a simple pit dug into the ground and covered with planks or tree trunks. Stones are typically heated in an exterior fire, and then placed in a central pit in the ground.

The Sweat Lodge ceremony was a response to influence of European culture with its corrupting effect on native culture. With the advent of alcohol and the brutal inhumane treatment of the natives, the urge to re-purify themselves and find their way back into traditional ways of living became strong, as they thought that the corrupting influence and the non-religious ways of the European culture was increasingly poisoning them. Then the Sweat Lodge Ceremony was born, out of this humble need to purify one-self out of the corrupting ways of the European culture and ways.

In recent times, there have been some causalities too after participating in this spiritual tradition. An Arizona homicide investigation is now looking into three deaths, after a woman died more than a week after participating in a sweat lodge ceremony that also hospitalized nearly two dozen people.