the wave of stillness comes when I’m sitting on the deck, naked, wrapped in a towel.
The view of the lake is magnificent, and at this time of the day, the ever-stretching golden hour, the light dances on the water, trees illuminated in golden and rust and replayed on the lake’s surface.
I’m shocked at how long the days are and are still extending, the nights still frosty, but dawns pushed further and further in time. It confuses me how cold it is, when it’s so bright this late, how in my mind it should be summer night's warmth, when the wind raises fields of goosebumps in my arms and legs
We came when the lake was still frozen. The women from all over, concentrated in here, and now, this place that God circled on a map for all of us. It’s fascinating to live in a commune. Every moment, every step, we co-create this universum. We make up the rules and we have the right to change them.
We’re learning as we go: each other and ourselves.
and amidst it all sauna is a divine gatekeeper, who governs our time here.
During the cold April Swedish days, sauna was the retreat, the refuge from the cold.In the hotness of the first days of May, surprisingly enough, we still gravitated towards her heat.
The dips in the lake became longer, grew into small laps, and then the circles rippled, like sound waves spreading on the water. We stretched on the deck, letting the sun lick the winter wounds, flush our faces with bubbly and exciting.
if sauna brings up the stillness in my body, the cold moments in between make me aware of the stillness around me. It heightens my senses, opens my eyes to what is always visible.
It’s where we met to stay silent and where we talk.
Apparently, gold must be heated to 1046 degrees Celcius for the impurities to melt away, for the gold to become pure and of itself. It gets rid of impurities. I wonder if that’s why the sauna is the perfect catalyst for the conversations. Maybe it’s because we’re stripped naked, so our talks could be also.
Maybe like the heat that tempers metal, the heat of the sauna works on us, too, and we’re letting out our impurities, the thoughts that weigh us down, and the beliefs that hold us back. All of this, all of the processes feel welcome here, sauna’s walls cocooning us into her safe embrace.
I’m always lighter after a sauna session, and no matter what I came with, after a cold dip, my head feels shocked back into peace.
Today has been cloudy and windy. It’s midday and I dare not go outside yet, nestled in the warmth of my sweater, but can see the grey puffs, from my window already. An universal sign, that the sauna has been lit.
It’s a smoke signal from my tribeswomen, an invitation to shift, to release, to sweat out and transform.
To connect, to soften.
It’s shelter is a constant, a rock that holds our currents, despite the weather shifts—those external and internal sunshines and torments—it’s a place that can take it all, joy and sorrow, the waves of sadness that dash through, like pebbles, bumping against the riversides on their way down, and the waves of stillness and peace, that cover the body, a warm blanket of harmony when nothing has to be altered and everything is welcome
sauna, a perfect vessel, has place for the sweat and the laughter
solidifying ourselves into who we are, as individuals and as a community
burning out the impurities into pure gold
tempering it all,
releasing it back to Mother Earth