It is pitch black.
There are four positions we are told we may take if it becomes too intense — though leaving is not one of them.
Sitting upright on the circular stone bench built into the dome.
Curled on the bench.
Sitting on the earthen floor.
Or chest down against the ground.
I remain upright on the stone.
The first surge comes when her male helper brings in the glowing coals. He opens the small door, and she heaves them with a pitchfork into the center of the dome. A bucket of water follows.
Steam erupts.
She begins with the body.
“What is your relationship to your body?
To your father’s seed?
To your mother’s womb?
To the Great Father?
To the Great Mother?”
More coals. She counts to four in Spanish as the door is covered again.
Uno. Dos. Tres. Cuatro.
Pitch black. No sight of her. No sight of my daughter.
Only heat.
Again, the door opens. More coals. More water. Sweat dripping down my spine. The mental layer.
“How are you loving in your mind?
Do you breathe well?
Breath is love. The opposite is fear.”
The water hits the coals.
She speaks of emotion — of water.
We cry when we are angry. When we are sad. When we are in awe.
Water is life. It moves. As our emotions move.
Another round. The grandmother coals are brought. This time she asks permission for the helpers to enter the dome with us. Too heavy even for her.
Bright red in the center. A firm countdown. The opening covered.
The greatest heat surge yet.
It feels as though spirit itself is stoking every opening in my body.
Each time the door opens and closes.
Each time the coals arrive.
Each time she counts.
I remain in the first position.
Right hand, fingertips gently touching the stone beneath me. It is warm now, slick with a puddle of my own sweat. That becomes my home base.
My breath is slow. Subtle. Deep. Expanding into my ribs.
I know I can stay.
When it is over, she tells us to crawl out.
We do not stand. We crawl.
Toward the still-burning fire across from us.
My body is shaking — not from fear, but from something that has been broken open.
I press my palms and knees into the earth.
My daughter emerges behind me.
Then the shaman comes out. She does not speak. She lowers herself fully onto the ground — arms extended; body surrendered — in a complete pranam.
Seven minutes. Maybe more.
She remains there in silence.
Reverence pouring through her body.
And I understand.
This was never about enduring heat.
It was about bowing to it.
About breathing with it, if one dares.
Devotion.
Breath as devotion. Life.
Breath as empowerment.
Breath as fierce feminine force.
Later, my daughter — a double half-Ironman, a businesswoman, an athlete — tells me it was the most intense experience of her life.
She moved to the third position to get through it.
“I couldn’t have stayed,” she says. “But I knew you could.”
She did not yield to the breath.
She knew that I did.
And somehow, that was enough.