Inipi

inipi
The reason I’ve been so rapt in thought on rituals is because of the blessing and luck that’s
come to me by way of a steady stream of exposure to wonderful, powerful indigenous
healing ceremonies of the earth’s tribal people. My first energetic taste of the drumbeats of
a pow wow in Michigan’s upper peninsula lead to the community uplift of the annual
footrace at the Taos Pueblo in northern New Mexico, showing me the way to sweatlodge
ceremonies with other North American tribes and finally funeral rites and healing practices
with the Tay, Red Szao and other minority groups of Vietnam.
Years after first being drawn to what for a boy from the northwest suburbs of Detroit
proved to be some pretty exotic purification practices, I was fortunate enough to have a true
Teacher, a Medicine Man who was an effective healer amongst the Sicangu Lakota Sioux
or Burnt Thigh people of the Rosebud Reservation in South Central South Dakota. At the
center of the center of Lakota Ceremonial life sits the most widespread indigenous tradition
practiced today – the sweatlodge, or what the Lakotas call inipi. The Lakota people were
tenacious in clinging to their ceremonies through a time when many other American Indian
tribes were forced by the pressure of missionaries and the Federal government to give up
them up. Inipi survived as did the songs and ways of its practice.
The Lakota word inipi makes for a very interesting study: ‘In’ is a supplemental prefix
meaning ‘By’ or ‘With’ just like in English. ‘Ni’ means the energy of life, like ‘Chi’ energy
or ‘Ki’ from the Japanese martial art of Aikido. And ‘Pi’ comes from the popular Lakota
word that you already know: Tipi, the place of abiding, ‘Pi’ alone meaning to abide.
Put it all together and it translates roughly to The Ceremony By Which They Dwell in the
Energy of Life. Back to the previous post on the power of ritual, if you as a human piece of
equipment ever long to find your way out of anxiety or depression, foster emotional
balance, or simply desire less drudgery and more ecstatic happiness, try Becoming The
Energy of Life. Of course, instead, you can try making an exhaustive, bullet-point list of
every last one of your co- dependant patterns, cling to collective co-dependant support
groups and try and divulge every last bit of your emotional pain. Beware of spiritual
teachers who overly reference co-dependancy and addiction, as they more than likely have
not healed themselves of these issues.
OR you can take the more direct route, like the one offered by inipi, that is: raising and
purifying the vibration of your own energy by spiritual purification. When you can make
the barrier between your inner and outward worlds disappear, when you start to move with
the rhythm of nature, not unlike like the sun and the moon and the stars, when you literally
become the cosmos, you and the Universe meld into a living activity that is one, in
complete accord. And that makes for permanent psychological changes as well as some
seriously healthy and good times.
The traditional Lakota prayer that acknowledges this is the spirit of Matakuye O’yasin, a
term meaning “All my relations” or “We are all related.” Beginning and ending all Lakota
Ceremonies, Matakuye O’yasin signifies the inherent Native American belief that we are
connected to and thus pray for ALL our relatives, every human being and every living thing
on this earth, from every animal down to the tiniest insect, every plant down to the bud of
the smallest wildflower, and all the way back up to the sky and the stars and beyond,
including the world of our ancestors, in a web of interconnectedness that runs backward
and forward through time. THAT is our true heritage and our legacy, where we all came
from and where we are all going. Back to that pesky old human condition, this opens a door
to an everlasting freedom in the finest sense of the word.
A final note for now on inipi – when a ritual like this is enacted, it must be felt deeply and
taken on with wholehearted courage in order to truly experience the growth it offers. What
cleanses your being mentally, physically and spiritually is your OWN relationship to the
Ceremony, not anyone else’s creative interpretation. Designed to put you in touch with a
part of yourself that you’re normally NOT in touch with, it requires a willingness to go
there. But without a willingness to confront oneself, it’ll simply never happen.
Thankfully, in one of my teachers’ notable lessons, he said that if you were to study the
inipi, it would take you your lifetime. So there’s lots more to discuss and plenty of time to
do so. Doksha (Until The Next, a.k.a. Later)
“Enlightenment is not imagining figures of light but making the darkness conscious. The
latter procedure is disagreeable however and therefore unpopular.” – Carl Jung
http://www.thespiraljournal.com/2011/10/inipi/

Inipi

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Inipi

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Inipi

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

inipi

You might also like