A dual sight, weaving and embroidery

Oaxaca, Mexico, April 2017

Bona fide temazcal experience with our dear zapotec weaving teacher maestra Norma and her family at the end of the residency. Despite our mutual language barrier, they let us share their private lodge for a cleansing ritual with warm kindness.

Temazcal is a meso-american structure (« sweat lodge ») for healing, health improvement and purification. Our teacher’s sister entered the lodge -entirely, from head to toe- and lied beside us as we got in -one after the other- to cover us with herbs wet with hot water. But all of us 3 visitors had to keep our breath at the entrance of the lodge as it is extremely hot inside, enough for our bathing suit to quickly get super wet from our own sweat. After 3 cycles of heat and cooling down, we were wrapped in total  well being. It’s somehow easy to sense that Temazcal was and is also used as an access to alternate states of consciousness.