Sweat Deaths reported in the Sacramento Bee 6/26/02 <//title> <meta name="keywords" /content="sweat lodge deaths, native american, ,Native American Freedom of Religious, Non-Indian Sweat lodge, Sweat Lodge death, Sweat Lodge deaths, spiritual tragedy, sweat lodge tragedy, two die in sweat lodge, Kokopelli ranch, bear tribe, New Age negligent homicides, occult, pseudoscientific, supernatural, fraud, hoaxes, New Age, alternative health, junk spirituality, new age frauds, plastic shamans, fake medicine men, shake and bake, twinkies, wannabees, wanabii, wannabiis, wannabiiz, wanabe, wannabee, wanabi sweat, wanabi tribe, wanabee sweat lodge, logic, philosophy, critical thinking"> </head> <body> <center> <table border=0= cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 width="75%"> <td> <H1>Deaths raise questions about spiritual quests </H1> <br><BR> <p align="left"> By Peter Hecht -- Bee Staff Writer Published 2:15 a.m. PDT Wednesday, June 26, 2002 It was to have been a cleansing ritual, preparation for a "sacred pause" in their lives. <br><BR> About 30 people from Northern California had journeyed into the El Dorado County forest near Omo Ranch last week for a "vision quest." For four days, they were to isolate themselves in the Sierra Nevada, turning to nature in search of meaning. <br><BR> Nationally, devotees to this growing spiritual movement may include adolescents moving into adulthood or people soon to be married or newly divorced. They may be changing careers or grieving for lost parents. <br><BR> They gather in deserts or on mountaintops to cast aside their former selves and be born again in new stations in life. <br><BR> But Friday, something went tragically awry. A woman and man lost their lives. <br><BR> In the dark, wee hours, four people entered a makeshift "sweat lodge" fashioned with a wood frame and made nearly air-tight with blankets and plastic sheeting. In the cleansing ceremony to prepare for their vision quest in the wilderness, they gathered around heated rocks and chanted while breathing vapors of herbs and water poured over the stones. <br><BR> After 1 ½ hours of heat and little ventilation, authorities say, one man and one woman managed to crawl out of the sweat lodge nauseous and nearly overcome. But two others inside -- Kirsten Dana Babcock, 34, of Redding and David Thomas Hawker, 36, of Union City -- stopped chanting and fell silent. Soon one of the other vision quest participants called 9-1-1. <br><BR> "They said somebody was having cardiac arrest or heart problems," said El Dorado County Sheriff's Lt. Kevin House. Emergency workers arrived to find Babcock and Hawker unresponsive, House said, and called for sheriff's deputies "because it seemed a little too bizarre to them." <br><BR> Authorities say the incident appears to be a terrible accident -- not a crime. But the deaths in El Dorado County have stirred concerns and called into question ceremonies employed by a growing number of wilderness and spiritualist groups that bring people into isolated settings for reflective encounters in nature. <br><BR> On Tuesday, House said autopsy results were inconclusive as to what killed Babcock and Hawker. Authorities have speculated that the sweat lodge may have been too hot or poorly ventilated, or that herbs used in the cleansing ceremony may have emitted toxic fumes. <br><BR> "It's a critical issue as to whether anything foreign was introduced," said House, who said toxicology tests may take eight weeks to complete. "The actual cause of death is yet to be determined." <br><BR> House said a local group known as Kokopelli Ranch sponsored the gathering. None of the members, who had ventured onto property owned by the Sierra Pacific Industries logging company for their ritual, could be reached for comment. But House and others say the group is one of the increasingly popular vision quest organizations now operating in the United States and Canada. <br><BR> Many of the groups borrow from centuries-old American Indian traditions -- such as the sweat lodge cleansing ritual -- to help city dwellers and suburbanites deal with their lives' passages and the stresses, the triumphs and heartbreaks of the contemporary world. But some of the groups shun the sweat lodge ritual, saying it may be inappropriate for non- <br><BR> Indians to borrow their customs. And some American Indians who revel in the sweat lodge traditions say they may not be a good idea for those who don't know how to do them safely. <br><BR> The ceremony employed last week -- in which rocks were heated outside the sweat lodge and stacked inside -- was apparently patterned after rituals of the Lakota Sioux in South Dakota. <br><BR> "All Native Americans have a sweat lodge ceremony that varies in tradition, but 90 percent of the ceremony is the same," said Rick Adams, a Nisenon Indian who is a member of the Shingle Springs Rancheria tribe in El Dorado County and a cultural advisor to the Maidu Interpretive Center in Roseville. <br><BR> In its sweat lodge ceremonies, the Shingle Springs tribe uses fragrant herbs, including red clover, white sage and wormwood, as part of a tradition of American Indians "cleansing themselves before they go out hunting." But life-altering self-fulfillment "or coming of age or anything like that," is not part of the tradition, Adams said. <br><BR> He also said sweat lodges should be opened and ventilated every 15 to 30 minutes and that a "sweat leader" should constantly check on the conditions of participants and cool the stones, open doors, pull up blankets or give people water if they are uncomfortable. <br><BR> Authorities in El Dorado County say the Kokopelli Ranch sweat lodge was kept nearly airtight to block out the natural light as the participants cleansed themselves before setting off into nature. <br><BR> "It was 3 a.m.," House wondered. "How much sun was going to get in?" <br><BR> The deaths shocked members of other spiritual organizations known for putting people in nature as a path to self-fulfillment. <br><BR> "I have never heard of anyone hurt like that," said Michael Botkin, director of Rites of Passage Inc., a Santa Rosa group that takes people into natural settings to "find a deeper sense of purpose" in their lives. <br><BR> But in 1993, Kelly Rice, a 35-year-old Austin, Texas, housekeeper and masseuse, died of accidental heatstroke inside a sweat lodge she entered to pray and purify herself as part of a vision quest ritual. <br><BR> Botkin said he has participated in many sweat lodge ceremonies with American Indian spiritual figures. But his Rite of Passage group -- which calls its treks into nature "vision fasts" -- does not do the sweat lodge ceremony because it believes it is inappropriate for non-Indians to mimic the American Indian ritual. <br><BR> Botkin says Rite of Passage Inc. carries liability insurance and has "some definite safety standards built into everything we do." <br><BR> As part of the spiritual rites, nature -- the outdoors -- becomes a "death lodge" in which people are supposed to experience their lives flashing before them and allow their former selves to die. <br><BR> "The first two days, I sat in the death lodge and received the oddest set of visitors, random people from my life," wrote an Oregon woman, Kayla, on the Web site of a vision quest group that sent followers into the southern Oregon desert. "By midafternoon on the second day, the truth of this sunk in: I had been dying for years, and it was time to stop dying ... and be reborn." <br><BR> Many of these spiritualist groups were inspired by the writings of a former San Francisco State University professor, Steven Foster, and his wife, Meredith Little. The couple founded the Rites of Passage organization and the School of Lost Borders, a center near Big Pine in the Owens Valley that organizes self-fulfillment trips. <br><BR> "They go out into an expanse of nature. I call it 'the sacred pause,' " said Angelo LaZenka, the school's co-director. <br><BR> LaZenka, who has participated in American Indian sweat lodge rituals, said the School of Lost Borders doesn't use them. <br><BR> "If we do any kind of sweat," he said, "we build a modern sauna." <br><BR> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- About the Writer<br><BR> --------------------------- The Bee's Peter Hecht can be reached at (530) 295-0627 or phecht@sacbee.com . </p> </p> <html> <head> <title>Sweat Lodge Death