Betting on Myself: Lessons From My First Sweat Lodge

3 days, 16 men, 12 archetypes

Oct 25, 2025

Sometimes you need to leave your regular life behind to remember what living actually feels like.

On October 10th, I celebrated by 55th birthday with the sound of a drum being banged outside my door. It was our group’s wake up call.

I was on Day 2 of the Men of Movement led by Mike Salemi. I was grateful for a comfy bed and a great night of sleep. The most noticeable thing was the fact that I didn’t immediately reach for my phone, as I had turned it off the previous afternoon, knowing it wouldn’t be back on until Sunday. Old habits die hard, and it was telling just how much my instincts were to ‘check in’.

I quickly dressed and made my way down to our meeting center. Over the course of three and a half days with 15 other men, we would do the physical, emotional and inner work to find our edges.

Each day began with a round of Chi Gong, led Dr. Jonny Suarez. I had forgotten how much I missed the martial arts. Years ago, while living in Atlanta, I had taken up Wing Chun Kung Fu and Jeet Kune Do, and remember it as an incredible experience. I even made it up to Green Belt in Kung Fu. So it was a potent reminder of the importance of finding and cultivating one’s own energy center.

In addition to the Chi Gong, we spent each day meditating. While I’ve been cultivating a meditation practice for decades, this was a new opportunity to make it more intentional. We were asked to try new versions of meditation where we would either see, hear or feel what was coming through and name it accordingly—”see” if a vision came through, “hear” if we heard something, or “feel” if a feeling arose. Breath by breath. If nothing arose, then we would simply say “rest.”

There was a vibrant mix of learning and doing, and we had the ability to work with one of the facilitators on our Archetypes. This particular exercise is based on the work of Caroline Myss who has created a deck to help determine which Archetypes are most active in your psyche, and how they can lead you to achieve greater insights into your life.

The session was led by Greg Schmaus, who guided us to pull 12 of the cards that we most resonated with and then in subsequent sessions, ‘cast’ the cards across our wheel of 12 houses. These include Personality, Life Values, Home, Spirituality, Relationships, Highest Potential, and more. Using my intuition to draw these was a powerful experience and it was uncanny how many of the cards ended up in just the right house.

What struck me most was the 10th house—the house of Highest Potential. The card I pulled was the Gambler. This speaks to the concept of trusting my intuition and betting on myself. As an entrepreneur, this resonated deeply: the idea of committing to a process, delaying gratification, and understanding that this is my purpose.

The work we did was just the starting point and I’ll be exploring my layout in detail over the next year, working on one house each month. Each archetype-house combination is an invitation to dive deeper for self-reflection.

Through a storytelling exercise on Day 2, I was able to experience a cathartic release, thanks to Mike’s guidance. It was a reminder of how I’ve carried childhood wounds into my present day, but that those events shouldn’t, and don’t, define me. I was grateful for the opportunity to share my story in a room with other men who were there to support and listen.

All of this work led up to a powerful Day 3: the sweat lodge. While I’ve had the experience of a sauna followed by a cold plunge (thanks Minnesota), I really had no idea what to expect.

We started the day by driving up to Tim Corcoran’s property, The Headwaters Outdoor School, which sits on a spectacular 32 acres on Mt. Shasta. What a great feeling to drink pure spring water directly from the creek that flowed down from the mountain!

By the way I highly recommend you subscribe to Mike’s podcast, The King Within (which I’m helping produce!), where he interviews Tim for an upcoming episode. Tim’s stories are wild.

With the guidance of Tim’s grandson, TJ, and Xander—both caretakers of the land—we learned how to start a fire from scratch and the reverence they hold for the land and the process of selecting the stones that make their way into the fire, where they heat up for several hours.

The sweat lodge itself is constructed from wood from the site and covered with tarps. We proceeded to crawl in, 16 of us, and sit around the fire pit. For each round, the now glowing red stones were ceremoniously brought in and welcomed with a greeting of “welcome stone!”

The flap to the outside was then closed and we were submerged into complete darkness with only the glowing stones as our light source. Tim sang songs for each round and did some drumming. Each round was subsequently hotter, and suffice it to say I wouldn’t have made it through without the support of the men in that lodge. Thankfully, midway through the four rounds we had the opportunity to take a dip in the 40-degree creek, which was incredibly refreshing.

The last two rounds were the toughest 20 minutes of recent memory. Just when I thought I wasn’t going to be able to take another minute, Tim shouted “open up” and the flap mercifully allowed the light and cool air to begin streaming in.

Given the size of the opening, we had to crawl out on all fours—it was akin to the feeling of being reborn. I crawled over to an open patch of cold dirt and proceeded to lay on my back to cool off with mother earth. As I stared up, all I could see was a ring of pine trees and had no other thought at that moment but immense gratitude.

Life has its challenges—the hard days, the ups and downs, the moments when you feel like quitting and wonder what it’s all for. But it’s experiences like this that remind me of the power of nature, of community, of breaking bread with men who have committed to spend time away from their families for the purpose of living better lives.

When was the last time you truly disconnected? Not just put your phone on silent, but turned it off completely for days? When did you last sit in a room with others and share what you’ve been carrying?

We convince ourselves we don’t have time for transformation, that our daily routines are too important to step away from. But what if the most important thing you could do is exactly that—step away, find your people, and remember what it feels like to be fully alive?

You don’t need to find a sweat lodge on Mt. Shasta (though I highly recommend it). You just need to give yourself permission to seek something transformative. To turn off your phone. To find or create community. To bet on yourself like the Gambler. To be reborn.

What’s stopping you?

With gratitude,

Harry

P.S. If you want a peek at photos from the event, follow me on Instagram, where I’ll be posting those later today!

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