Congratulations and Welcome to 52 Rituals!
If you are reading this, there is some part of yourself that is saying YES to the journey of a more fulfilling and whole life. You may be a little curious and apprehensive of what a site devoted to rituals may be about, but don’t worry my goal is to enrich your life by teaching you how to connect more deeply with your own soul and life itself, while introducing you to a new way of being in the world where you are actively co-creating with the Big Mama herself. Some parts of the journey may be uncomfortable and challenging, others silly and playful. Either way if you commit to the process you will gain greater insight into what makes your heart hum and how you can finally foster a self-care practice that doesn’t make your feel selfish or indulgent.
It’s time to get in touch with your soul. She’s been there all along, sending you subtle (AND SOMETIMES LOUD) messages about where you need to go and what you need to do.
It’s time to get quiet, strip away the noise, and tap into that knowing part of yourself that’s here to do the big work. It’s time to, SAY YES TO YOUR SOUL!
So Why Rituals?
Rituals were performed more frequently in ancient times and created a container for which individuals could process emotions both individually and collectively. The specified time of ritual, allowed individuals a prescribed process for which to process emotions which might otherwise be glossed over because of distraction or lack of discipline. Without taking time to properly process events and emotions, they are stuffed or pushed down, where they get buried in the body. Despite the minds thoughts of being “over it” these emotions are often wreaking havoc on our health and overall emotional wellness and will eventual re-surface in order to be healed. In modern times, it seems more imperative than ever to invite rituals back into our life. As our lives become increasingly busy, technologically based and driven by money, it’s more important than ever to find space and time to go back inside. Rituals can provide the framework to help us learn to sit with our souls. To process stuck emotions and interact with our inner child. To reconnect with our creativity and remember what make us feel alive.
To reclaim a deeply meaningful life perfectly defined for us and by us.
A Modern Approach
Our daily devotion to rituals create the fertile ground where the big seeds (desires) of our soul can be planted and nurtured. Rituals create habits and neuropathways in the mind, which in turn create the ideal environment for which we can boldly go for our dreams. We nurture those seeds by actively raising our vibration through conscious choice about our environment including our friends and the media we consume, the food eat and thoughts we choose, and by moving the energy in our body through exercise, breath work and meditation. These are the ways we elevate our consciousness, get in touch with our soul and life purpose and provide the necessary nourishment for those seeds to grow and flourish. We need to feed ourselves not just with food but with time and space, so we can find our own unique flow. For me, this is through the daily ritual of yoga. Yoga is the anchor in which I stay connected to the deepest part of myself and connect to spirit. For you it may be rock climbing, painting or writing.
These rituals are designed to help you connect with that piece of yourself that has been forgotten, lost, ignored, or maybe never found. To find what it means to be in the flow.
How to get and stay there. How to create a life the truly feeds and fulfills you. To stop looking for happiness in the next purchase, trip, raise or drink. To find joy right now, in this moment, with nothing more or less than what you are. You are beautiful and majestic and posed for greatness. So, stop shrinking. Stop dulling your light. Own who you are and where you’ve been. And if you don’t like it, well it simply is a tool to tell you where you want to go and how you want to spend your time.
How are we going to do all of this? Though the cultivation of rituals. Rituals bring reverence, grace and positive habits into our life. They provide structure when things get rough or we get lazy. They evoke ancient wisdom that has been lost in our fast-paced Western culture. The rituals offered here are designed to help you break through your everyday perceptions and thinking and offer a new, simpler and lighter way of being. Rituals invite us to use our intuition and trust in things unseen. Like many things, there are many layers to this work. It doesn’t matter where you are at, it only matters that you begin. Pick the one that resonates with you most first. Try to extend yourself past your normal comfort zone. Perhaps you’ve never meditated or chanting out loud feels strange and weird. That’s OK! Just start somewhere and slowly add in pieces as the process opens you up. Also remember, that if you’ve learned from a different lineage or background, please honor the practices that feel true to you. These are simply my reflections and insights through my own personal journey and research. There is always opportunity to go deeper and in no way am I an expert on YOU. If you find a particular ritual or area is resonating for you it simply offers you an insight into your own particular flow and the work you need to be doing. Now the job is yours to start investigating and diving deeper into that area. Perhaps it’s a new hobby that feeds an unseen part of yourself or maybe you are finding your calling. Either way do the work. Peel back the layers and investigate. Why is this resonating with me? What part of this do I FEEL? What part of myself has been dormant during this phase of my life?
Ready to dive in with me? We’ll be exploring rituals which I have divided into four areas: Health & Wellness, Creativity, Connection and Spirituality. Through this journey we’ll explore ways to journey and descend into the soul and ascend towards spirit. We’ll connect rituals with a chakra, so you’ll be able to understand areas where energy may be stuck and by performing these rituals how you can start to get unstuck. The goal is to always keep the energy moving and flowing. We’ll look at how we can also associate the rituals with the cycles of nature and seasons. We’ll de-mystify seemingly esoteric practices like smudging and the moon phases, so that you can understand their heritage and power. We’ll turn things you love and are drawn to (think crystals and essential oils) into powerful allies on your path to wholeness. What you may have seen as “woo woo” at one time might become an anchor for your everyday. It’s easy to label things we don’t understand. But when we open ourselves up through daily rituals and practice we start to understand their wisdom.
Our health and wellness are the fundamental building blocks to creating a conscious and meaningful life. Without a clear vessel for which the soul can peak through and be heard and served, we will be stuck in the endless chatter of the mind and aches of the body. When we shift our perspective, we can start to see the wisdom of our bodies and their connection to mind and spirit. We can replace daunting exercises and diets with our natural desire to want to FEEL good through movement and the right foods.
We are ALL creative beings. It is part of what makes us human and is an outer expression of our interior landscape. If you don’t believe me look at children. Before we learned to judge what, we created we found joy in expressing ourselves this way. Creativity doesn’t have to mean artistic. You can show your creativity in the way you put an outfit together or cook a meal. It doesn’t have to be pretty and might possibly be messy. But there is a simple joy we can all find from laboring and birthing a thought, vision, inkling into something real and tangible. Creativity is a muscle like any other. Use it or lose it. So many of us were told our art wasn’t good or to stick to math and reading, we forgot the child inside who wants to create and replaced it with an inner critic who has no time for child’s play. These rituals were designed to re-awaken that part of you. To strengthen and trust that creative muscle inside of you. To get lost in THE PROCESS and not fixed on the result. Try things on, explore, be silly, tap into your emotions and intuition. Creativity allows us a way to move through and process our emotions and can you help you catch glimpses of your soul’s dialogue.
Connection is the way we FEEL love and stay connected in the present. It is how we get to see and better understand our self and true nature. Community allows us safe ground to tip-toe into our own greatness. A soft place to land when fear overwhelms us. But mostly community allows us to see ourselves more clearly through the reflections of those people and experiences we attract. We will also dive into ways to more deeply connect with ourselves. Through self-inquiry and journaling we can pull back the layers of the ego and chatter of the mind to discover the core beliefs and emotions which our driving our behavior. With greater awareness we are able to consciously move into the direction of our desire rather then get de-railed by unconscious stories and beliefs.
Our spiritual life connects us to something greater, source, The Universe, God, Our Highest Self, it doesn’t matter much what you want to call it. Learning to live in alignment with the laws of Universe you will find greater flow, abundance and synchronicity in your life. You will learn life doesn’t happen to you but for you. Moreover, spiritual rituals create the container for us to to safely look within, debunk false stories, and come into alignment with our highest self.