Do you know the power of ritual? The modern age has given us lots of cool and useful new tools, like penicillin and the internet, but in the moment when industrialization occurred, a priceless social technology was buried: the Ritual. It’s time for us, contemporary dwellers to get off our hamster wheels and tap back into the power of ritual.
Rituals are so powerful because they are experiential. They speak to your being through all of your senses. Rituals cause you to feel, and be present in the physical world. Rituals communicate directly with the living, breathing, feeling, wise, intelligent, intuitive part of you; and in doing so, accelerate the change; even for, and especially for modern day people like you and me. The rituals work because they center you in your intention, in your body, and in your power.
As a Ritual Designer, I invite you to start the year by taking inventory of your rituals.
According to Merriam Webster Dictionary, Ritual is defined as:
1: of or relating to rites or a ritual : ceremonial (e.g. a ritual dance); 2: according to religious law (e.g. ritual purity); 3: done in accordance with social custom or normal protocol (e.g. ritual handshakes or ritual background checks).
For the purpose of this article, Ritual also has a 3-step definition:
1. Design of an activity with intention; 2. Implementing and Executing that design; 3. Taking note of the change you create.
Take honest inventory of what rituals you have in place right now. What do they do for you? Rituals are a how you experience the world and how the world experiences you using your body as your creative instrument in the present moment. Its sort of like your body is your pen or your paintbrush. I challenge you to start right now – write out exactly the life you want most; start drawing, start painting. Don’t leave it to vision boards and don’t leave it to strategy of the mind, because calling in what you want most doesn’t work that way. We activate and bring in the new with our doing, with our activity, with our bodies.