How to Infuse Every Day With Ritual
There is a myth that I want to dispel today.
The myth is, that unless we spend hours and hours doing some kind of practice/ritual - such as a long meditation, an extensive yoga practice or a long journaling session - that it isn’t worth doing.
What this myth does is make bringing sacredness into the everyday life feel like an impossibility. The result? We do nothing - which takes us further and further away from our most connected selves.
Presence is one of my greatest challenges
To not be so in my head that I am thinking about things to come, or reflecting on what has already passed - that is something I have to continue to work on.
Bringing a sense of ritual to as many moments in my day as possible helps me to constantly navigate this.
Ritual helps me feel grounded, present and brings me back to myself over and over again. If I thought I couldn’t access this unless I had long stints of time - then I would struggle to anchor myself. And motherhood has shown me that it is absolutely vital for me to be grounded in order to move and flow with the continuous state of uncertainty and change that undoubtedly arises!
I realised very soon after giving birth to Sophia that when I didn’t find this connection throughout my day that I wasn’t able to stay ‘with’ her fully. I would check out and become distracted, irritable, frustrated and look for ways to escape.
In the early days after Sophia was born, it was actually relatively easy to find longer stints of time to myself. Not only did she sleep more - but she was also static and perfectly happy to lie on her mat and gaze at lights and twinkly things!
Now however, as she is nearly a year old (how?!) that time is not quite so readily available! It would be easy to totally sacrifice any form of ritual, however I know that without these sacred moments I am not able to mother in the way I would like.
So I have cultivated an ongoing practice of making so many moments in my day sacred. The mundane and monotonous tasks have become ways to connect in deeply with myself.
It doesn’t need to be elaborate.
In the ‘old days’ - pre Motherhood - I thought that I needed to get on my mat and commit to a long daily practice. But once I had done my practice - I was often checked out.
It became another thing that I had to tick off my to do list and once it was ‘done’ - whether I was present or not to it - I could then get on with living a slightly mindless way.
So in actual fact - having less time to bring an element of ritual into my day has lead to a deeper, more grounded and more present way of bringing the sacred into every single day.
NOW it is less about one single practice and far more about weaving these moments of presence and self awareness throughout every single day.
The three things that make it sacred to me…
Devote. Find something that you can commit to almost every day - choose something that you already doing before adding in extras - that way you won’t feel like it is more to add to an already packed out schedule.
Connect. When you do this activity make it all about connection and presence. Be with it - even if it is only for 1 minute.
Intention. Infuse intention into the activity. So instead of doing it mindlessly - try adding an intention to it. That may simply be stating the words to yourself I AM PRESENT as you do it. Or it could be bringing in an emotion or feeling you wish to embody - such as joy, calm, love. You can use different intentions depending on how you feel on that day.
I find even simply calling some of my daily routine tasks ‘ritual’ can make a shift.
You can turn so many things into ritual…
Your daily shower.
Your morning drink.
Choosing your clothes.
Brushing your teeth.
Your daily commute.
Coffee breaks.
Walking the dog.
Creating your meals.
Washing your face.
Going to bed.
Ritual does not need to be elaborate and time consuming, to me is simply bringing intention and sacredness into the things that I can do daily to bring me back to myself. Over and over again.
What can you use in your everyday life to bring a sense of ritual and sacredness? I would love to know - please do share in the comments below.
Lx
