How Tiny Rituals Can Change Your Life

What if there was a hack to remind you that your true power to shape your life comes from within you

and is available in every moment?….

Enter Ritual.

While the word ritual is often used as an anthropological reference to ancient, ‘primitive’ practices, or to refer to extensive plant medicine ceremonies, the truth is that ritual is quintessentially human - we’re always doing ritual. Repetitive actions are the way our brain creates patterns to understand the world and minimize excessive energy use.

Our lives are composed of rituals, though most of them are relatively unconscious. Unconscious rituals are called habits.

Because the human brain is incredibly efficient, it places more importance on repetitive actions, carving deeper and deeper neural pathways over time to create habits.

Watching Netflix, going to the gym, eating sweets after meals, smoking, checking your lipstick before a meeting, regularly interrupting people when they are talking, always judging your reflection as you walk past a shop window - habits.

Our current life is the sum of our unconscious rituals (our habits).

But conscious rituals, even tiny ones, can rewire the brain and unlock our power to create the life we want!

Rituals have power.

The question is - are we using that power consciously or unconsciously?

Life affirming habits, like daily walks, exercise, shopping at the farmer’s market, asking how others are doing and actually listening, create a foundation for health and happiness. Harmful habits turn life into a roller coaster of ups and downs dependent on circumstance, driving us on autopilot while deepening grooves of negative thought patterns, anxiety, victim mentality and addiction.

How can we shift the course of negative patterns and mind created suffering?

Conscious rituals, even tiny ones, can rewire the brain and unlock our power to create the life we want!

Pain is Inevitable, Suffering is a Choice

Mind created suffering is part of the universal human experience.

The concept that ‘pain is inevitable but suffering is a choice’ and the practices that provide passageways out of suffering is the content of both ancient and modern wisdom paths, like yoga, Buddhism, shamanism and Depth Psychology.

While we could spend many lifetimes studying complex systems of escaping suffering, we could also just capitalize on simple neuroscience and create a small but repetitive personal ritual that expresses the energy that we’re looking to live into.

One ritual I incorporate into every yoga retreat is a community created Earth Altar to hold the intentions of our journey together

While we might not be able to control what happens to us, our mindset shapes how we perceive our experience. To take it even one step further with the help of quantum physics, our perception, in turn, shifts the types of situations we draw into our life. Our very belief in what’s possible shapes our capacity to experience that reality.

Small but repetitive conscious rituals, as simple as…

lighting a candle, taking three slow breaths before turning on our car, spending time in nature, saying a short prayer of gratitude before eating, practicing walking or speaking mindfully, stretching each morning, thanking our body for it’s health, regularly expressing appreciation our friends and family, committing to a monthly moon ritual or yoga class, (insert yours here)….

may seem like small things but, when practiced repetitively over time, they carry immense power to reshape our brain and shift our attitude towards gratitude, presence, peace and compassion.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit. - Aristotle

If we are the sum of our habits,

what do your habits say about you?

The Smallest Things Create the Biggest Difference

Research shows that even simple rituals can help release stuck emotions, heal trauma, process grief, cultivate resilience and remind us of our interconnection with all life.

While you don’t have to ask 99.9% of your ancestors nor any indigenous medicine keeper why ritual is important, if you’re still a skeptic, look through the Western lens in these articles from Scientific American, Psychology Today and Yes Magazine that explore how research shows that rituals reduce anxiety, improve performance and confidence, and even work on people who don’t believe in them. For example, in a University of Toronto study, participants who performed a ritual before completing a task exhibited less anxiety and sensitivity to personal failure than when they completed the task without first performing the ritual.

Simple rituals can remind us that we have the power to consciously co-create our lives, to consciously walk the path that great mystery lays out before us versus stumbling along, distracted and complaining. We are empowered to choose our own adventure - Compassionate or angry? Peace or overthinking? Gratitude or regret? Self love or self judgement?

A simple and repetitive habit of connecting within has the power to remind us that…

we are magical, wild beings having a human experience,

we are cosmic deities in yoga pants and t-shirts,

CONSCIOUSLY GATHERING together amplifies the impact of rituals

we are children of the Earth,

we have the power and wisdom to choose the future of our lives

we have the power to choose the future of this beautiful planet.

There is a role for humanity on the planet at this time. That role is to remember our nature as love. Each of us is an imperative part of this collective puzzle. Ritual reminds us that the power is in our hands.

Still reading this? If you weren’t sure already, consider this your sign - you’re being called to step up and step inward by practicing personalized daily ritual to support you in remembering who you truly are.

How might you insert one joyful, pleasurable, life affirming

yet simple ritual into your day, starting today?

If you want support in creating healthy rituals, join us in the Earth - Body Wisdom Collective where we gather monthly for new and full moon rituals or connect with me to learn more about 1:1 support to embody the fullness of your power and your joy.

Let me know below, what is your favorite simple ritual that reminds you

of who you want to be (aka who truly are)?