return to ritual

a soft place to land

I walk into the annex of the teahouse like it’s a portal. Its effect on me is instant. I mirror its softness and my lungs expand. The room smells sweet and floral, a mix of fresh flowers and dried chamomile. We are ushered in by reverent hosts who imbue the magical space with their energy, inviting us to take a seat anywhere in the room. Esmerelda, our guide for the evening’s ceremony, chops cacao at the counter. An altar is set up with a cushion in the center. Two taper candles drop wax onto tall candlesticks and tealight candles flicker warm light around the perimeter. Flowers are arranged in tall vases at the front corners, orange and yellow and white, all at different heights. We are seated in silence, encouraged to journal our intentions and connect with our breath. I find stillness. My friend Andrew is beside me. Sometimes I wonder who I would be if it weren’t for him. He showed me the Four Agreements when I was 23 and, the first time I meditated, I reached out to tell him what a revelation it had been.

“Why don’t you come to this cacao ceremony with me?” I asked him the week before. “I think you’d like it.” I didn’t know what it would entail when I extended the invitation but my first Tea at Shiloh experience had such a profound impact that I trusted them to guide with sincerity.

At our seats, we receive a small ceramic cup to cradle between both palms. Esmerelda glides around the room to pour smooth, rich cacao into each of our cups. The only sounds are breath, whispers of gratitude and the shiny percussion of cacao falling into itself. Ritual. I close my eyes and inhale deeply, sink a little into my seat.

I, myself, had just supported my sister’s Women’s Circle by leading a group of women in meditation and guided journaling practices. “How do you make each day sacred?” we asked, because the days are getting shorter and dropping temperatures demand that we move more slowly. Collectively, we sipped bitter cacao and shared intentions for the coming month. Mine was a return to ritual. I had pretty much stopped meditating, hadn’t practiced asana in a full three months and I held it in all my body: perceptible rigidity. When I found myself seated in this circle, holding a small cup full of ceremonial cacao to my chest while I tuned into my heartbeat, I felt that I’d been handed ritual on a silver platter.

“How is your heart?” Esmerelda asked each of us. “What is your intention for this evening?”

“I feel at home in my heart,” I said, “and I intend to see where it leads me.”

Friend, this is where it led me first: a concert that turned me inside out so the music and warm evening wind felt inside of me, not separate. When I listen to Dijon in stereo, it already feels like the frequency of love. The experience in real life undid me. It wasn’t only that I could feel the music vibrate in my chest. There was softening, an unknotting, that rippled across my entire body. Tears gathered behind my eyes when he played Baby and sampled familiar songs (higher love for higher!), and screamed raw and ragged from the core of his being. I lived layers and layers of love in deep presence. It felt like coming home.

I designed a week-long ~personal writers retreat~ for myself¹ as practice for retreats I intend to host. Every experience was an opportunity to rest in the seat of my heart but it was the structure, in the end, that invited real softness. I sat for meditation each morning, practiced sun salutations (which challenged my stiff body and reconnected me with my cellular memory of devotion), wrote each morning at the round white table outside of Moon Juice on Rose. My favorite thing that I incorporated was The Fountain writing practices by Chelsea Bieker and Kimberly King Parsons.

When I traveled, and the backdrop of home changed every day, I internalized a sense of home through ritual. It was in meditation that I found my center, in morning pages that I could witness my patterns, through breathwork that I regulated my nervous system, in asana that I came home to my body. When I was even younger, I became obsessed with optimizing my morning routine specifically. Mostly because the benefits were so clear and tangible, and I loved the morning anyway, and everything that followed felt like bonus after that.

All of this to say that I am no stranger to routine but it had fallen away amidst the heat of summer and my erratic schedule and the whirling busyness that New York City compels. When I run around, it’s really like spinning, the strength and speed and destruction of a tornado. The time scarcity that always finds its way to my movie screen had been taking a leading role the past few months. I’d been forgoing discipline in my delirium after late nights working at the art studio, when I would come home - body broken, mind fried - and could do nothing but lay my bones down horizontal. I, a creature of the morning, occasionally have to work until midnight. It doesn’t suit my body, and I feel tired and out of it in the days that follow. It takes me a long time to get myself back on track. Sometimes, life demands that you move faster and you have no choice but to keep pace. Planting myself firmly in New York had that effect. The revered self-sacrifice - but all of the work that I had done previously kept me tethered to my body, hanging on by a thread but still present.

Add to that: In the past couple of months, I tried casting the net of my energy wide enough so home could also feel like something that existed outside of me. In externalizing my home, ritual fell away. I think it’s necessary, sometimes, to let everything go and experiment with surrender. All of my practice had been for that very moment of departure.

The return to ritual has ultimately become a story of coming home to myself. It sounds silly, I am aware, because I am *at the same time* inescapable to myself. But I am constantly learning about the truth of my nature and, in the moments when I am spinning, there is a palpable separation. The trick, now (in post-retreat peace and fortitude), is seeing how long you can hold it.²

As I write this, I am sitting at the table in my living room. I’ve brewed a perfect cup of tea (strong ginger + KCC signature chai + whole milk + a pinch of turmeric + a pinch of anima mundi rose powder). The flowers I bought from the market (celosia) look like a flame. They’re in a thin glass vase that puts their pink and orange stems on display. My favorite candle is lit. Everything glows soft and the air smells like beeswax. I am returning to ritual.

It feels important to note that ritual doesn’t require anything extravagant. It simply cannot feel rushed. It’s a deep exhale, a rich act of self-love. Devotional, it is an act of prayer, an offering. Sitting at the intersection of presence/intention/boundaries, ritual can turn anything we already do (shower, eat) into something more meaningful and nourishing for the spirit. Par example, deeper presence in the shower is probably my biggest bliss. It gives me the space to ask: where can I soften?

I am coming home to my body, reanointing my space, calling back my energy and channeling it into myself so I can offer the big magic of overflow to the world. It makes me think of The Wellness Industrial Complex, how our health is stolen and then sold back to us. It is my favorite indulgence, to be clear (& tbh I will link my favorite ritual tools if you have the means/interest in investing) - and YET I am reminded by this return that is only asking me to breathe a little deeper, soften into spaces that feel like home, carve time out for slowness. How we do one thing is how we do everything. The calm ripples out into the dusty crevices of our lives and clears them out.³

So I am peeling pomegranates like a prayer. Nudging each kernel with my thumb, pressing gently to release: an offering of time and energy, a devotional act of patience. That is my ritual now. We are never guaranteed a reward and, still, when the seeds are swollen with juice, the experience is equivalent to bliss. The whole act is an offering of love. Let me be brave with it, soften into the experience of it and allow it to be joyful.

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~if you have the means/desire to invest in ritual tools, these are my very favorites~

1. The Five Minute Journal: low hanging fruit and extremely powerful! All it asks of you is a commitment of a few minutes each day. Minimal effort, maximum reward.

2. Moon Juice Magnesi’om: Early mornings start the night before. Bioavailable, restful, restorative.

3. Mystical Oneness Beeswax Chimes by kate gardiner clearlight: ceremonially hand-dipped beeswax chimes, ritual is inbuilt

4. Kolkata Chai Co Signature Chai Mix - my first true lesson in ritual

5. Insight Timer: !!free on the app store!! And fantastic. IMO the best meditation app on the market.

6. honorary suggestion for anyone heading into a colder season: Wintering by Katherine May changed the way I view winter when I moved back to New York in October 2020

1. complete with class with Courtney Deri, time with my friends, dancing & Dijon. An aside is that I often feel like ritual is a solitary act but my dinner with Glyn and Kathryn, and sitting with Kelly, even just hugging Tanza, all felt like precious reminders that connection is ritual, too - the ceremonies and circles, the fortified power of collective consciousness.

2. I struggle with the word “hold” a little - because I don’t think we’re supposed to hold things with closed fists in that way. “Internalize” seems more appropriate, remembering that it is always there, a part of you, accessible.

3. Practically, what this looks like is when you’re stranded on the side of the road, 45 minutes away from your destination because you got off the bus in the middle of nowhere, you breathe, and you recalibrate quickly, and you arrive at the party ready to dance.