Sometimes healing from the root cause has nothing to do with the food that we eat or the supplements we take, but rather so much more to do with our mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being.
Today we talk about creating a quick daily ritual to set the tone for our day and ultimately, our lives.
It’s a way to create a grounded and elevated perspective on our lives that allows us to rise above the energy of worry, fear, overwhelm, responsibility, and stress and observe our lives from a bird’s eye perspective so we don’t go through our day mired in the weeds.
Doing this daily is like taking the time to know where your gas gauge is and then filling your tank accordingly, because just as a car cannot run on empty, neither can we—although we often try, don’t we? 😉
We all deserve to have our spirit be nurtured and to know that we are the ones who have the power to do that for ourselves. This can provide us with a visceral reminder to know that we’re stable, supported, and not alone.
Our outer experience of life is a direct reflection of what’s going on inside, so doing a daily grounding ritual also provides us with an opportunity to reflect on who we want to be and where we want to go and allows us to more consciously choose to show up as the best version of ourselves.
Albert Einstein said:
“No problem can be solved with the same level of consciousness that created it.”
Cultivating some kind of ritual that allows us to think differently (and this can literally be just three minutes a day) can be such a game changer for what happens in our lives and can affect our ability to respond vs. react to those things.
Here to help us cultivate a ritual is my friend Tara Teipel.
She’s the owner of a local Aveda spa and has been on a spiritual path for 25 years.
Tara’s developed a way to balance being a busy business owner and a mother with a regular self-care practice.
She created something called My Spiritual Ritual which leads you through a 28-day spiritual journey to help you deepen your connections and awaken to greater self-love. Anyone can do this in several minutes a day and involves setting the intention to do the following:
Invoke greater self-love since this is first base to any other type of love. If we don’t feel love for ourselves, we cannot truly love another. This step reminds us that we are worthy, valuable, lovable, and deserving of happiness.
Establish love with and for another (this could be with the Divine, God, nature, or another person). This can only happen when we begin to love ourselves.
Expand our love with and for our community—feeling more connected to the place we live, and the people who live there.
Further, expand our love to have the kind of selflessness that can include love for all of humanity.
Tara says starting your day with something like this (and it can be whatever variation resonates with you) is just as important as brushing your teeth if you want to create positive energy in your life.
I agree with her wholeheartedly and on some level, this concept is what had me drop out of the world of international relations (I was headed toward becoming a diplomat) and take up holistic nutrition as my way to contribute.
Reading a quote from J. Krishnamurti’s book, “On God” while traveling around the third world in my early twenties, during our second war with Iraq, was a defining moment for me.
The quote said:
“Systems, whether educational or political, are not changed mysteriously; they are transformed when there is a fundamental change in ourselves. The individual is of first importance, not the system; and as long as the individual does not understand the total process of himself, no system, whether of the left or of the right, can bring order and peace to the world.”
That truth was enough for me to dedicate my career to helping others get healthy and create peace within them so they could then pay it forward.
The greatest bonus perhaps that comes from this kind of dedicated practice and awareness is that as we cultivate more self-love and self-care, we naturally take on more self-responsibility and accountability, and that means we stop inadvertently blaming or shaming ourselves and others. Only then can our world change and improve because we start to realize our own power and are better able to claim it and to live it.
It bears repeating that there’s one universal truth I’ve learned from all of my life experiences, including the most challenging ones, and that is that our outer world is always a reflection of our inner world. So I urge you to prioritize taking the time to cultivate a beautiful garden on the inside so that you can gravitate toward and attract people and situations that resonate with who and what you really want.
All the kale and bone broth in the world can’t do that for you.
You can source Tara’s “My Spiritual Ritual” kit and join the 28-day challenge with us at thewholejourney.com/ritual.
Plus, get 20% off your first order by entering the code “WHOLEJOURNEY” at checkout.
Let us know if you’re up for the challenge or if you have a daily ritual of your own? Please share in the comments below so that our community can benefit from learning all different ways to connect and thrive.
“Primary food” is not the food you eat, but food for the soul.
It can be anything that feeds your positive experience of life in a way that food can’t.
The more we consume the primary foods our souls so desperately crave, the more we naturally crave to eat foods that support our highest well-being.
Incorporating primary food provides emotional nourishment that food cannot. We are then better equipped to view food for biological development (instead of an emotional crutch) and therefore choose supportively.
So, go with your gut and create a short daily ritual that works for you.
You don’t need to do yoga, wear flowy clothes, go on retreats or have any kind of “verbal uniform” in order to be spiritual or connected.
“Spirituality is a single journey, not a group sport.”
You only need the desire, a few primary foods and a short daily practice to connect to something higher (whatever that is for you) and to be able to trust that force to inform your life.
