Keep Your Love Relationship Alive, Hot and Fun!

My book, “Love From Both Sides – A True Story of Soul Survival and Sacred Sexuality,” tells the story of my husband dying in my arms and “coming back” to chat. Now you may be wondering, and how does that relate to “Rituals for Healthy Living?”

It does, because during my own marriage, I insisted on creating lots of simple rituals. For instance, even though my husband and I were both busy, (Dan was a lawyer and I was a screenwriter), we tried to eat dinner together whenever we could. I cooked, set the table and lit candles. I insisted that we enjoy the small moments. I also insisted that we actually set aside time to “be together.” We made dates to sit on the couch, light a fire, share a glass of wine. We talked, sometimes we even read poetry. In those quiet moments, we remembered why we got married.

And if I was lucky? I got a massage from his wonderful, blacksmith hands, and then we’d make love. And taking time to make “love” a ritual, rather than something that happened at the end of an exhausting day, or worse… something that didn’t happen because we just had no energy left, kept our love alive and the sex hot!

And what was amazing? Even though Dan would sometimes make fun of my fussiness, after he died, he thanked me for insisting that we “honor” what we had together. So ladies? You’ll love my book, because I got an apology! And appreciation. Better late, than never, right?

Creating a sacred ritual of your own might help to keep your love relationship alive, hot and fun! And that in turn will help your own health. (And it might help you lose weight, because you need high levels serotonin to lose weight, and sex is an easy way to get it!) Also according to the new brain research, the more sex you have, the better your brain functions! That’s good news, yes?

So why not start thinking about fun, sexy rituals? According to a wonderful article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, (1/25/09), what really excites women (and creates lots of beneficial chemicals in her brain) … is being desired by her lover. So maybe dance for your lover… become a goddess, and create a fun sexy ritual that will help you live a healthy life!

~ Stephanie Riseley
www.stephanieriseley.com

Stephanie is participating in the WOW! Women On Writing Blog Tour for her book Love From Both Sides – A True Story of Soul Survival and Sacred Sexuality

Shower People with Encouraging Words, Thoughts and Love!

I am going to start to send letters, post cards and small things through the mail to my grandmother. One each day. She has not been feeling well lately and I thought this would cheer her up a bit. I am thinking of doing it with other people as well so each week I will pick a new person to shower with encouraging words, thoughts, and love!

~ onefish2fish

Photo by Mr. T in DC

Private Time with Dad

My son Isaac taught me a form of ritual. When he was about six I asked him, what do you think you should do when life feels complicated? Without any hesitation he said, “sit down, think, ask for help.” It is a process for both personal and communal learning that has taught me much.

Yesterday, I walked with my daughter, now 13. It was a “private walk with Dad.” We are vacationing, “holidaying” in Canada with grandparents and cousins. I wanted to make sure we had some time. My daughter so much relished the time. Her life, questions, stories were pouring out of her. We walked among the trees of this little town, Fairmont BC. We went to a favorite place, by a stream. I picked up two small stones. At the end of our walk I gave her one and called it a “truth stone.” It was a simple invitation, a simple symbol to invite our truth telling and witnessing with each other, whenever needed. It was one of those moments when my daughter and I just clicked in a great mix of laughter and seriousness.

Tenneson Woolf
tenneson@berkana.org


Sitting and Thinking photo by funkypancake
This is a Stone by Julio Martinez

Listen to Birds, Insects, my Thoughts

Before mom passed away:
Called her every day
Told her I love her every day

What I always do:
Wash my face and brush my teeth before bedtime
Take my two pills before bedtime

What I strive to do:
Listen to birds in the morning
Listen to insects at night
Listen to my thoughts when I wake up
Look out the bedroom window at the roses blooming
Collect water from the shower and water plants outside
Recycle
Be conscious of water use
Have reading glasses in hand

What I do now:
Listen to Paul sleep
Check on Paul if he is napping in the daytime
Listen to how energy is flowing through my body

What I always have done:
Create
Watch
Think a lot
Touch different textures
Love music
Find beauty in everything

I think this is a lot, but I feel that it describes a lot of rituals in an overview that are important. I feel like I have just sent an outline of my life.

Cathryn P. Cooper
cathryn.artist@gmail.com
photo by Cathryn P. Cooper

I Have Rituals and They Change in the Details of How They Unfold

I have rituals and they change in the details of how they unfold.

I have a morning practice that I do at least 5 or 6 days a week. The goal of the practice is to have some time for moving my body, some time for meditation and some time for written reflection. Having said that, the details depend on the time available. Some mornings I have only 30 minutes and then it gets pretty compressed. Mostly, I like to have an hour. An hour and a half is delightful (although more and more rare). My morning movement varies – mostly yoga stretches. I try to do at least a few minutes of some kind of stretching.

Recently, I was doing the Presence Process by Michael Brown. Doing that work, my meditation takes 30 minutes to an hour which pretty much squeezes out the other aspects. It also has added an evening meditation.

Other rituals – I call my Uncle Walt weekly. He is 91 and living alone in his own house. Actually, I have a ritual about calling all of my family – so I am in touch at least every couple of weeks.

I do intensive exercise – preferably NIA or yoga 2-3 times a week and try to do some exercise daily. Lots of walking.

I now have a ritual of taking an extensive set of supplements in the morning – but that is new in the last six months.

I mix my Alexander restorative rest and a series of healing visualizations.

So, as you can surmise, this all rises and falls depending on the time available. Some days it is very compressed and not all of it happens and occasionally I actually do it all!

Karma Ruder
kruder@ethicalleadership.org

photo source

Saying Goodnight to Our Neighbors

I'm sitting on a boring conference call and started thinking about rituals. I actually have fought myself to have less rituals, as most of mine were "OCD-like" and really bothered me. For example, I used to always make sure I started walking with my left foot and stopped with my right, so I would take an even number of
steps. I'd end up bumping into things and going near bonkers when I had to stop, trying to remember what foot took the last step. That was a bad ritual, though it's funny in hind sight.

We have some rituals with Ona that are pretty cool, though. Every night at bed time we close the blinds, then the drapes while saying good night to our neighbors. I wish I could say it's because we want her to have a sense of community, but it's really just because windows are her favorite toy. We open them up and say "good morning" to the neighbors in the morning.

I'm drawing blanks on other things we do now, though. If you want to look into behaviors people get into, there are probably few groups of people with more bizarre rituals than baseball players. They are widely thought of as highly superstitious, and players tend to get into rituals with things such as patterns of adjusting between pitches, jumping over the foul line when going onto/off the field, drawing symbols in the dirt with their bats/feet, and on and on. I never strung together a great enough run to have one common ritual, so I can't say I was a member of that club, but I love learning what the pros do to calm their nerves.

If you want to read more, this article has some good tales of superstitions, some are rituals, some are just superstitions. The biggest ritual guy I can think of is a player named Nomar Garciaparra. Between pitches, he goes through a very elaborate deal where he adjusts his gloves, taps his toes, adjusts the gloves, taps the toes, taps the helmet, and so on.

Eric Muntz
Projectminer.com
ericmuntz@gmail.com


photo source

Dinner at the Playground

We eat breakfast together and water the garden in the backyard.

Feeding our hummingbirds.

We hang out our sheets and blankets in the summer and revel in climbing into bed at night.

We go to bed in the evening at a set time during school months and if they are reading a good book no bedtime applies.

Listening to Woodie Guthrie Children's songs while puttering around the house.

Eating Pizza and watching a Baseball Game together at home.

Dinner at the playground. Parents sneak a bottle of Sangiovese.

~Bridge


Hummingbird photo
Pizza and baseball photo

Wow!! I Do Take Care of Myself With My Rituals

For me… I do a meditation/clearing/intention time each morning consisting of energetically clearing out my house, my office space, and my boyfriend’s house, then putting in white light of the highest vibration into each of these spaces where I spend the most time. Then I call in all helpers/angels etc to assist me for the day (in general and in specific if I am working on something), and then I do the same for my daughter. Sometimes I do it at my altar, other times in bed before I get up.

Currently for the next 2 weeks I am cleaning out my energy field 2x/day after a shaman session I had recently.

I work out 3-4x/week…hike, swim, cardio, weights…

Before I go to sleep I go through the day and get into a space of gratitude for all the things that I enjoyed throughout the day. Occasionally I’ll get to write in my journal.

I have a spiritual book club that I attend 2x/month. I belong to a women’s prosperity circle that we talk 1x/week and do emails during the week to keep our vibration high!

I get Acupuncture (1-2x/month), Massage, Anat Baniel, Chiropractic etc as needed.

WOW!! I do take good care of myself with my rituals!

W.W
Source for Wellbeing


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Sharing New Things Each of Us Learned

Give thanks before every meal, joining hands with all gathered around the table

Bless the car and everyone in it as I begin driving

Bless our daughter, Adonia, each night, cuddle and give thanks for the day and look back at what went well and what could work better another day

Share with each other at supper time what new things each of us learned during that day

Pray/meditate each night before going to sleep, even if just for a short while

Touch in with my husband each evening to get a sense of the next day's flow and how we will weave each of our schedules and rhythms together in mutual support and awareness

Do a cleanse in the spring time -- which includes a yearly wildcrafting of nettles

That's a start for now... wanted to write some down right away before your email scoots too far up in my inbox (another "ritual" I am trying to enact more and more ;-))

~anonymous

Photo Source

Family Rituals Creating a Physical and Emotional Glow

Funny you should ask. This has been a big new (or lots of little new) bit in my life. I have started to meditate 20 minutes every morning. I have dance 1x/week and yoga 1x/week plus I'm wearing a pedometer to help me raise my awareness of my activity level with a goal of 10,000 steps a day. This means at least one walk a day or a number of shorter ones. Good for spring weather.

To engage the whole family in better awareness and care of our bodies, I have used the game-generation approach and we have a Wii Fit board which engages with quite a bit of hilarity, a little competitiveness (I am the mother of two boys, remember, one of whom is a gamer who does not leave his chair.) For the last week every evening before dinner we play together. It has created both a physical and emotional glow.

ALl these things help me separate a bit from my work - so much less blogging and blog reading. It is interesting to see the teeter totter of our life's rhythms.

Nancy White
Photo by Nancy

Sometimes Rituals Turn up. Sometimes They Vanish.

Rituals. Mmh. At certain times in my life, certain rituals turn up. Like meditation in the morning. Sometimes they vanish again. Partly because of a lack of discipline on my part. Partly because of completely mysterious reasons.

Right now, living the pretty scheduled life of a working father, my rituals are (randomly):

• Deep muscular core workout every Tuesday evening
• Anusara-Yoga at Sunday nights
• Singing a good night song to my son three times a week
• Talking my son to sleep. A little ritual I created when Finn couldn't find the gateway to the causal on his own. It's partly progressive muscle relaxation combined with a form of prayer. I always let him decide whether he wants to fall asleep alone or if I should guide him. Finn is 4.5 years old.
• Group meditation (1 hour) and energy work every Thursday night
• Trying hard to drink at least 2 liters of water every day and mostly succeeding
• A cup of strong black coffee in the morning
• Sensual love including oil-massage as regular as possible
• Sitting in a café drinking latte machiato and reading the paper on lonely Sunday mornings

That's it for now. My regular patterns. Rituals in the broad sense. Nonetheless..

Jan Koch
jankoch.email@gmail.com

Tea With My Son When He Gets Home

I have been so busy lately that I've dropped many of my healthy rituals. Not a good time for that!! I've even picked up some unhealthy ones recently (playing that colored lines game too often). It's incredible how tenuous our healthy habits sometimes are. A very good lesson for me, though. I try to "have it all together" all the time, and I need to allow myself to sometimes NOT!
I am also trying to show this part to others more regularly, rather than hide behind the "got it all together" and "doesn't get perturbed" masks.

But in this last week of school this quarter I have been turning back toward the healthy ones more. One that I have never dropped is praying before dinner. We go around the table and say what we are thankful for at that moment. It is a great way to slow down, and approach the meal with more presence, intention, and gratitude.

Another ritual is having oolong tea with my son when he gets home from school in the afternoon. It is a nice way to relax and be present together. We also read together most evenings before bed. This is probably one of my favorite rituals. We are currently reading the Chronicles of Narnia together. We both enjoy fantasy stories, and simply lying in bed together at the end of the day before going to sleep.

I have also been playing squash once a week with someone who is right at my level. We have a real good battle with each other!! I push myself very hard, and have a lot of fun in the process. This is my only regular exercise at the moment, but it's nice to have a regular time to meet with someone else to keep me engaged with it.

Rituals that I am currently interested in including more in my life are: coloring and drawing, recording and contemplating my night-time dreams, sitting meditation, playing piano, and creative visualization.

Michael Byrne
Creating Vitality



photo source

What's Most Needed that I'm Most Ready to Do?

not sure i have any rituals anymore. i meditate on el trains and airplanes. i clear the email inbox once a month or so, if i'm lucky. i keep working on the house, picking my way along rather than pushing for a schedule. i do open space when people ask. i'm slowly reforming my late-night habits so that i get more cozy time with jill in the evenings. i've volunteered as the steward of a piece of riverside nature trail behind our house, so i am thinking about making trash pickup while walking that space a new sort of ritual, i guess. that will be weather dependent. that's sort of how more and more is happening around here, based on the weather, inside and outside. maybe it's ritual giving way to being in it all the time and just doing the thing that i can, whatever i can, os, email, community, carpentry, food, laundry or whatever that is most in need of doing and that i am most ready to do. it's either brilliant or i'm full of it. flip a coin!

Michael

Nourishment Cleanse and Practices of Now

There is one ritual that I have for spring and fall – a nourishment cleanse – around the book “If Buddha came to dinner” – it’s a month long attention to eating close to the earth.

I’m beginning another practice process later this month to help me come deeper into the now. It comes from Michael Brown and his book, “the presence process” – it’s an 11 week program which includes 2 -15 minute sessions of conscious breathing every day. I wonder what I will learn and what my practices of the now will be after going through… how will it be in my every day?

I also try every day to get out into nature in some way. The dogs always help with that too. And it feels more important than ever to get my kids there (for me and them).

Teresa Posakony

photo source