Have you ever noticed that when you just “can’t take anymore,” you take a step back and tend to get your zen back? You are literally full of life experience, and in that moment you intuitively know you need a minute to digest and regroup. This natural human instinct occurs in many aspects of life, including dating. Personal rituals are necessary to bookend your dating process.
Personal rituals are both the natural preparation and natural aftercare for metabolizing the intensity of dating, and of life in general.
Deep breaths, a walk, a creative outlet, cooking, going out with friends, journaling; these are all ways we process our intense emotional energy with personal ritual work.
Industrialization and the Modern Age bulldozed tens of thousands of years of ritual practices. Personal rituals are the things you do that act as your own private rites of passage that take you onward and upward to make space for more life and more love. One of my areas of expertise is to deliver and design modalities for you to live more authentically in personal ritual through times of change.
For the Summer Solstice this year, I visited a healer and henna artist named Mangala at Mehndi NYC. I confided in her the life changes and emotions I’ve been processing, as well as the design of my own personal rituals and rites of passage. In support of my journey, she created a henna piece based on the idiom “thunderstorm in a tea cup,” so cool! The sun comes out from behind the clouds, spilling over from the cup–nourishing and creating a garden of beautiful flowers.
Inspired by this concept, I remind you all to believe and stand for your experiences–thus nourishing your destiny. Expand your own tea cup by taking the time you need for self care and reflection, on your dating life, and with all of your personal ritual work. We are past the longest day of the year already now, and moving into the heat of late Summer.
It’s the perfect time to harvest activities and experiences that help you feel your most desired and ideal experience of love.
If figuring out how to expand your tea cup doesn’t come naturally, never fear! Here’s a handy list straight from your Love Sherpa:
- Draw yourself a weekly bath. Light candles. Bring everything into the room that you need for the next hour–and shut everything else out.
- At dusk, take a walk around your neighborhood. Take the turn you rarely take–explore your world beyond your front step.
- Cook a colorful meal and share it with a friend. Breathe deeply while you are enjoying your food and take pauses while you eat to share about your week with one another.
- Wear a special piece of jewelry ceremoniously to represent something you are feeling or looking to attract into your life
- Write a list of things you are moving away from or done with experiencing and burn them over a special candle ceremoniously.
- WRITE! Journal for a few pages when you wake up in the morning to start the day with a fresh mind and take some time to move your body as well.
Receive Everything,
Emily Tepper
Love Sherpa and author of Personal Rituals on Heartalytics.
