A Summer Solstice Ritual

                                          A Summer Solstice Ritual

One of the byproducts of lockdown in the early 2020s was moving online for connection. So many of us longed for and found online healing practices. At a time when our repetitive daily habits were weighed down by the new normal, they were mentally cleansing. They helped to lift some of the fear we were living with, and helped us live it alongside others, and feel less alone with those feelings. I attended online workshops with Jen Waine, (see jenwaine.com) and she incorporated rituals that helped me move through some of them. David Kennet, too, offered (and offers) incredible sound baths via fb live.  (see davidkennet.com)

The word "ritual" may bring many things to mind. The word can be associated with habit and routine. For example, making coffee in the morning might be considered a form of ritual. (Friends: what is a ritual to you? Please answer in the comments area.) And yet, I sought ritual to help push me into a new, more refreshing mindset, exactly to rip me away from those habits of the mind that loop us into beliefs that aren't true. I wanted to delineate an experience of growth from where I had been, and wanted to do so in community, with nurturing earth elements and natural sustenance.

And so, on the Summer Solstice this year, I held a ritual for one friend, and myself, as a kind of practice run (though without any shortcuts).  In the end, our Solstice ceremony was a beautiful and tasty co-creation. We both left feeling better. 

Roundness: a Solstice theme

I greeted my friend at the front porch with a round wooden hand-held ball scented in Frankincense, and we walked through the neighboring community garden around to the back deck, where I had prepared a table. We burnt a stick of sage and made a zig-zag circle around one-another to eliminate toxins and invite in healing. Friend, who has experience in leading ceremonies, called in the Directions (N, S, E, and W). Calling in the directions is a way to imagine our connection to a larger humanity, the earth, and beyond.

Then I called for circularity in our friendship and in all of our relationships with balanced listening and speaking. I had come to see over time that one of the accidental byproducts of hypervigilance is hyperfocus on self (a survival instinct, really). 

There was a round bowl with water, floating rounds of lemon, lime and cucumber.
The water ceremony was to encourage flow in our lives and eliminate obstacles while forgiving ourselves for encountering them. Hers: resistance to a recent major development in her life and mine: paralysis caused by pandemic fears. I had filled a big bowl with water and circle slices of lime, lemon, and cucumber, and we enacted scooping up our obstacle and poured it back into the bowl to bring flow to the obstacle blocking us in life.

Then we invoked the Yogastrology (R) body correlation for Cancer: the chest: we moved into a seated chest opener--breathe in, move flat of palms to low back and lift chest toward the sun.

 Ahhhhhhhhh. Helloooo sun. 

We closed with a singing bowl ringing to honor the sun's solstice movement and the start of its seasonal decline. We invited in nurture and protection, warmth and expansion.

Hydration and purification.
Our healing bevvy was Pellegrino, Blood orange syrup, rose water, clary sage, and real ginger ale, along with a warm mix of green, orange, and fennel tea in a separate cup (teacups from Limoges, France, that Friend had given me). We laid out some Himalayan salt and two heart-shaped tokens to represent living with heart. The blood orange, we decided, was also representative of vitality and life-force. There were cucumber sandwiches and round macaroons and chocolate biscuits. Yum.
Ritual doesn't have to be as fancy as this~or involve this much preparation, but this one hour~one hour~was magical, and we got out of it what we put into it.

Everyone has their own relationship to ritual (what is yours?)
(( <3 )) 

Credit and Bow: @DianeBoothGilliam Founder, Yogastrology (R) @JenWaine, Yogastrologer (R), Ceremonialist, and Founder, Sanctuary (R) 

Please see: Homepage - Yogastrology

https://www.jenwaine.com/

For more information on David Kennet's healing sound work, including live sound baths, see:  https://davidkennet.com/