How to create your own spiritual rituals

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

Every day you practice rituals without even realizing you are doing so. When you open your curtains on waking, make your morning cup of tea or coffee, or take a daily lunchtime walk, you perform a ritual. One that you do so often, you don’t even notice that it has become an everyday action.

Often people want to find their spirituality without joining a religious or spiritual group; this is where creating your own practices can help. A spiritual ritual is an action taken with mindfulness and acknowledgement. It is an action that allows you to deepen your emotions and connect with something outside of yourself—allowing you to feel a sense of calm.

Spiritual rituals can come in all shapes and forms, from prayer to gardening. Your actions should reflect what you require for your spiritual growth and your overall well-being. With this in mind, below, you will find some suggestions for spiritual practices you may want to create as your own.

Develop a prayer practice

A specific religion or deity does not own the right to all prayer. Prayer is merely communication between an individual and the sacred, and the sacred will vary between each person, just as beliefs vary. Some people pray to a god or gods, others to ancestors or the universe. If you already pray or decide to add prayer to your spiritual rituals, ensure it is personal to you and your beliefs.

Find your peace in exercise

Practising exercise isn’t just beneficial for your physical health; it can also help your mind find stillness. Again the type of activity you incorporate into your life should work for you. Qi gong and yoga are good examples of mind-body practices. These practices allow the participant to balance mind and body using breathwork.

Running, swimming, and hiking can also help calm the mind by allowing you to live in the present moment and feel your breathing along with the movement of your body. Whichever exercise you do, concentrate on how your body and mind work together and practice being conscious in the present moment.

Breathwork & Meditation

Breathwork and meditation are two practices that can help you to move past your body and mind, allowing you to connect with your core being while deepening your spiritual practice. There are numerous ways to practice breathwork and meditation, so look at what is out there and see if something will work for you. For more inspiration, look at our blogs ‘alternative nostril breathing‘ and ‘meditation practice tips for beginners.’

Setting Your Intentions

Recognising your spiritual goals and setting your intentions will allow you to live consciously and focus on how you want to feel. So grab a piece of paper and note how you want to feel and what you can do daily to achieve that goal. By setting an intention, you are making yourself a promise to create the life you want (for more help on goal setting, click here).

There are many intention-setting rituals that you can introduce into your life. For example, you could use crystals to set your intentions; they are lovely visual reminders of what you want to achieve. If you choose to use a crystal to set your intention, begin by selecting a crystal you are drawn to. We are naturally attracted to crystals that we need in our life at that particular moment.

Once you have your crystal, allow yourself to sit quietly, holding it in the palm of your hand. Breathe in peace, and visualize your intention for your crystal; continue to do this for a few minutes. Feel the crystal’s energy; it is listening and ready to support your intention. You can now carry your stone in a pocket or place it somewhere prominent to your goal; this visual queue will help you focus on your goals, attracting a quicker outcome.

Practising Gratitude

Society has conditioned everyone to aim for the next thing; this can put us under constant pressure. Believing that we aren’t achieving, gaining, or providing enough. Practising gratitude can break this cycle of stress by reminding us of what we already have and have already achieved. To begin practising gratitude, grab a notebook and pen and write down three things you are grateful for today. For more information on gratitude, click here.

Nurture Yourself With Nature

Getting closer to nature is one of the greatest and easiest spiritual practices you can add to your life. There are many ways you can connect with the earth. You may like earthing, where you walk barefoot outside, feeling the ground beneath your feet, allowing you to connect with mother nature. Or you may prefer gardening and the feeling of soil between your fingers; you may even love just sitting surrounded by nature and absorbing all the sights, smells, and sounds around you. Whatever you choose to do, just being outside and present can fill your soul with calmness and comfort.

Spiritual Bathing

Bathing in different forms has been used for centuries in spiritual practice. For many, bathing in water is believed to cleanse and recharge the body, mind, and spirit. Adding essential oils, herbs, or crystals to your bathing water can elevate a simple bath into a personalized sacred ritual. You can find a recipe for a herbal bath mixture here, but remember this is your ritual, so find scents and stones that have meaning for you.

Practice Positive Affirmations

An affirmation is a positive statement you tell yourself that will help you challenge and hopefully overcome negative thought processes. It is a simple ritual that is easy to include in your everyday life since you can do it anywhere at any time. Positive affirmations will help you visualize and feel the emotion and, as a result, can help build confidence and self-esteem and remove negative feelings. Here are some examples of positive affirmations:

• I trust in myself and my ability to overcome fear
• My consistent daily actions will lead me to my desired outcome
• I am abundant, and I am grateful

Creating Your Own Spiritual Rituals

So as you have seen, spiritual rituals can come in many different forms, and it is entirely down to you as an individual what your beliefs are and how they impact the spiritual rituals you decide to practice. As Sue Monk Kidd wrote in her book the dance of the dissident daughter, “You create a path of your own by looking within yourself and listening to your soul, cultivating your own ways of experiencing the sacred and then practising it. Practising until you make it a song that sings you.”

Finding your own spiritual path through rituals you create can enhance and enrich your life in many different ways. So we hope you feel inspired to create something that works for you. For more information on manifesting abundance and embracing spiritual wisdom, click here. And finally, don’t forget to share your journey with us, @surrender_to_happiness; we love to see how all our readers are doing.

Disclaimer