Personal Rituals & Practices: The Essential Component for Change

Daily life can range from feeling labor-some, mundane, chaotic, or even flat. Compound that with anxiety, depression, added stressors and responsibilities, relationship issues, and self-esteem concerns and we find ourselves checking out of the stream of life with scrolling, binging, overindulging or numbing in an abundant of ways.  This is how most clients arrive to therapy (thankfully they have reached for support in their journey) seeking a way out of the continued loop of a lack-luster state of mind and being.

While somatic-based therapies can offer methods for shifting out of these patterns that talk therapy cannot always touch, what happens inside the container of a session with a therapist is only a fraction of what is needed to begin to create change. Rather the time and efforts outside of sessions become the rich traction for real change within clients. This is where the developing of personal rituals and personal practices becomes essential for carving out a life that feels more intentional, present, and grounded in well-being.

Personal rituals and practices are intentional acts that are client-defined, present-moment enacted, and provide anchors throughout our days, weeks, and months. They disrupt mundanity, ruminating, and over-thinking, and in exchange begin to provide a sense of meaning, connection, and balance. 

Developing a personal practice or ritual need not be complicated, in fact simplicity is the recipe for success. In addition, personal practices and rituals need not and should not be lengthy. I encourage clients to pepper personal practices throughout the day starting out with a technique I call guppy sips. Taking a 15-30 second guppy sip of an intentional act such as actively pressing the bottoms of your feet into the floor coupled with a slow breath in and out will start to shift the nervous system out of its chronic protective state (or in other words, lower an individual’s stress levels).

Personal rituals and practices can be intentionally placed into time pockets of life to help slow things and provide support. Transitions, for example, are difficult for many individuals, even without their realizing it. Morning or evening transitions, transitions from work to home or home to work, transitions of roles, and bigger transitions such as location moves, employment moves, relationship changes. When we have personal practices and rituals steady and in place regularly, we can move through transitions with less anxiety and less body bracing and feel more adaptable to the inevitable uncertainties that lie ahead.

In my sessions with clients, we will spend time exploring a few simple acts that could serve as a personal ritual or practice; the key is that the effort of implementing these is the responsibility of the client. Yes, this takes discipline. It takes a bit of pushing past the discomfort of trying something new. It takes a bit of push back to the thoughts that say “this is dumb”, “this won’t do anything”, “this is a waste of time”.  The clients I’ve witnessed who have been able to slowly implement and build their own practices and rituals over time have consistently shown that they can then shift out of their suffering and build resiliency towards life’s stressors. 

The best part of establishing personal practices is the time commitment is shockingly minimal. Many clients will push back with “I don’t have time to do anything for myself”, and I counter with “then how do you brush your teeth every day?” The time investment in the guppy sips I mentioned above is 15-30 seconds of a present-moment act. Committing to this 5-6 times a day is only 1.5-3 minutes a day! Of course, the idea is to increase this to guppy sip breaks of potentially 2-3 minutes, but still, we are looking at only 15-20 minutes broken up throughout the day. And yes, that minimal amount of time can create change in your mind and body, especially with daily repetition.

When developing your own personal practices and rituals, consider working with your therapist to help you define and develop ones that feel meaningful and manageable for you. Consider acts that engage your senses (touch, sound, sight, taste, smell) as well as sensory movement. Examples of easy approachable personal practices that can be utilized in the guppy sip method are the following: a slow stroll, bare feet in grass, watching the clouds in the sky, diaphragmatic breathing, dance break, city soundscape listening, tuning into bird song or chatter, drawing repeated shapes in a journal (circles, lines, dots), leaning into a tree and looking up, making a cup of tea, grounding through the sensation of your feet, walking one flight of stairs (up or down), tasting a mint or piece of gum, wrapping/cocooning in a blanket, slowly applying hand cream, your favorite yoga pose, tapping or rubbing your collarbones, petting your dog or cat.

Keep in mind that while you are establishing your own personal practices and rituals that it takes time to build a new skill or rhythm. Dedication and curiosity to the process of developing these practices for yourself will lay the groundwork for persevering rather than self-criticism. Most importantly, your personal practices are just that, practices and not a magic tool for lifting you out of crisis. Once established, personal practices and rituals can be relied upon when our stressors are high, but when used as a one-off they are never as effective as we need them to be.