Episode Summary
As we continue to move out of the pandemic and begin to vision what we want our new lives to look like, what do you see for yourself? What are you creating? Are you anxious to get back to everything at once or perhaps are you seeking a slower, more intention way of living. What might that look like?
Episode Resources
→ Be Ceremonial Website: https://www.beceremonial.com/
→ Be Ceremonial App (App Store): https://apps.apple.com/app/be-ceremonial/id1582513679
→ Be Ceremonial App (Google Play): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.beceremonial.app
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About the Show
Shame Piñata is hosted by Ritual Artist Colleen Thomas, a Certified Meditation and Mindfulness teacher who helps people make sense of life through ceremony. Music by Terry Hughes.
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Full Transcript
Sheldon: I learned this beautiful word during the pandemic called languishing and it was this idea that you're not thriving and you're not kind of depressed, but you're just kind of floating through. And I think that's what happened to a lot of us. We shut down because we just got overloaded with all these feelings. And I think now that I'm starting to turn that back on and kind of move out of that languishing kind of, you know, blah, and move back into feeling alive and connected, I think that ritual has been a huge source for me to get back there.
As we continue to move out of the pandemic and begin to vision what we want our new lives to look like, what do you see for yourself? What are you creating? Are you anxious to get back to everything at once or perhaps you’re seeking a slower, more intention way of living and what might that look like?
This is Shame Piñata. I’m Colleen Thomas. Welcome to Shame Piñata, where we talk about creating rites of passage for real-life transitions. I have a good friend who is always trying to get me connected. She tells me about the amazing people she’s meeting in the world and encourages me to keep connecting with the movers and shakers in the world of ceremony. She helped me connect with Megan Sheldon, a leader in the field of ritual. Megan is wonderful. She is grounded in nature, really connected. She’s a cultural mythologist, a storyteller, and a celebrant. She makes ritual accessible through an app called Be Ceremonial. We actually dedicated a whole episode to exploring Be Ceremonial and how it was created and how you you can use it. Check the show notes for a link to that episode.
Today, though, we’re going to listen to Megan speak about slow technology and how she is using ritual to help us transition from pandemic to endemic. We’re going to start out with a simple question: What is ritual?
Sheldon: People often ask me what the difference is between a routine and a ritual. You know, if you think about, “Oh, I make my coffee the same way every day, is that a ritual?” Like, no, it's not like it becomes a ritual when you add that intention when you add that meaning. When you're, you know, remembering the way that your dad made coffee every morning and using that as a chance to connect with his memory. Or thinking about the stress and anxiety that your body might be holding and using that moment as the pot of coffee is brewing or the kettle is boiling, to just move your shoulders around and feel the stress in your body and just kind of release it. So I often say that we fall into a routine but we step into a ritual. So it's this idea of you just fall into something and you just do it out of habit, that's not a ritual that's just laziness or routine,or that's something that you've just become accustomed to. But as soon as you elevate it through that intention of like, “Okay, what am I want that action to serve? What do I want it to bring? What I want it to do?” Then you've kind of stepped into that ritual mindset.
So stepping into a ritual mindset. This is something Megan says that we can do on a micro-level every day by simply adding intention to a daily practice we’re already doing. I would say that just playing around and noticing what feels good throughout the day is a good place to start. Maybe it’s taking a deep breath at every stoplight to help calm the nervous system, or keeping a gratitude journal, or taking a moment before we leave the office to reflect on what a rockstar we are at our job. Megan says that these kind of micro-practices can give us a good foundation to draw on when big life things come up in life. And when we need those more encompassing ceremonies, there are options. There are talented ritualists in this world and there are also more and more resources to support us in creating our own ceremonies. Megan’s app Be Ceremonial is one of those. She spent some time telling me about what it was like for her to bridge ritual and technology, and said something I’d never heard of before: slow technology.
Sheldon: If you think about the slow movements, you've got slow food, you've got slow fashion. It's about being mindful of what you're using and how you're using it. So I remember there was a small little town in Italy and I heard stories about them that they were resisting fast food. They were saying we will not allow any… we will not allow any fast food to enter our region. No McDonald's, no Burger King, no…you know, all the for the most part American but also European kind of versions of fast food where you go in and get the food and you leave and you eat really quickly and you know, you don't really have time to digest and there's no conversation. There's no unfolding. And the Italians do food so well. So they made a law. They forbade fast food to enter their walls. And instead it was the slow food movement. So how do we get back to eating with intention and seeing eating not as something that just like fuels our body, but something that feeds our soul and creates these connections and we allow it to digest and we allow ourselves to kind of enjoy each bite? And so the slow food movement was something that I was introduced to in my early 20s and I just loved it. I just felt so, so right.
And I know that they have adopted a kind of mechanism, the language for a lot of other things like slow fashion. If you think about the way that we're consuming apparel these days, and these, you know, companies that are just mass producing all this stuff that’s just going straight into the landfill. And I lived in Ghana for a while and I remember seeing this giant, giant landfill of all these clothes that were sent to Ghana from North America in such poor condition that nobody wanted to wear. And just went straight out into this dump, into this landfill as pollution. And so we have to be more mindful of how we're consuming things.
And technology is, is there too, right? If we're, if we're not mindful of how much we're on Instagram, or how much we're on YouTube, or how much TV we're watching. If we just kind of allow technology to become so fast that we're… we don't even have time to react, it's just in our face all the time, which… I'm raising small children, so I'm very aware of their relationship with technology and it's forced me to look at my own relationship with technology. Where am I… Where can I bring more mindfulness and ritual into that experience? So the idea of slow technology, for us at least, is that we want to create something that can give people tools and inspiration and share stories. And you can print out the ceremony and have it in hardcopy, so you can leave your technology behind so you don't have to bring it to your ceremonial setting. We don't want to kind of force people to feel like they're missing something if they're not there with you all along. So a lot of the workshops that we create, we're going to be pre-recording, and we're going to be putting them into the app environment so you can access them when you need them. It's not… there's not a deadline, there's not this kind of, you know, movement forward where you feel like you're gonna miss something if you're not saying yes to everything.
I have a dear friend here in Vancouver, and she told me that… what was her exact quote? “Urgency is a Western construct,” and I laughed, I'm like, “That's it! Like somebody sends you an email and you think you have to respond right away.” Well, okay, let's be ritualistic with the way we respond to emails. What would your life look like if you didn't just respond to an email when it came in? But every day from 10am to 11am, you made the same kind of cup of tea and you sat down mindfully, maybe you put on a song, and you said, “For the next hour, I'm going to respond to these emails mindfully. I'm going to read each one, and I'm going to think about it. And I'm going to respond in a way that feels, you know, intentional in the moment. And then I'm going to turn it off and I'm going to wait until the next day to respond to the new emails that have come in.” What would our lives look like if we just slowed things down a little bit? Easier said than done…
Thomas: I like it and I can feel the resistance of the part of me that's like, “No! They need me, I must, you know, I must reply now…they asked me, I must be needed!”
Sheldon: That's that fast culture being like… permeating into us, into our psyche, saying, you know, “Do it now, or else you'll miss out,” or, “They'll be angry, or they'll be upset, or they'll move on to the next.” And I do think we can reclaim the space and ritual is a really… You know, daily ritual and tapping into that kind of intentional way of living and the mindfulness… they're all connected, hey're all hopefully teaching us to not just respond for responding’s sake, but to digest and… like the Italians do with their food, right? Imagine responding to emails the way you would enjoy a beautiful meal in a small little town in Italy, savoring each bite. [LAUGHS] What would that experience look like? And maybe you're looking at the email and you think, “No, I'm not going to respond to an email here, I'm going to phone them,” or “I'm going to ask this friend or this person that reached out, you know, I can sense that there's something more here I'm gonna ask them to meet me in the forest and we're gonna have a forest walk instead.” I've hosted, I don't know, 50% of my meetings the last two years in the forest instead of over the phone.
Thomas: Wow.
Sheldon: And what that does for us is a whole other whole other chapter…
Thomas: That's so wonderful.
[MUSIC]
If you enjoy Shame Piñata, consider checking out Daily Magic for Peace. Daily Magic for Peace is a totally different kind of show that invites you to grab an item and do a simple ritual for peace in Ukraine. Episodes are less than 10 minutes long with a focus on calming the nervous system and keeping your heart open. You can find Daily Magic for Peace wherever you're listening to this podcast.
Speaking of slowing things down and savoring them, Megan inspired me to consider how the pandemic has helped us appreciate the things that really matter in life.
Sheldon: It's been three and a half years since my mother-in-law in Sweden has seen my children. And she comes next week. And I am full of ideas of like, “Oh, okay, what are we going to do with her? What are we you know, all the things…” And then I just have to slow down and think, “You know what, it's not about that.”It's about creating those ritual moments, the small little moments of intention, where there's no pressure, there's no traffic, there's no urgency. We're simply creating space to be with her because for three and a half years, that's what we've been mourning and grieving. So I'm really starting to let that resonate of how we can have her leave after the month that she spends with us and feel really full like that… you know, that felt ceremonial in some way. There was something that happened at the beginning and the middle and the end of the trip that allowed us to acknowledge the things that we've been holding and witness each other.
Thomas: Are you working with people specifically around rituals to mark changes in the pandemic?
Sheldon: I actually just hosted a retreat in person two weekends ago and it was all about emerging out of the winter into the spring, also known as the pandemic into the endemic. So the whole theme of the weekend was around, you know, the first evening is all around releasing what was. So the way that I frame a ceremony, there's always an opening ritual to kind of invite you in and a closing ritual to kind of close it off. But in between, you need to acknowledge the past, the present, and the future. So the first night of our ritual, we acknowledged what was and we all went around and we shared stories about what we've been holding and what we've been grieving. We wrote things down on paper and ritually burned it in this beautiful old stove fire. And we did it in silence. We witnessed each other. We didn't rush. We just kind of, you know, we were present in that moment. And the next day we found rituals to be in the present and to acknowledge what is and to not think so much and not stress so much and not regret so much. And of course, I took everyone into the ocean, because that's my go-to these days for being present. But it also comes back to breath and we were doing a breathing ritual together earlier and I think coming back to breath is so important. I base a lot of my rituals around the four elements to how you incorporate fire and earth and water and air. And really finding that stillness I think is an integral part of the ceremonial experience.
And then finally, the third day was around acknowledging what will be. So how do we… how do we create our own legacy? How do we leave the pandemic, leave the kind of winter kind of feeling behind and move forward with something that we want to carry intentionally? How do we plant those seeds that we hope will soon grow? How do we think about it as a rite of passage? How do we incorporate this back into our daily life? So I think the beautiful part about the ritual retreat was that we all came together and we all co-created these things. The finale ritual that we all created was I brought a giant bowl in the center of our circle filled with epson salts and I invited everybody to spend some time on the 30 acre farmland that we were spending the weekend on and find a natural piece of grass or flowers or moss or seaweed - something that they had found. And then at the end, we all offer that to this giant salt bowl. And we did so with intention. We were sharing something that we needed or something we wanted to offer the group. And as we placed it in the center, one by one witnessing each other, we then had this big giant bowl full of all of our intentions and our wishes and our blessings and our hopes and our dreams. And we stirred it all up together and then I had little jars for each person. I invited them to scoop up their own little glass jar and then take that home with them. And then I said, “When you're feeling disconnected. When you're feeling that you are missing the energy from this weekend, or a version of yourself that you remember this weekend, take some of these salts and place them in the bath or go down to the beach or put them in your room somewhere where you can see them.” But for me, it's that ritual bath it's just like I soak in the salts that were co-created by people that I grew to love - I’d just met three days earlier and we became a community. So for me that type of ritual that you can leave people with something to hold on to, something to tap back into that experience. And it doesn't have to cost any money it can be a pine cone you find in the forest, it can be a rock you find on the beach. I mean I'm a little biased because I live and live in the Pacific Northwest where we're surrounded by mountains and forests and oceans but you know, it can be a quarter that you find on the sidewalk in downtown Manhattan and suddenly that quarter holds a different symbol symbolism and meaning if you if you imbue it with it ,if you take that quarter and you think this is going to represent this day or this feeling.
You may not be able to attend an in-person retreat with Megan or join her in a bracing dip into the ocean, but there are ways to connect to her community.
Sheldon: We will always make Be Ceremonial available to people in some shape or form. So, I think that if you are interested in ritual and ceremony and you want a place to start, I think that it's a really good place just to start to get some inspiration and just to have, you know, a little sneak peek behind the curtain as to what's possible. And if you want to go deeper, if you're somebody who really wants to bring more ritual and more ceremony into your daily life, into the lives of those that surround you, there is a place for you here. This is the growing community for me will completely be fueled by our stories and sharing with each other what's possible. And that gets me really excited, that fills my bucket just imagine the idea of a co-created community around the globe of ceremony seekers and people that are, you know, they they might not even know it’s ceremony and ritual that they've been seeking but as soon as they hear it as soon as they you know introduce it back into their lives, they'll know. And I think it's really important for people to know that you know, I'm not here to teach you about ritual and ceremony or how to be more ritualistic. I'm here to help you remember because I do think that we are all naturally ceremonial. I think that if you look at kids… My three and five year old last year were so craving ceremony and I wouldn't even give them that much parameter, I would just create that container and give them that invitation and they would naturally become these little ceremony beings that were so happy to have a place to channel those feelings that they were holding. So if we if we ever think that we don't know how to do ritual and ceremony, just ask your kids, or ask your friend’s kids, or go down the street and see a little one and, you know, invite them to talk about, you know, the things that they do, that might be defined as ritual. And I think it should inspire all of us because it doesn't have to be complicated, it doesn't have to be costly, it can simply be that moment of intention with the hope of creating meaning in your life or in the life of someone else.
I hope you are able to take a breath today, maybe schedule a time tomorrow to finish going through emails. I hope you are well and healthy in moving from pandemic to endemic and that you have as much support, creative inspiration, and love as you could possibly have. Be sure to check out the first part of my conversation with Megan where we take a deep dive into the Be Ceremonial app. Find it on the Shame Piñata feed or at the link in the show notes.
Megan Sheldon is a Cultural Mythologist, End of Life Storyteller, and a Celebrant. She is also the co-founder of Be Ceremonial, the world's first ceremony creation platform, giving you the ritual tools you need to create your own ceremony. You can sign up for a free account at www.beceremonial.com or download the App in the App Store.
Our music is by Terry Hughes. Find us on IG and Twitter at shamepinata, reach us through our website, shamepinata.com. And subscribe to the show on your favorite player. I’m Colleen Thomas. Thanks for listening.