Winter is for Sacred Simple Pleasures

It’s a cold and cloudy day, a perfectly cozy winter’s day, promising much-needed snow and quiet time. I’m sipping cinnamon and anis-laced coffee this morning, gazing out the window above my writing desk, and relishing the cozy warmth of my home. It’s strewn with twinkle lights and smells of beeswax and more cinnamon. It’s filled with books, herbs, and all the things I love, including my two familiars gazing out the window beside me. It’s a comforting and warm antidote to the brewing storm outside.

Truly, it is the perfect day to indulge in self-care. There’s something about this heavy weather that invites us to slow down and take care of ourselves. Maybe indulge a little.

Honestly? I’ve always said magic is a hard, gritty thing. It takes work. You can’t just light candles, say positive affirmations and then expect the universe to drop miracles into your lap. You’ve got to work for it. Stay grounded but hopeful—and always, always be proactive in cultivating a magical life. Self-care is like that. I mean, you can light candles (again), say positive affirmations (again), and…expect to feel reborn. Sure, light your candles. I love my beeswax candles because they cleanse the air, smell like honey, and are just plain pretty. Affirmations can be powerful spells that help you grow. Candle magic is a thing. You see, magic and self-care have a lot in common—I mean, we think of candles and affirmations for both, right? 

In fact, seasoned witches know that radical self-care is the backbone of magical living.

It means slowing down and feeling hard feelings. It means talking with those you love to find a way forward. It means pinpointing a place in your life where the energy is stagnant and then working through things so the energy can be free-flowing. Sometimes, it means you need to reimagine your life. Things that were once generative and inspiring for a time can become sour and toxic if we hold on too long. Energies change, and it’s time to move on—it’s life’s way of making sure you keep growing. It’s also about being able to acknowledge and celebrate the moments when your life is flourishing and where energy flows. And yes, self-care is also about exercising, eating right, sleeping well… basically treating yourself like a small child who needs a lot of TLC.

But here’s the thing I’ve discovered: that work can be exhausting.

It takes a lot to face hard things, to sit with those feelings, and to map a way forward. It can be hard, too, when you experience joy because sometimes you realize you haven’t allowed yourself to experience enough of it. Who hasn’t been stingy with their joy from time to time? All this to say that sometimes, as we stay steady, conjuring change through our routines as rituals, we need a breather. 

And that’s where the fun—and ever so important—part of self-care comes in. 

I admit it: I like my candles and positive affirmations. I’ve spent the afternoon making cinnamon, orange, and peppermint bath bombs so I can indulge in festive bubble baths and share them with loved ones. I’ve also become obsessed with “fussy” skincare routines of oil cleansing, honey face masks, and painting my nails. I’ve added touches of glitter to, well, everything. These silly things—so often the things we think of when we think of self-care—are just as important as all the other hard stuff you have to do to really take care of yourself. There’s nothing like brewing a pot of mint chocolate tea, curling up on the couch in a pile of blankets (and cats), and going down a Pinterest rabbit hole to learn about the best tips for face care or what the heck latte makeup is (what I normally wear, as it turns out). 

Or there’s the pure gothic delight of listening to ghost stories while knitting by twinkle light, or, yes, watching a cheesy holiday movie for a popcorn and pizza movie night. Sometimes, it’s taking a day to go to the salon and indulge in holiday shopping. Or cozy up by the fireplace and do nothing but daydream and snooze. See what I mean? It’s frivolous and fun…and so absolutely necessary.

Choosing joy is when we let the magic in.

It’s when we allow all we’ve worked for and conjured to settle and take root and manifest in the way that is healthiest for us. It’s the fallow time when we reset and rest and let nature do its work. We can’t always be go-go-going. In fact, it’s a good way to clog up your energy and inadvertently sabotage your conjurings! All good magic is a hard, gritty thing, true. But it’s also a soft thing, a thing that needs energetic flow and divine receptivity to balance out the dirty business of cleaning up our lives.

The holidays are the perfect time to slow down and indulge in sacred simple pleasures; the sillier and more joyful, the better. All the better, in fact, to conjure magical living this year and in the next…

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational collection of musings touching on life’s simple pleasures, everyday fantasy, and absolutely delectable recipes that will guarantee to stir the kitchen witch in you.  If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is the everyday, subscribe here.

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Everyday Magic for Difficult Times: Journey Into Self with Radical Self-Care & Slow Living

I started the year with one goal in mind: to live more slowly. I’d been feeling that I’d been moving too fast, zooming from here to there, and caught in a cycle of overworking. I wanted more space for quiet. More time to reconnect with myself and those I love. Space to detox from my busy addiction. Little did I know that two short months later, I would be practicing social distancing due to the pandemic. It certainly slowed me down!

It was a strange and eerie transition, even without moving my teaching life completely online, educating students about why they should be taking this situation seriously and how to best stay safe and help their community (wash their hands, stay home). Then there was checking in on family in Italy and New York, along with friends in Seattle to make sure they were safe and well. And missing family here that I couldn’t visit regularly, though we live so close to one another. I won’t even get into grocery shopping—once a ritual that was so soothing for me! (Luckily, I can have groceries and local produce delivered to my doorstep, thanks to our incredible farmers.) Between the understandable frenzy of the outside world and my own worries about our changing reality, I found myself, like so many others, adrift in a sea of confusion and uncertainty.

Suffice it to say that when all the dust of the transition settled, I found I needed to get grounded and return to everyday magic. Yes, magic. And it has been no easy task. I quickly realized that I could be just as loud and busy at home as I was in my regular routine. My mind raced. I was constantly plugged into my online classes—when I wasn’t glued to my newsfeed. Clearly, I needed to shift my attention from the craziness out in the world toward nature and the quiet mysticism that has always guided me through difficult times.

Return to Slow Living

My first step back to everyday magic was to let go of things I couldn’t control (the outside world) and be proactive about the things I could (teaching, social distancing, helping my community, my own well-being). Then I took a deep breath and turned off the news. Stepped away from my phone. Didn’t even turn on the TV. Instead, I put on an old Bill Evans record, cooked a simple dinner, and read a book by cozy lamplight while cuddling my familiar, Smoke.

For the first time in ten days, I slept long and deep, and, perhaps more importantly, I dreamed deeply. Those dreams were like a soothing balm on my ragged and tired soul. I’d reconnected to my magic again. This experience taught me that what I needed to do during this time of social distancing (or New Mexico’s new stay at home orders) was to focus on my connection to self, to nature, to the mystic world.

Of course, later I realized that what helped me relax and reconnect with my inner life was slow living. I turned off electronics. I let go of my need to stay busy. I simply enjoyed a quiet night at home and pressed paused on my racing mind. Slow living wasn’t just a soothing luxury then, it was absolutely essential to my overall well-being and mind, body, spirit connection. It is only with that connection that I could remain a grounding, hopeful force. Only then could my magic flow and be a bright and steady light to counter the darkness.

Return to Radical Self-Care

Slowing down also showed me how I’d been neglecting my self-care needs. It’s hard to feel like you can take care of yourself when you’re so fixated on making sure everyone else is okay or worrying about anything and everything. But that’s no way to live, especially in times of crisis. I began to understand that keeping myself healthy was an important part of helping others. It meant my immune system was in top form, which meant I was less likely to get sick and risk passing stuff on to others. It meant I was better at helping my students with the move online and that I was learning how to be more sensitive to myself and my needs.

I started off slowly. I paid attention to my energy levels. If I was tired, I didn’t push past that limit. I stopped expecting myself to keep a normal, action-packed routine. Instead, I settled into a quieter, slower pace. I prioritized yoga, house cleaning, patio gardening, and, when I felt it, walking. Evenings were for enjoying make a healthy dinner and decompressing. Then I made sure to get a full night’s sleep.

I also made a point of searching for good news in the midst of all the bad: communities coming together to support one another. Officials, like the New Mexico governor taking the safety and welfare of her people seriously with decisive action to curb the spread of the virus. The earth healing now that we collectively have had to curb our mindless consumerist habits and fast-paced lifestyle that contributes to climate change. Better still, we see that we can work together to protect mother earth, just like we are working together to deal with our current situation. The land is healing itself and we are healing our relationship to the land.

Reconnecting to radical self-care, then, reminded me that we have so much power and agency when it comes to dealing with this global crisis. Working together (albeit separately in our own homes) we do our part to conjure a solution to our current situation.

Journey Into Self

My energy opened up when I found my way back to slow living and radical self-care. I was calmer, more grounded. I begin to think of this time as an opportunity to turn inward and tend my internal life, something few of us often have a chance to do in the hustle and bustle of daily life. Now, it is as if life is forcing us to take that time—more time with our families, more time with ourselves, more time focusing on what really matters. Even now, I find myself thinking about things that even a month ago I was worrying over that now seem so small and insignificant. I’ve had to come to terms with the energy I’ve wasted on nonsense things!

Now, my focus is on a healthy and safe family, gratitude for my communities working together to help one another through this time, and the slow and steady conjuring of everyday magic. So if you find yourself struggling during this difficult time, as so many of us are for so many reasons, take heart and find your way back to the grounding power of the everyday mysticism with these simple tips:

Be gentle with yourself and others. So your first attempt at slow living didn’t go so well or you’re struggling to practice radical self-care. That’s okay. It’s a journey with many ups and downs. Go easy on yourself. You’re doing your best. And be gentle to those around you, too. We’re all in this together.

Feel what you need to feel…then let it go. Everyday magic isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s about creating space to safely feel what you need to feel, process what you need to process, and then allow yourself to move on. Don’t hold onto every hard emotion or passing anxiety. Take a deep breath. Let it go. Remember that you are allowed to feel joy at this time and seek refuge in your sacred simple pleasures.

Give yourself permission to be unproductive. I find myself writing a lot during this time but that’s because writing is a huge part of my self-care practice, helping me to stay grounded. I find refuge in cooking and cleaning to experience the catharsis of a good cleansing spell. Hope in gardening and crafting. But that doesn’t mean I’m working all the time! And if these things don’t soothe you, don’t do them. It’s easy to bring our addiction to busy home with us and use to avoid feeling what we need to feel. Don’t do that. Just create space to breathe. This is doubly true for those of you working from home and taking care of children. You’re doing so much already! It doesn’t all have to be perfect or insanely productive. What matters is that you and your family are home and safe. Enjoy your time together.

Remember that social distancing doesn’t mean social isolation. We are social creatures. Don’t deny yourself the comfort of connecting with others. As hermetic as my life seems now (okay, always!) I’ve found that in reality, I have so many relationships I’m grateful for. My family, first and foremost, but also my teaching community and students, who have all done an incredible job to help one another get through the term online. My writing and reading groups have been a huge part of my self-care practice as we discuss the magic of stories and check in on one another regularly. Then there’s my witchy community that is working to conjure a little more joy and calm in the world (more on that soon). In short, for a seemingly anti-social introvert, I’ve found that I’ve got an awful lot of love in my life. I appreciate being able to stay connected with these people thanks to the wonderful world of the internet. Take advantage of modern technology to connect with your tribe.

Be informed—but step away! I check the news once in the morning and then that’s it. Any more than that and I go down a rabbit hole of negative news and anxiety that’s not helping anyone or anything. I want to stay informed but then I focus on what needs immediate tending: my family, my home, my teaching, my writing. I’m also fond of taking social media breaks and screen-free time. Staying connected is good, but not so much that you begin to mindlessly scroll. Give yourself permission to stop following posts that are feeding into hysteria and follow only those with credible news, helpful information, and good vibes.

Treat this as an opportunity to turn inward. How often do we get the chance to work on our emotional and spiritual health? How often do we keep going when what we really need to do is reconnect with ourselves on a deeper level? This is a great time to reevaluate what really matters in our lives and let go of old patterns of living. Sink into your sanctuary. Allow yourself to unapologetically take care of yourself and your loved ones. Subtle but profound wisdom will come from small synchronicities and natural magic conjured from a quiter routine.

Reconnect with Nature. During all of this, spring has quietly swept through my city. Trees are blossoming. The morning birds sing me awake. My herb garden gets more fragrant with each passing day. Take all this in and celebrate the hope it inspires. Spring comes even after the hardest winter.

When all this is in the past, I won’t return to what Normal Life was before. I don’t think any of us will—or can. Instead, let’s make it better: slower, more thoughtful, kinder. Filled with love. And with more than a little everyday magic.

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you. If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment. Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

A Year of Slow Living

Last year, I committed to a year of sacred simple pleasures. I cultivated joy. I indulged in the little things that delighted me. I embraced the sacredness of pleasure. During my year of buying, using, and wasting less, I did just what it sounds like: I became ultra-mindful of my consumerist habits and focused on cultivating a greener lifestyle. If these past two years committing to both these things—consuming less and enjoying sacred simple pleasures—have taught me anything, it’s that the only way I can make meaningful changes in my life is if I slow down.

So much of my bad consumerist habits stemmed from being overworked, overscheduled, and in need of major soothing. I turned to retail therapy and stress shopping in an attempt to heal myself when what I really needed was to be more proactive about cutting stress and toxicity out of my life. The same goes for opening up to pleasure in all its forms. I had to create time and space to allow my capacity for enjoyment to strengthen and grow. I simply couldn’t explore what sacred simple pleasures were to me when I was too busy to have the energy to playfully explore my relationship to pleasure.

Both these experiences made me decide to commit to a year of slow living in order to continue cultivating a balanced life in harmony with self and nature. Slow living can mean a lot of things but, in essence, it’s about cutting out unnecessary things that clutter up your life and doing activities with purpose and pleasure. Rather than rushing around from commitment to commitment, you focus on the handful that you need or want to do. You take time for yourself and make every routine a ritual. So basically what I already do, with extra attention to examining and letting go of old habits that have me falling back into unnecessarily over-committing my time and energy to people, places, and things. I want to create space, in essence, for more everyday magic.

I have a few guidelines to help me focus on slow living (I won’t say rules because, well, that feels a little too restrictive for me!). They’re pretty simple but, as I’ve found over the past two years, pretty reliable ways of making sure I’m not moving too fast.

1. Enjoy more quiet time. It sounds funny, but towards the end of last year, I found myself fantasizing about quiet time. No music. No news. No loud conversations. Just me and my cat and the soft hum of our daily routine. The whistling kettle. The gentle clack of knitting needles making a blanket out of nothing but a strand of yarn and a few simple loops. The soft woosh of beeswax candles being lit. This intense desire for quiet made me realize how much noise I surrounded myself with each day and how important it was to unplug from it. I needed this quiet, in short, in order to hear myself.

2. Make more homemade meals. It’s no secret that I love cooking. And while I’ve lately come to enjoy the pleasures of the occasional take out meal, I find that slowing down for long enough to cook dinner during the week goes a long way to help me decompress and get grounded. I also get super excited at the grocery store thinking about what delicious, simple things I can make from the seasonal produce.

3. Carve out more unstructured time to play. In the past when I wanted to get out or doing something outside of my teaching life, I’d commit to a bunch of activities each week and pencil in all sorts of extracurriculars. It was fun at first….and then I’d inevitably get burned out on extroverted fun, usually mid-semester when my workload increased. I finally realized that part of the burnout was because I wasn’t always listening to what I felt like doing in the moment. Now, I’m learning to see what the day brings. I might have a few ideas of what I’d like to do over the week, but I don’t commit to anything unless I feel really excited about it. This has created such a relaxed, flexible way for me to explore my “playtime” without a strict structure that takes the fun out of things.

4. Prioritize reading time… I’ve seriously gotten into audiobooks over the past few years thanks to a friend (you know who you are!), and I absolutely love them. They are integral to my self-care and relaxation, especially during the heavy grading periods when my eyes hurt from too much computer time, but I need the comfort of a good book. Still, I miss the joys of an old fashioned paperback or ebook to sink into. There’s a magic to see the words on the page and slowly disappearing into a new world. Thanks to my HEAs All Day Books Club and my Occult Detective Book Club on Goodreads, I think I’ll be able to commit more time to reading. I’m shooting for 30 minutes each night before bed and am reworking my nightly routine so I can do it without falling asleep five minutes after I open my book, ha!

5. …and time in nature. It might be an urban hike, an afternoon reading in the park, or simply tending my potted herb garden, but I need time outdoors. I am a better person when I’ve had time to listen to the whispering of the trees and the idle chatter of birds. I’m even better when I’ve got dirt-stained hands and rosemary-perfumed skin. It reminds me that I am more than my accomplishments or the next thing on my to-do list.

6. Tune into my breath. It’s a funny thing, breathing. We do it unconsciously. Without thought or connection to our bodies. But I’ve found that when I stop and tune into my breathing patterns, I become more aware of the tension or feelings I might be holding onto. Sometimes in an effort to get through a packed day, for example, I find myself breathing short, shallow breathes which isn’t good for our nervous system or overall well-being. Pausing to slow our breathing—I’m talking deep belly breaths—helps soothe the sympathetic nervous system (that thing in control of our fight-or-flight responses). I also find that it has helped me stay better connected to myself and let of things that might be causing energetic stagnation or stressing my body.

What ways do plan to slow down and enjoy life?

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you. If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment. Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

5 Things I Learned From My Year of Cultivating Sacred Simple Pleasures

Last year, I committed to a year of sacred simple pleasures. I cultivated joy. I indulged in the little things that delighted me. I embraced the sacredness of pleasure. Sounds fun, right? And it was…once I got past the hangups I unwittingly nourished over the years. You know the ones: I should be working. This is all just silly stuff. It’s a guilty pleasure. I don’t have time for this. Other people enjoy this so I should too. I couldn’t just enjoy something without these ugly thoughts cropping up. In short, as I started this journey into the sacredness of pleasure, I realized that I had a complicated relationship with pleasure.

I like to blame this on puritan culture and run-of-the-mill religion that makes us feel guilty for enjoying anything that feels good. I also had to come to terms with the fact that, as a successful woman of color, I often came up against feelings of guilt or impostor syndrome that told me I wasn’t allowed to enjoy myself. Sick, right? It’s the epitome of everyday gothic when your inner saboteur comes out because the idea of bliss is a scary thing to hold onto. You begin to hold yourself back before others can do it all in some vague attempt to keep yourself safe from whatever the world wants to throw at you, the transgressive bruja that is living proof that minorities can not just survive, but thrive. Honestly, I’m like a walking threat to puritan values and toxic patriarchy!

Once I cleared through all that muck, however, I was able to indulge in the sacredness of simple pleasures. I learned a lot about myself as I explored what was truly pleasurable to me and what wasn’t. It was like a year of relearning what it means to experience joy, from the small quiet joy of brewing a pot of tea, to the loud silly joy of playing hide and seek with my niece. I learned how to give myself permission to not work, to rest. I made room for things and experiences that had no value other than that they made me smile. And I learned that I had to completely upend the notion of pleasure before I could experience its sacredness. This revelation can be boiled down to five truths I learned from my year of cultivating sacred simple pleasures.

1. What I thought would be pleasurable often wasn’t. Okay, calling on the sympathy of all introverts here, I’m embarrassed to admit that when I first started the year, my idea of pleasures conjured up more extroverted activities. Going out with friends, dancing all night, filling up my weekends with out-there stuff. And while some of that was fun (I enjoy a night on the dance floor as much as the next woman), I found that much of it felt like I was performing.

   I could never quite recharge and found myself starting the work week with an empty battery and no energy to enjoy my cozy daily routines. I realized when I stepped back to look at things, that I was relying on what the extroverted world said I should be enjoying, versus what I was actually enjoying. Mainstream culture’s notion of pleasure is not my notion of pleasure….aside from the occasional turn about the dance floor.

2. Quiet is delicious. So there I was a few months into the year, having to completely reframe my approach to pleasure. It wasn’t a loud, splashy thing. It wasn’t about being surrounded by people or chasing experiences. It was about listening to myself and my needs. And yeah, sometimes that meant being surrounded by people and chasing a new experience. But more often than not it was about giving myself permission to be quiet.

   In the quiet, I found that I was able to unplug from this fast-paced world and tune into myself. I experienced surprising revelations that I wouldn’t have otherwise discovered if I’d continued on my path of loud, fast, busy. I reconnected with old parts of myself that I’d thought long gone. They’d only been in deep hibernation. My creativity and intuition blossomed under the soothing blam of quiet. I connected more deeply to life’s natural rhythms and, as a result, found greater peace in my daily goings-on.

3. Slowing down is an essential part of enjoying life. With quiet comes a slower pace. It takes time to settle in and indulge in something. Simple pleasures can’t be rushed. I’d begun to see that having a full to-do list or social calendar kept me from actually enjoying myself. It often left me disconnected from self and soul. In fact, I found that busy, busy is a great way to avoid yourself and the things you need to work through.

   I pretty quickly had to come to grips with the fact that, despite my best efforts, I can still be prone to overworking. But when I made a conscious effort to do less, I was rewarded with the time and space to clear out fo stagnant energy, outmoded ways of being, and the yuck I’d internalized from a world that isn’t comfortable with magical women of color. I replaced them with things that made me feel beautiful, stories that made me hopeful, and experiences that proved just how powerful pleasure can be.

4. Pleasure stirs up all sorts of unexpected emotions. Here’s the thing about enjoyment. When you create space for it in your life, you also make room for other emotions that bubble up as you begin to relax and open yourself to the softer, gentler things in life. Sadness, when you begin to realize that you’ve unconsciously denied yourself certain pleasures. Shock, when you realize how armored you’ve kept yourself—healthy boundaries are VERY important, but it’s equally important to remember to stay open to the good stuff. Guilt when you’re enjoying yourself a little too much…but there’s no such thing as too much, so then you feel anger at how you’ve let those pesky puritanical norms snake their way into your brain and make you doubt your own joy.

   See what I mean? I’ve got a complicated relationship to pleasure, or rather, the way society tries to manage and contain it and, sometimes, to crush it. This year taught me that I’ve had to consciously nourish and protect my sacred simple pleasures. The world is afraid of joy and, if I’m out of tune with myself, I can become afraid of it too. It’s the divine feminine incarnate and, like all powerful energies, can be at once healing, joyful, and terrifying.

5. Homey domestic comforts are the ultimate sacred simple pleasures. Seriously. Coming home to cat-cuddles. The smell of beeswax candles perfuming my home with their honeyed scent. The whistle of the tea kettle. These things bring me so much comfort and joy. I even found myself rediscovering old pleasures, like sewing and knitting, during this time. All of these homey tasks helped me to unplug from a long work-week, ground my energies, and fill my life with beauty.

   I began to more consciously craft the kind of life I wanted for myself. Full of luscious herbs in my garden and a pot full of stew in the kitchen. More books than I can ever read in my library and a bed piled high with knitted blankets large enough for two to cuddle under. I got rid of things that didn’t bring me joy in order to create space for my pleasure in my life and home. This simple domesticity brought me back to my core belief that true magic is in the everyday.

The thing about pleasure is that it’s pretty darn contagious. In fact, you could say that pleasure begets pleasure. It’s pretty wanton that way. If there’s one final takeaway I got from my year of cultivating sacred simple pleasures, it’s that the more you open yourself up to enjoying the little things in life, the more pleasure you start finding in the bigger things too. It is an act of everyday conjuring to invite this heady, hedonistic energy into all aspects of your life. My year of meditating on these simple pleasures might be over, but the cultivation of them is ongoing. After all, life is more delicious when you welcome in the divine feminine power of pleasure.

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you. If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment. Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

Cultivating Routines as Rituals

I write a lot about the power of routine as ritual, or taking our day-in, day-out practices and turning them into meaningful, intentional activities that enhance the overall quality of our lives. But what does that really mean? And how to we turn these rote activities into sacred practices? First, we have to understand the difference between routine and ritual.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, routine is defined as “a sequence of actions regularly followed.”  Pretty straight forward.  It’s the stuff we do regularly without fail, whether they are good for us (waking up early to exercise before work) or bad (always hitting the vending machine at three in the afternoon).  Some are more mundane: pay the rent at the first of the month, take your six-month visit to the dentist, get an oil and lube for your car. 

We are so used to these things as basic parts of adult life that we never really think too hard about them, unless something is out of joint (not sure how you will pay your rent, a sketchy dentists, weird nosies coming from your car’s engine).  Hell, our routines are so ingrained, we often zone out while caring from them.  Have you ever driven home from work via the same rout you take every day and have no memory of the drive?  That’s you on autopilot.  Your routine is so second-nature you disconnect from the actual activity you’re doing.

The second definition  of routine is equally telling.  It defines it as “a set sequence in a performance such as a dance or comedy act.”  So routine is not just a basic repetitive schedule, but something we perform, consciously or unconsciously.  It’s all about how important we want people to see us.  Running from one thing to the next practically shouts that we are so busy, so interesting, so important!  It also broadcasts our values.  Do you value squeezing in one more thing at work over finishing a few minutes early and leisurely heading home to enjoy some self-care?  To you pack your weekends with activities and experiences, or do you create time to dally?  Each decision shapes how we see ourselves and how others see us. 

But these definitions of routine only take is so far.  Only far enough to get us thinking about how we see ourselves and how we want others to see us, in fact.  But what about what we want to feel, experience, and enjoy?

That’s where ritual comes it. 

Ritual is about consciously, mindfully tending to our daily tasks, taking comfort in the familiarity and pleasure in how they ground and nurture us.  We welcome in the healthy and the good and actively eliminate the life-diminishing and bad.  

In order to do that, however, we have to change how we look at our day-in, day-out.  It’s not a place we need to escape from (who hasn’t fantasized about running away to a distant land when life gets complicated or dreary?).  It’s not a collection of minutes that fills our head until the real fun—a weekend, celebration, or happy event—can happen.  It’s about finding joy in the life we create for ourselves one small, deliberate act at a time.  I’m reminded of the Ten of Cups in the tarot here—the homey gratitude card that asks you to step back and appreciate all the simple magic of your life that you’ve worked hard to create. 

The first step to unplugging from rote activities—aka mindless routine—is to find enjoyment in the things we often perceive as One More Thing To Do.  Celebrate chores, rather than dread them by turning them into rituals that help you unplug from your workday and reconnect with yourself.  So I have to turn my compost—good.  Dirt in my fingernails grounds me and feeding the worms connects me to nature.  So I don't know what to cook for dinner—I 'll start with sautéing an onion and let my farm fresh ingredients speak to me.  Taking the extra time to cook a healthy meal allows me to nourish my whole being and enjoy the sensuousness of sautéing vegetables.  It allows me to slow down and reconnect to the deliciousness that is life.  Throw in a jazz record and a glass of wine, and you've got the makings of a divine evening.  

Now, doesn’t that sound lovely?

Each and every task becomes a devotional act to the energy I want to welcome into my life and an expression for gratitude for the abundance I have painstakingly cultivated.  A celebration of my hard work and a deliberate conjuring of more good energy. 

What routines will you transform into sacred rituals?

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you. If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment. Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

A Year of Sacred Simple Pleasures

Last summer, I wrote about the importance of sacred simple pleasures, those ephemeral soul-filling things that make life delicious. What followed was a season spent nourishing and prioritizing the daily joys that rejuvenated and refreshed.  I returned to teaching that fall excited and enthusiastic.  The experience made me realize how important it is to cultivate a wellness practice that emphasizes simple pleasures.

It also renewed my belief that simple pleasures are integral to conjuring everyday magic.  They are, in fact, sacred. Pleasure is significantly undervalued in our society.  If it feels good, it must not be important.  If it brings you joy, it’s not to be taken seriously…how many times have you heard or seen these ideas reinforced?  The way people turn their noses up at romance novels is  good example of this.  These books have sexytimes! All the feels! People having multiple orgasms! And a Happily Ever After! So…why are these bad things?

I blame this fear of pleasure on religion and a society that is still afraid of the sacred feminine.  Instead of nurturing this Eros energy as an important part of our day-to-day lives, we treat is transgressive, a deviant pursuit stuffed into weekends, vacations, and any place else that doesn’t fall into the seriously business of our daily routine. It’s kind of like Dry January: people binge drink on December and then repent with virtuous abstinence come January. Why not just enjoy moderate drinking year round? Even worse, we often ignore the simple pleasures right in front of us, and thus, an important part of enjoying our day: the morning sunrise, the unexpected blood oranges at the market, the delicious cup of oolong. When we deny ourselves these simple pleasures, we deny an important part of our identity.

In reality, pleasure tells us a lot about ourselves. It’s easy to identify a toxic situation because they make us feel so bad.  But once we address negative issues, how do we then cultivate joy?  It takes a lot to conjure and maintain happiness.  We have to get used to what pleasure feels like and perhaps more time to unabashedly court its presence in our lives. Like any good reader of romance knows, the iconic Happily Ever After takes a lot of grit and hard work to achieve.  We have to ask ourselves hard questions: What makes me happy? What do I want in my life? What doesn’t bring me pleasures? Seemingly simple questions, sure, but how often are we honest with ourselves about what we enjoy versus what society tells us we should be doing?

I also found that prioritizing simple pleasures allows me let go of the things that complicate or otherwise being negative energy to my life. During my year of buying, using, and wasting less, I found a direct correlation between moving too fast and being less mindful, less eco-conscious, less in-tune with myself. When I paused to indulge in simple pleasures, I was able to unplug from the frantic energy of our fast paced world. Same goes for toxic people situations. Learning what brings me joy helped me better understand what throws me out of whack.

Recently, I found myself in a social situation that I committed to not because I necessarily wanted to but because I thought I should be doing it. It seemed like a good idea, but my gut feeling was telling me it wasn’t my vibe. The energy was too groupie, too demanding on my time, and too draining. In the space of a week, I went from being happy and full of life, to tired, anxious, and without inspiration for my writing. Those feelings told me a lot. And in talking with loved ones, I was finally able to trace these feeling back to stepping into a zone that wasn’t right for me. Once I had that revelation, my energy returned. I felt happy again—albeit tired from this strange emotional journey. I could write again. I looked forward to my work day. And I felt joy in the littlest things. The energetic shift was shocking and made me realized how much I took my inner joy for granted. In reality, I had been so happy because I nourished the sacred art of pleasure and eschewed anything that didn’t enhance the quality of my life. It made me feel like I could do anything and everything—until I stepped into that dead zone and realized that wasn’t the case. My energy had been abundant because I cultivated abundance—and ruthlessly cut out anything from my life that didn’t enhance my overall wellness.

Lesson learned. Pleasure is an integral part of my day-to-day. It helps me understand why certain things make me anxious and unhappy—and that it is okay to let those things go in favor of radical joy. Now, I feel like I have to say that this isn’t about never having stereotypically “negative” feelings or never allowing yourself to engage with things that make you uncomfortable. Rather, this is about meaningfully allowing yourself to feel what you need to feel and listen to what those feelings are telling you. We find out a lot about ourselves from painful situations, true. But it is equally important to listen to what our pleasurable experiences have to teach us.

So how will I go about this year long exploration of sacred simple pleasures? I don’t have a set of rules to gauge how I indulge in this, mostly because I absolutely adore unstructured time and a lack of schedules when I’m not teaching. You could say it’s my number one sacred simple pleasure. I want to be open to synchronicity and spontaneity. Cooking and dreaming. Knitting and lolly-gagging.  Adventuring and magic-making.  I’ll only measure it by how nourished by soul feels. How balanced my life is.  How much magic I feel in the everyday. I’ll examine how slowly—intentionally—I’m living. How often I’m comfortable in asserting my needs and desires. How delicious each day tastes.

What simple pleasures are sacred to you? Why? Here’s to a year of cultivating pleasure! 

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you. If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment. Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!