Ritual, with Dani van de Velde

Dani Van de Velde is the founder of The Meditation Teacher in Singapore. She’s a highly-qualified, highly-experienced meditation teacher, Usui Reiki Master, healer and spiritual mentor and she is a regular keynote speaker for corporate, school and community-based audiences. On this episode, Kim Forrester chats with Dani about the power of ritualistic practice, and explores how ritual - in its multitude of forms - can help us connect more deeply with the moments that make up our lives. 

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Intro:   0:02
Welcome to Eudaemonia, the podcast that is all about flourishing. Plug in, relax and get ready for the goodness as we explore the traits and practices that can help you thrive in life ... with your host, Kim Forrester.  

Kim Forrester:   0:22
Welcome to the final Eudaemonia podcast for 2019. As we head into the holiday season, a time of great tradition and ceremony around the world, I felt it appropriate to talk about the value of ritual. Dani Van de Velde is the founder of The Meditation Teacher in Singapore. She's a highly qualified, highly experienced meditation teacher, Usui Reiki master, healer, and spiritual mentor. It's my delight to welcome Dani at the British Club, here in Singapore, to chat about the power of ritualistic practice and to discuss how ritual - in its multitude of forms - can help us connect more deeply with the moments that make up our lives.  Dani Van de Velde, welcome to the top of the hill here in Singapore. We've got the Singapore Air Force flying over us on occasion, but it's such a delight just to be in your presence.  

Dani Van de Velde:   1:15
Thank you so much, Kim. Yeah, it's beautiful. It's a beautiful day here in Singapore. It's warm, and it's, um, it's lovely to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

Kim Forrester:   1:22
It is a pleasure. We are closing off this year's seasons of the Eudaemonia podcast, and I'm really looking forward to having a delightful chat to you about the power of ritual.

Dani Van de Velde:   1:33
Me too. It's one of my favourite, favourite topics.  

Kim Forrester:   1:36
Human history ... it's really interesting ... human history is filled with different cultures, religions and worldviews, and all of them, to some degree, involve ritualistic practice. What do you think it is that draws us, as human beings, to ritual?  

Dani Van de Velde:   1:52
Well, I think it's really important to understand what ritual is, but I guess we're going to get into that during this chat. But, certainly in my view, I don't think ritual belongs necessarily to any kind of framework or spiritual path. At its very basic form, I would say that ritual is a very natural human expression of spirit. You know? Ritual can take many different forms, but there are some, you know, shared ingredients, if you like, within ritual. But I think it's a very beautiful human expression of the sacred and the mystery.  

Kim Forrester:   2:31
If we avoid ritual, if we ignore it, suppress it, avoid it at all costs, do you feel that we're missing out on something special in our lives?  

Dani Van de Velde:   2:43
Well, it's such an interesting question because I don't think we do. I think we, as human beings - and regardless of what our sort of inner path is, or our understandings are about, you know, spirituality or our inner terrain - I think we all do it. You know, like, I don't know one woman in my life who doesn't, at spring time, do a clean out of their home; change up the colours in their home. All of us, to some degree, mark our major events within our family life with celebration. These are rituals. And certainly within families, too, I think there's this beautiful kind of legacy that can happen with rituals. You know, I celebrate my kids' birthdays in exactly the same way that my parents did with me, in exactly the same way they did with them. You know, so there's story in ritual as well, and there's a kind of a tribal identity and a sense of belonging that group ritual and family ritual can engender. So I think we all do it. We probably don't call it ritual, though, but we will do some form of meaningful action that marks life.  

Kim Forrester:   3:54
Okay, so here's the big question. What is ritual? And the way I'll ask it is, there are many things that I do regularly. I brush my teeth every day. I feed the pets twice a day. I take the rubbish out three times a week. What is it that takes these habitual daily activities and turns them into ritual?  

Dani Van de Velde:   4:13
Okay, so you know I write about this a lot, right? I write about bringing ritual and the sacred into the modern life. And anything can become a ritual. So what is ritual? So that's the big question, isn't it? So, ritual is a way of combining intent with meaningful action, with awareness, and also with some form of energy. Okay, and that can take lots and lots of different forms. And, you know, certainly in esoteric traditions, which is probably what people associate ritual with - you know, there's shamanic ritual, for example, which has become very trendy and people are exploring it, these days, much more intently. There's ceremonial ritual, like the Catholic Mass is a beautiful example of a big, beautiful, ceremonial ritual. There's magic ritual as well. And so there's lots and lots of different sorts of ritual. But what it really does when we engage in ritual is, we're opening up what's referred to in sort of the magical realms - and I don't mean 'rabbit out of a hat' magical, I mean esoteric magic, which includes shamanism and so on - a liminal space. That's what ritual does. So it combines intent and meaning, and purpose, and awareness - which are functions, if you like, of our conscious mind - with much deeper movements of energy correspondences and meaning - which are a function of our invisible aspect; our deep mind. Ritual is very, very evocative to the subconscious mind. It's felt more than thought. And so by bringing these elements together, what we're actually doing is, we're generating a space, if you like, that bridges the mundane and the mystery. And that's what's so divine about it. Because what it does do is, that steeps us - even momentarily, you know, or for five minutes or whatever your ritual is - into the sacred self. And with that comes, I think, a deeper connection with the patterns and the deeper meaning and the purpose within our mundane reality. And that's why it's so important. So all of my courses - even if it's from Introduction to Meditation, right through to intuitive healing and the deeper esoteric stuff - all of them contain an element of ritual. 

Kim Forrester:   6:50
So you alluded to this earlier on. Do you feel that we have to have a particular definition of that version of sacred - do you feel that we have to ascribe to a particular spiritual practice or faith, or worldview - in order to get the most out of ritual?

Dani Van de Velde:   7:01
No. It's a human thing. So, like going back to your examples before about brushing your teeth and putting out the trash and all that kind of stuff, I mean these are all sort of mundane operational actions of the home and modern life. However, if you bring to your daily action of taking out the trash, a deep intent and a correspondent sense of meaning - and you do that action of taking out the trash but holding the meaning that you are removing and clearing from your space, from your life, the stuff that doesn't serve you anymore, or the clutter of your mind, or clutter within your relational field - that act of taking out the trash becomes a deep, impressive, generative ritual. It creates change. Ritual creates change, and we all know it. Like, you know, whether you're doing your own little light a candle, burn some incense, meditating - the act of meditation is a ritual - you come out of that altered. You know, it's so interesting using the word 'altered'. So, for a lot of my groups of students, part of the preparation of moving into one of the journeys that I'll take them on is, to set up a sacred space in their home which is the dedicated space for their ritual. In other words, an altar. Now the word 'altar' comes from the Latin word 'altare', which means 'to alter'. So when we engage in ritual, and especially repetitive ritual, which we can talk about, you are altering your state of consciousness. Because you're moving from the frenetic activity off the conscious mind into a much deeper zone within the self of the subconscious, the energetic, the creative.

Kim Forrester:   9:01
Is it necessary for us to have a particular space where we perform particular rituals?

Dani Van de Velde:   9:06
Well, I do think that there are associations that you create when you engage in regular rituals. And so having a space, a dedicated space , is useful. But so is facing east every time, or burning the same oil every time, or laying out the same little cloth every time. So, you know, when I've got people that come in for the Intro to Meditation courses, and one of the first things I say to them is, "Generate a very, very simple repeated ritual every time you sit to meditate." And the reason for that is because you start to create an association between the psyche and the act of meditating. And so it makes it easier. You know, every time you lay out your little cloth, maybe at your sacred space, or maybe at the same chair - I suggest, if possible, to meditate the same time every day - you light your candle, your system starts to recognise the cue to move into meditation. So smell, for example, is very evocative. So I've been meditating and teaching meditation and esoteric work for years and years and years - I have to think how long ... over 20 years - and I've always burnt the same brand of insense; the gorgeous nag champa. You know, Sai Baba's nag champa. Now, I've got such a strong association with that smell that even if I'm not meditating or not entering ritual, but I get a whoosh of it out of my teaching kit, I can feel my central nervous system moving into synchronicity, just with the association to the smell. Even if I'm running late and bolting out the door. So ritual is useful in that regard.

Kim Forrester:   10:46
And certainly the repetition of...?

Dani Van de Velde:   10:47
Absolutely.  

Kim Forrester:   10:48
Which brings me to Rafael Nadal. He is as well known for his rituals as he is for his tennis. For instance, he takes a cold shower before every game. He will only ever step over the boundary line using his right foot, his right leg. When he walks out on to court, he will always places tournament ID face-up on his bag before he walks out to play. Most people would regard those as simple superstitions, but what you're saying here is there's perhaps a ritualistic essence to what he's doing. Do you think these things actually make a difference?  

Dani Van de Velde:   11:23
They absolutely make a difference. So I don't know Rafael, although I'd love to. But I would suggest that he's probably also done a lot of work in the background around visualising success. And so those ritualistic little things that he does are like touchstones to access the energy of the possibility of success. It just opens his energetic field . And we know that when we've got a beautiful expanded field, we can generate a greater sense of flow. And he's learned that there's little touchstones that create an association that opens up his, I would say, 'expanded' mind. You know? So we have this idea that the mind is just a function of the brain. But the expanded mind is the wholesale engagement of the entire system: body, mind, energy, mental plane, emotional plane, and broader spiritual aspects that connect into patterns and possibilities beyond the boundary of our mundane awareness. We're all designed the same way, and ritual is one way that we can open up the field.

Kim Forrester:   12:32
Which is really interesting. You're talking about ritual being used as a way for us to expand the possibilities within our own mind and within our own reality. Because in his book Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, Mason Currey contends that ritual plays an important role, or has played an important role, in the creation of any artistic masterpiece...

Dani Van de Velde:   12:52
Yeah, beautiful.

Kim Forrester:   12:53
...that is out there today. Have you personally found a link between ritual and creativity?  

Dani Van de Velde:   12:59
Absolutely. So I think it's worth sort of think about: what is creativity? I mean, you're a creative person. You write heaps of stuff and you're creating these gorgeous podcasts and stuff. And I'm also very creative. So, I write all my course content; I write my meditations, articles and stuff. So that's my go-to form of creative expression - is through words. But I think if you talk to any person who's in a creative line, whether they're a painter or an artist, or a writer, and you look at the reading around creativity, the process of creativity is almost like this sort of ascending, ripening movement of intelligence and energy that comes up into the critical mind. So you can't think your way through ... well, I suppose you can, with some force and discipline, and that sort of thing. But the playful sensory movement within the creative expression is what I think yields the juice. And then we use the critical mind, then, to hone it; to edit it; to make it snappy; to make it digestible for other people. I mean, every creative I know and who I've read about, talks about the creative process as a matter of ofallowance.

Kim Forrester:   14:12
Absolutely. Getting out of one's own way.  

Dani Van de Velde:   14:15
Totally, and creating enough of an expanded state of energy and feeling within the body to allow your unique voice or your unique expression to rise. And therefore catch it, and then hone it and turn it into something outside of yourself. So it is about expanding the field.

Kim Forrester:   14:36
Which is what you've just spoken about in terms of ...

Dani Van de Velde:   14:40
Yeah. And ritual is one way to do that.

Kim Forrester:   14:43
So when it comes to ritual, what is most important: the action or the intent? If we are scrolling through our Instagram feed with meaningful intent, is that truly a ritualistic practice? Are we expanding beyond our critical mind when we're doing so?  

Dani Van de Velde:   15:01
OK, so I would argue that ... I think it's interesting that you did the Instagram scrolling example, because a really key element of ritual is present awareness. And we all know the rabbit holes of social media. Like, you can just mindlessly be scrolling through it and then wake yourself up and go, 'What the hell am I doing? I could be doing something way more meaningful and awesome.' Not disparaging social media, you know I love that, too. But I can't imagine that scrolling through Instagram could be turned into a meaningful ritual. And the reason for that is because there needs to be beauty in the architecting of a ritual for it to really do the things that we're talking about. And the preparation, choosing the time of day. I mentioned earlier, correspondences so ... and this is where, you know, esoteric practice and high spiritual ceremonial group rituals, that's what they excel at. You know, so there's meaningful objects that have corresponding meaning to the purpose and the intent of the ritual, and they're laid out in a beautiful way on the altar in a ritualistic space. There's herbs, and scents, and words that are said - certain decree, or invocations, or prayer, or whatever the framework is that you're following. And all of these are essential. And your present awareness - like, putting all of your energy and your real love, really, in a dedicated act of beauty and meaning. And that's what opens the liminal space where you're moving in between mundane reality and the fields of information and energy that holds the mundane reality in place. I mean, that's really what you're doing. And you're dropping your pebble into those fields and creating change, creating ripples.  

Kim Forrester:   16:48
So the action is important.  

Dani Van de Velde:   16:50
The action is important. Thought-through action. Although I do know a lot of people that love ritualistic magic, and they get really bound up in, 'Have I got the right colour candle?' You know, 'Have I set it up the right way?' And they're so sort of into the action that they're bound up in their conscious mind. And they're not engaging the rest of themselves in it. And they don't really yields results.

Kim Forrester:   17:13
I also want to present to you the situation that I think occurs with millions of people around the world, where they engage in ritual because it is what they have been taught to engage in. And they will go through the actions, they will say the words, they will light the candle because that is what their family, or their society, has done for millennia. And yet to them, personally, there is no meaning. Do you feel, in that case, that it's important to sort of find meaning in that ritual, or perhaps find another ritual that has meaning?  

Dani Van de Velde:   17:49
Well, I think if you're just kind of going through the motions, you're not engaging in ritual. You know, I'd say, you're either engaging in actions that keep the family happy ... You know, I do think there is something in that, though. Like I do think, let's just say, for example, you've grown up in a Catholic household and going to Sunday Mass is really important. And you grew up with that. There is a sort of childhood association with that. So, you know, I know a lot of people who, perhaps for varying reasons, have moved away from the Catholic church. Yet they will still say they love going to Mass because the hymns are familiar, the prayers are familiar, there's a sense of group movement in there, even though it may, over the years, not hold the meaning that it did for them. I do think, as well, there is a lot of beauty in family and tribal ritual. Like we were saying before about the celebration of the family. Or the way the Christmas meal's done and it's done the same way every year and at least that's one thing you can peg on. It gives a sense of belonging. It gives a sense of identity. And, you know, you may not be into the meaning of Christmas, but that meal and having the family together - even if it all goes pear shaped and ends up in fights or whatever, hopefully not - that's important. You know, so there's an importance in legacy and tribal meaning and the carrying on of that. However, if you're, for example, entering a ritual - like, for example, shamanic ritual, which is a gorgeous framework to use; it's one that I teach and is one that I love in my life - to create a shift within yourself so that you can either let something go, or forgive something, or try and seek some revelation from deeper aspects of yourself around an issue that you're dealing with life. If you play the drumming trap or play your drum because you know you have to, light candles because you know you have to, it's superstition.  That's not ritual because only one-fifth of you is engaging in it. The physical.  

Kim Forrester:   19:45
So you engage in ritual a lot?  

Dani Van de Velde:   19:48
Yes, every day.

Kim Forrester:   19:49
In your view, Dani, is it more meaningful when we partake in ritual with others, or is it powerful by ourselves?  

Dani Van de Velde:   19:58
I think they both have their place. I mean, we do know that our neurons fire very differently and we have a very different chemical response within the physiology when we engage in anything in a collective. And we're collective creatures. You know, we've all had that experience of, like, being at an awesome music festival, and the sound and the celebration, and it raises you and you vibrate. You can feel it in every cell and it's just divine, you know. And there is - certainly with my groups of meditators - one of the most common things I hear a couple of weeks into the meditation journey for students, where they're just trying to establish a regular practice, and they'll come back into the class the next week and go, 'It was so much easier in the group. I didn't do anything differently, but it was easier in the group." Well, we know that that's a thing. When we come together with shared intent and with mutual respect each other, we generate an energy field that can act as a bit of a trampoline, if you like, for our own practice and so on, which is really beautiful. And certainly a lot of spiritual frameworks are very prescriptive about numbers of people and, you know, the importance of the group, and levels of roles, and so on. I'd add, just on the exploring the group ritual, that there also is something very, very powerful about having your ritual witnessed. You know, if you're making a decree of some sort, or you're putting out an intent into the causal fields, and you're really claiming that as something that's important to you and something that you want to manifest in your life, having that witnessed is hugely powerful. So, you know, I'll often prescribe to some of my private clients that I do spiritual coaching with, if they're really letting go of some sort of sticky pattern, to do a fire ritual. And you know, there's the element of fire, which is very powerful. And there's something beautiful and very sort of final around casting something to the flames. But I'll often say to them, 'Get a really close friend who's cool with a little bit of juju, to witness this.' They don't have to participate. They don't ... you don't have to explain to them, or unpack the whole thing afterwards, you know. Have them stand as your witness. Have it watched. At the end of the ritual, thank them for being there for you and then go and open a bottle of wine.

Kim Forrester:   22:18
Surely it matters the types of people that you are surrounding yourselves with? Not just having people in your environment.

Dani Van de Velde:   22:22
Absolutely. So you can't be self-conscious. And, you know, ritual has a certain amount of flow to it. That's what you're doing. You're accessing energy streams and flow, and inspiration, and beauty, and so you can't feel self-conscious. But having said all of that about group ritual, there's something very, very sublime, as well, about personal, private ritual. And, you know, I'm dawn junkie. And for me, that is a very, very sacred time. You know, where the day's just beginning; the activity hasn't rushed into my consciousness yet. I can participate in the sun running the first sun beams over the canopy. I can participate in that first release and sigh of oxygen from the botanical realm, and I can lean into the potential of the day. And I know that within all of the myriad of possibilities of the day that, somewhere in there is a beautiful high path for me. And and I claim it and I connect with it. And the days that I do that - I rarely don't - but the days that I do that, play out beautifully.

Kim Forrester:   23:33
It's starting to heat up here at the top of the British Club. People are starting to come in and join us!

Dani Van de Velde:   23:37
Sure is. I think lunch hour's starting, too!

Kim Forrester:   23:40
Dani, in the 20 years that you have been practising esoteric ritual, have your personal rituals evolved over that time, or have they sort of remain unchanged?

Dani Van de Velde:   23:51
Yes, that's interesting. So I've been teaching it for 20 years, but I would say ever since I was a little girl, you know, I've brought a feather home from the beach, put it on a little space, had a candle lit ... because, as we talked about, this is a natural expression of the human spirit. But absolutely, my rituals change and morph. With a deeper understanding of the combination that creates rituals - correspondent meaning, what we talked about: intent, present awareness and energy, bringing energy into it, you know, so either by breath work, or fire, elemental energy like fire or sacred smoke, or whatever it is, sound, whatever it is that you use - those basic ingredients can be expressed in innumerable ways. So I do like exploring old, traditional, well laid ritualistic tracks because I think there's a technology in them. So you know, I love Kabbalist ritual, for example. I love shamanic ritual, for example. And so what I tend to do is, find a good teacher, learn the traditional ritualistic steps until I've mastered it, and then go off-piste.  And freestyle a little bit because that really is the point of it. The point of it is your unique expression of spirit, your unique connection with the mystery of life, your unique ability to move through this liminal space between the mundane and the mysterious, and plant your seeds. You know, plant your intent. Generate change. But I would say, as I've matured in my spiritual practice - as I've taught it and I've observed it more - my ritual tends to be more and more kind of wild. 

Kim Forrester:   25:50
Yes, you have gone wilding lately.

Dani Van de Velde:   25:50
Yeah, I do. You know, it is just so resonant and beautiful to connect in with wild fields. So I, more and more, have taken my ritual out of my temple - whether that be my home altar, or the church, or other space dimensions - and I just take it into the jungle. Or when I'm in Australia and previously, I take it to the beach. And, you know, these elemental fields are highly resonant and they really serve you. It is a bit like communal ritual with the elements, rather than with other people.

Kim Forrester:   26:24
So it's one thing to have your rituals evolve over time. But are some people, Dani, who simply find it difficult to do the same thing over and over again. They get bored, they get disheartened or disillusioned, or whatever. What is your advice to those people?  

Dani Van de Velde:   26:38
Well, my first advice would be to listen to this podcast and expand your understanding of what it is that you're doing with ritual. Because it is a seamless integration. I mean, if you want to really sort of deep and groovy with it, life is a ritual. We are here as fields of consciousness that have chosen to incarnate in this world, if you want to get really deep. This body is a symbol - it's a correspondence - of who we are. And living life is, I guess, the ultimate ritual of the soul. You know? So, I don't see it as having to make time for ritual. I see it as absolutely part of my natural expression. And I'd suggest to anyone who goes, 'Oh, I don't have time to do it. I really want to do it. But I don't have time', is to deepen your understanding of what ritual is.  

Kim Forrester:   27:32
And how has ritual allowed you to flourish in life? The Eudaemonia podcast is all about flourishing. Since you were ... well, you said that you've been engaging since you were a toddler. How do you see ritual playing a part in terms of you being able to thrive in life?  

Dani Van de Velde:   27:51
Oh wow. Well, in a number of ways. So ritual brings me back into presence. That's one of the beautiful effects of it. So there's kind of this sort of inverse relationship: ritual brings you into present awareness, and present awareness is required in ritual. But the beauty, and the act, and the actions, and the decree and however you weave your ritual together, brings you into presence. And, of course, we all know from meditation and mindfulness just the massive benefits that that yields, both physiologically, and emotionally, and mentally, and so on. So, present awareness is one. Secondly, ritual really plugs me into my expanded field of awareness. And it's within that expanded field of awareness that intuitive prompting, and the dialogue of intuitive wisdom, comes through. You feel intuition. And so, by regularly keeping a beautiful, ritualistic channel open in that liminal space - that links the invisible with the visible, the wave with the particle, you know, the mystery with the mundane - we're better able to pick up information that exists beyond our mundane sensors. So it plugs me into my intuitive field. And, I guess at sort of a really fundamental level, it is beautiful. So brings a beautiful, spiritual, creative expression into my life which washes over the day-to-day, and makes it meaningful.

Kim Forrester:   29:27
So, if life is getting a bit funky and you're feeling pretty human, are there particular rituals that you dive into in those moments?  

Dani Van de Velde:   29:36
Yeah, I do. So water ritual is beautiful for getting rid of that funk feeling. So, if I've got a really sort of contracted emotional situation going on, for example, and it's difficult for me to ease it off - and I have lots of different ways to do that: breath work and so on, and meditation normally does it. If it's really intense, I run every morning anyway, and I run in wild places and that's got a beautiful grounding effect. But I will absolutely do a water ritual - which can be, coming back to your earlier point at the beginning of this chat, my shower. I take some essential oils into the shower. I light a candle. I establish my intent. I step into that shower fully engaged in a sensory way. And I dedicate that shower in a ritualistic, very simple way to washing away the funk. And when you combine the energy of it, the intent of it, the meaning of it, a correspondent oil which is traditionally used for cleansing, you walk out of that shower free.  

Kim Forrester:   30:46
So my final question, and it's one that I ask every guest on the Eudaemonia podcast. Can you recommend what I call a morning reminder? And in your case,  I believe what we're looking for is a simple daily practice that can help my listeners tap into the power of ritual.  

Dani Van de Velde:   31:03
Absolutely. Oh, my goodness. I mean, there's so many examples. But I'll share my one, which we touched on before, which is to start each day with a very, very simple ritual. So I will ... every single day, as soon as I get up. I get up quite early. I always have because I do my practice then, before I go out and start seeing students and clients. I will face east. I will greet the rising light. I happen to live next door to the Indonesian Embassy so my soundtrack is normally the call to prayer, which I totally love.  

Kim Forrester:   31:37
Adorable.

Dani Van de Velde:   31:37
So that's very evocative for me. And I have a little ... sweet little crystal dedicated glass with some water.  And I greet the dawn, and I greet the promise and the highest potential in the day. Sometimes with decree, sometimes just with the feeling;  enormous gratitude to be diving into another day of mystery and awesomeness. And I will take a sip of the water as the ritualistic symbolic act of bringing that possibility into my system. And then I return the rest of the water to the Earth.  

Kim Forrester:   32:13
Dani, that's just beautiful.

Dani Van de Velde:   32:13
Super simple. High meaning. Very, very resonant. Connection with the elements. Connection with light. And really effective.  

Kim Forrester:   32:25
And if people want to find out more about you - about ritual, about your offerings - where can they find you?  

Dani Van de Velde:   32:32
At the moment they can find me at www.themeditationteacher.net. They can email me at dani@themeditationteacher.net. That's all about to change next year. But I'll be routing traffic through to my new platform next year. So, yes, get in touch. And I've got lots of blogs and articles on my website, all around this stuff. So get in touch, I would love to help you. You can tell that I'm very excited. I love ritual and I'm so stoked that's my topic that I got to talk to you about.  

Kim Forrester:   33:02
Dani, it's just been a delight to have you here. We share our space with those enjoying their lunchtime ritual. And the children downstairs, enjoying some swimming pool ritual.

Dani Van de Velde:   33:10
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely beautiful. Yeah. Thanks so much, Kim, you gorgeous. And it's always fun talking to you. Thank you. 

Kim Forrester:   33:17
As Elizabeth Gilbert wrote in her book, Eat, Pray, Love, 'This is what rituals are for. We do spirituals ceremonies as human beings in order to create a safe resting place for our most complicated feelings of joy or trauma, so that we don't have to haul those feelings around with us forever, weighing us down.' You've been listening to the Eudaemonia podcast. If you'd like to learn more about how to live a truly flourishing life, please subscribe and check out www.eudaemoniapod.com for more inspiring episodes. I'm Kim Forrester. Until next time, be well, be kind to yourself and enhance the moments of your life through simple and meaningful ritual.