Ritual & Ceremony

Ritual brings attention and intention to moments that might otherwise pass unnoticed—a way of pausing, listening, offering gratitude, grieving what has been lost, or consciously marking what is changing.

We can create ways of bringing ritual and ceremony into your life—honoring transitions, relationships, ancestors, beginnings and endings, the seasons, the natural world, and what we hold sacred.

For as long as people have lived together, ceremony has helped us move through change—birth and death, coming of age, loss, and spiritual awakening. In much of modern life, these practices have faded or become private, and we are often left to face great changes alone. Yet something in us still longs to have these moments witnessed.

Some experiences are too large or too deep for words alone. Ritual speaks in the language of the body, of symbol and image, of gesture and the natural world. It can reach places within us that talking may not, helping us take in and complete what has changed.

My approach to ritual has been deeply influenced by many years of learning from Q'ero teachers and the wisdom traditions of the Andes.

Central to these teachings is ayni—sacred reciprocity: an understanding that we live in relationship with the earth, one another, our ancestors, and the larger living world. Ritual can be a way of tending these relationships.

Since 2000, I have been a student and teacher in the Pakarina Wisdom School with Don Agustín Machacca Flórez, Q'ero elder and pampamisayoq of Cusco, Peru.

To remain in sacred reciprocity with the tradition I have learned from, I give annually, directly to a Q'ero village.

Ritual gives grief somewhere to go.

We grieve not only people we love, but relationships, identities, places, dreams, communities, and the lives we imagined.

My relationship with grief ritual has been influenced by the teachings of Sobonfu Somé and Malidoma Patrice Somé and the work of Francis Weller, particularly their understanding of grief as something that can be held through ritual, community, and relationship with the natural world.

If you live in California and would like clinical support, grief therapy is also available.

Our lives contain many thresholds, yet we have relatively few ways of consciously marking them.

Together, we can create ritual to honor a significant passage—what you are leaving behind, what you are carrying forward, and what you are welcoming.

Ritual does not need to be elaborate or belong to a particular religious tradition. We begin with what is meaningful to you.

A ritual might include nature, silence, movement, intention, offerings, fire or water, meaningful objects, writing, music, or other forms of expression.