2020 was a tumultuous year—one requiring a new kind of awareness, organization, and emotional resilience—and, you made it! Please take a moment to acknowledge and celebrate yourself. Appreciate you, your family, and your business for what you were able to adapt to, achieve, sustain, and learn from.

For those who follow Chinese astrology, 2020 was foretold to be a year presenting itself as “water moving under earth.” Symbolically, this means that many had the experience of walking on shaky ground, watching plans get swallowed up by the earth, and riding the unsteady landslides of chronic uncertainty. As we experienced so many of our own routines and structures being dismantled, new structures began to emerge in place of the old. For us, reliably and regularly creating sacred space became the vaccination to the violent shell shock of an unpredictable pandemic. And these intentional practices have now become the bedrock and launchpad for our future inner and outer well-being. Discover the elements of sacred space that support nourishing habits and build a future filled with your values, essence, and energy! 

“Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again.” —Joseph Campbell

What Does Sacred Mean to You? 

The word sacred is sometimes associated with religious beliefs, spirituality, or an experience of connecting with the divine, with nature, or with one’s essence, soul, or spirit. We acknowledge and honor your relationship with the sacred. We experience sacred as the embodiment of any word, thought, or action that is intentional, inspirational, and full of heart.

As you travel on your own journey into the sacred, you allow your personal values and passions to imbue all the sacred spaces and sacred moments you are living into. We invite you to become surprised and delighted by your own discoveries and experiences of the sacred as you construct and reinforce the architecture of your being. 

How to Create Sacred Space

Creating sacred space is both the foundation and scaffolding for connecting to what’s most meaningful to you. It can be a place to reflect your beliefs, ideas, dreams, and creativity. Consider how you want your sacred space to make you feel and how you want to use it. Generating sacred space can be something you do daily, monthly, or seasonally, and it can be shared with loved ones or practiced alone. Following are some considerations for growing your sacred space.

1. Find Your Spot

It doesn’t have to be a whole room. It can be a corner of a room, a bookshelf, the top of a dresser, or a place in your garden. Choose whether this space will be public and open to the contributions of others or private and filled with your own personal touches. Perhaps your scared space is on wheels or on a tray that can be moved in and out of public and private areas.

Our space is in the center of our home, on the fireplace. It’s a place we pass by several times a day, and it is openly displayed for others to see and contribute to. Seeing it helps us remember to pause for a mindful breath; to reconnect with an intention, affirmation, word, or feeling; or to simply make us smile.

2. Gather What You Love

Find and place personal items that are meaningful to you in this space. These items may include pictures of family members (who are still with you and those who have passed), teachers, mentors, guides, and statues or icons of those whom you admire. It may include your favorite candle, poem, affirmation cards, stones, crystals, plants, flowers, or anything that gives you energy, inspires you, and reconnects you to the sacred. 

We have included items from our travels, pictures of our teachers, icons of our ancestors, artwork, flowers, a single candle, and sage for smudging. Our space is continually being refreshed and evolving with what we feel is valuable in the moment.

3. Create a Nourishing Habit 

Once you create your sacred space, decide how you will enjoy it. Will you use the space to meditate, stretch, pray, or set intentions? Will you just sit with your eyes closed, enjoying a few minutes of peace and quiet? Will you sing, chant, ring a chime, play an instrument? Your ritual can be as simple or as intricate as you like. It can be something you share with roommates or family members, or you can spend that time alone. But whatever you choose, make it nourishing and meaningful to you.

Some days, we light a candle or burn sage while we say a prayer of loving kindness. Sometimes we choose a card from one of our favorite decks to help inform a daily intention. Other days, we beat on a drum or resonate with a singing bowl. Drawing from sacred traditions from around the world and our own travels has inspired us to include a variety of resonant, symbolic, and nourishing practices. 

Everyone can benefit from creating places and habits that are intentional, inspiring, and full of heart. Choosing to do so will be a resource for continual refreshment and nourishment, and it is a reliable way to recover energy, breath, and awareness. The routines, rituals, and habits you create consciously or unconsciously are currently shaping your existence and your future.

About 40 percent of our daily behaviors are actions repeated from the past. Therefore, “If we change our habits, we change our lives.”² Daily routines and habits are a touchstone providing stability, refreshment, and continuity. Based on the results of your daily habits, are you happy? What meaningful routines or habits do you currently have that boost your overall well-being? And what new nourishing habits would you like to create? 

The new year brings a new opportunity to reimagine the physical and energetic structures you are building with your daily thoughts and habits. The process of constructing your own sacred space, filling it with what you love, and customizing your own sacred practices can reinforce your true nature and help launch you into the future you desire. Successfully forging a nourishing new habit is best accomplished when it is simple, easy, and pleasurable. If connecting with family is important to you, then maybe the dinner table is your sacred space and Wednesday night family dinners become the nourishing habit. If self-care is valuable to you, the living room can become your sacred space while you stretch, dance, or listen to a favorite song or guided meditation.

Your experience of the sacred can be infused at any time and in any place where your actions are in alignment with your values: sacred practices are self-care!

Whatever the practice, listen to and honor your heart’s desires. Trust your intuition to show you where to begin, what to include, and what to do. No matter what this new year brings, feel yourself enlivened and nourished by your sacred scaffolding, and a future full of heart. 

Healing with Sound and Light

To Heal is to Make Sound

Sound healing is the use of sacred instruments or the power of your voice to release energetic blockages. Sound can induce states of ease and harmony in the body. The vibrations produced by healing sounds can “alter your brain waves and can shift frequencies from guilt and fear to vibrations of love and joy.”¹ Creating healing vibrations with crystal bowls, tuning forks, drums, rattles, chimes, and more is a powerful way to reinforce an intention or affirmation. Using your unique voice to pray, chant, or repeat an intention can be a powerful nourishing habit. 

Let There Be Light 

Light has been used as a symbol of illumination for centuries. Lighting candles, creating a sacred fire, or burning herbs through ritual and ceremony are believed to carry prayers, intentions, and requests to the universe, nature, or the divine. Using the power of light in your sacred space can rejuvenate feelings of peace, connection, and inspiration.

Notes

1. Gayatri Bhaumik, n.d. “Sound Healing – How it Works and Its Health Benefits,” Destination Deluxe, accessed November 2020, destinationdeluxe.com/sound-healing-health-benefits.

2. Gretchen Rubin, Better Than Before (Crown, 2015).