As soon as October wraps up, the holidays come rolling in fast and furiously like nobody’s business. The end of the year packs on the additional stress of meeting final quotas, navigating familismo, and so much more. You might notice yourself needing a little more spiritual support as you’ve come to understand the importance of pulling out all the self-care rituals you can practice in order to finish the year con fuerza. We’re right there with you, amiga.
You might be wondering, aside from your daily affirmations and routine therapy, what are other ways you can acknowledge overwhelming feelings that could arise this holiday season? During a time when you shouldn’t be packing on more than you can handle, it’s easy to unexpectedly say yes to the demands of overspending on gifts, saying yes to every party invite, and feeling frazzled knowing you’re going to have to confront that toxic tío during dinner about his marianismo comments. Next thing you realize, stress has entered the chat. This is where buckling down on your spiritual practices helps you convert back into the manifesting mami that you are. Fix that crown, and remember how much of a chingona you are when you feel defeated by holiday stress. We’re here to remind you that you can conquer all the holiday chaos when you bring in the help of your ancestors and their spiritual ancestral practices. Here are some rituals and limpias to ground yourself this holiday season while you implement healthy habits and do less in order to do more.
How to Spiritually Ground Your Energy, and What Does It Mean?
In times of crisis and uncertainty, it’s important to remember to ground yourself. You might hear that phrase a lot in the spirituality community. What exactly does it mean to ground your energy, and how do you do it? Grounding is the act of centering yourself with your present moment. Grounding is a simple method that can help you realign your focus and discern what is worth focusing on or not based on whether it’s helping you reach your highest version of self. Grounding techniques vary, and you’ll have to decide which grounding protocols work best for you.
Stress can induce states of anxiety and fear. When someone is living in those states, one can then become ungrounded because they’re taking themselves out of the present moment. Anxiety makes you think about the future, creating scenarios that can happen or that are further from the truth. Grounding brings your focus back to what is in your control and detaches you from situations that are not in your best interest. Grounding practices can range from spiritual cleanses (limpias) to breathwork rituals. There’s no incorrect way to ground your energy.
What Is the Difference Between a Ritual and Limpieza?
Ancestrally, as Latine/x and as Indigenous people, rituals and limpias have been a staple in our spiritual practices. Whether it was our ancestors performing rituals to appease the
lunar eclipses or working with sacred plant medicine to heal themselves, this is nothing new and it’s very much part of our roots. Limpiezas and rituals are powerful methods of removing stagnant energies, and releasing mental or spiritual blockages, and can help you ground your energy to power through challenging situations. The difference between a ritual and limpieza is that limpiezas focus on releasing. Whereas rituals can focus on a variety of intentions including releasing. A limpieza is usually performed by a curanderx or spiritual healer. Although you can certainly self-perform a limpia. Limpiezas help renew your energy and strengthen your aura by removing low vibrational entities such as depression or spirit attachments.
Rituals are spiritual practices you develop and implement as a habit. Rituals are also considered to be divination tools to manifest your intentions. Rituals to ground your energy can look like spending time alone at the beginning of the day and towards the evening to call back the energy that you’ve given away throughout your day to people or situations. Rituals of course, can revolve around the lunar cycles or can be ancestral traditions you’ve reclaimed. Again, a ritual is an act of setting an intention, calling in deities or spirits to petition the desire, as well as working with specific metaphysical tools you prefer to manifest and do divination work.
How are Rituals and Limpiezas Culturally Tied in Latinx/e Culture?
Your pre-colonial ancestors had their own religion and spiritual philosophy that was Indigenous to their culture and rooted in ritual work. In order to create erasure, colonized religions fused these Indigenous rituals and practices with religious rituals and holidays. So yes, even your Christian tía is performing rituals when she’s lighting her velas (candles) and doing prayer work to saints (which are basically spirits). Culturally, there are colonized religious rituals and ancestral rituals that have been kept alive by elders and now you.
From remedios to limpiezas, your abuelas and elders likely have stories of their parents performing natural remedies and Earth-based healing practices that have been culturally tied to their tierra linda. Whether it’s rubbing Vicks Vapo Rub to remove that illness or performing an egg limpia, these rituals and limpiezas are culturally tied in Latinx/e culture, which is very much a superstitious culture that’s filled with hidden brujería.
Embrace and create your own rituals as you reclaim how you ground your energy and heal in times of chaos. Your ancestors did and so can you.
How Can You Navigate Stress and Family Through Rituals and Limpias?
Now, how do you bring this old knowledge into the modern world? Use these spiritual practices to stay committed to healthy new habits by way of rituals. Incorporate limpias to release unwanted energies from low vibrational exchanges with irritated people you come across this holiday season. Of course, you’ll also want to start incorporating limpiezas to combat the occasional mal de ojo(evil) that your toxica prima sent you at the family gathering.
Create a ritual that helps you call back the energy you unknowingly gave to others in a tense situation and that you equally give back to them any energy they unknowingly gave to you in the exchange. You can do this through meditation, mindfulness practices, or by wishing them well and sending them healing energy.
Here are some specially curated rituals and limpias for you to adapt into your own personal practice. Implement these this holiday season when you navigate stress from family, work or travel to better regulate your nervous system through spiritual support.
Ritual: Centering on Cutting Cords with Family Cycles
Cutting cords with people is such a powerful way to gain back autonomy. It’s a simple ritual that you can perform with the least amount of time needed. Perform a cord-cutting ritual
with anyone who you feel you need to respectfully give their energy back to them and receive your energy back from them. This doesn’t have to be limited to negative interactions like arguments or fallouts with family or friends. You can do a cutting chord ceremony after you’ve spent a lot of time with someone and you feel you politely want to disconnect from them out of respect. This is a great ritual to do after family dinners or when you have been around too many conflicting energies (e.g. when chilling en la sala this holiday season). It’s a way to let go of others’ emotions and remove their projections off you.
Here’s how to perform a cutting cords ritual with people and family cycles.
Write down who or what toxic cycle you wish to let go from your aura and write how this is limited to your ancestral lineage. Why do you want to release them or this cycle? How will you replace this connection or cycle with a healthy habit or new high-vibrational cycle that is healing and beneficial for you and your future ancestors? How will you limit interactions or not let the energy of such individuals or such cycle burden you? Be practical here.
Next, bring the individual or the cycle in your mind and wish them well. Let the person and the cycle know you mean no ill intentions. You simply no longer want to be a willing participant in this energy exchange. Visualize a chord from you to them at your heart space. In the case of a cycle, visualize a chord from your heart to all past ancestors that stem from this cycle. Visualize yourself cutting this chord and releasing the energy from your aura. You can take it a step further and write the name of the person or write out the cycle on a piece of paper and cut it in half to symbolically represent that you are separating ties from them or it. Toss paper in the trash. Then make a commitment to yourself on how you will confront this cycle or person if there’s ever any opportunity for it to come back to you and how you will call back your peace of mind at that moment.
Limpia: Centering on Keeping Your Aura Strong During Holiday Stress
Everyone has an aura. Although you can’t see it, you can certainly feel it because it is energy. You can feel when someone’s aura is good or bad. You can absolutely feel when someone’s aura is heavy, icky, or light and full of positivity. Your aura is super important to keep clean and clear. Stress bombards your aura and weakens it. Hence it is so important to develop an auric hygiene practice to keep your aura healthy and renewed.
During holiday stress it is easy to let our rituals and habits slip. This is the time when it really matters to hold yourself accountable for how you keep your self-help and self-care routine integrated. Here’s a simple limpia to center your aura by keeping it strong during the holiday madness.
What you’ll need is some Florida Water (also known as agua de Florida). First, you’ll dab some Florida Water on the inner parts of your wrists then inhale it from your wrists to awaken your senses. Then dab Florida Water on all seven chakras in order from the crown chakra down to your root chakra. Once done, place your hands over your heart, and visualize the Florida Water strengthening your auric field. Making your aura big, strong, and protected. You can do this before you leave your home or when returning home from an event that might have riddled your auric field.
Ritual: Centering on Grounding Your Energy When Triggered By Unhealthy Familismo
This next ritual will assist you with grounding your energy when triggered by unhealthy familismo. Let’s be real, it exists no matter how much you’re doing the work or teaching your family members about breaking ancestral curses, familismo is deeply indoctrinated and loves to make an appearance during the holiday season. Perform this during a triggering moment to help you call back your power and assess if it is worth confronting, and if so, how can you approach it from an empowered place?
In a triggering moment, separate yourself and retreat to a safe space of solitude where you can regroup. Take three big inhales and close your eyes. Visualize white light from mama luna coming down over your body and over your aura, shining high vibrational white light and it’s sweeping away this trigger. Clearing your aura and giving back whatever emotion this person projected onto you. Then take another three deep inhales. Ask your intuition if this emotion is yours or not. Ask your intuition if it is worth you confronting or not. Then call back your power. Say out loud or in your mind, “you do not have access to my energy and I call back my power.” You can repeat this several times as needed until you feel empowered.
Limpia: Centering on Ancestral Support thru Prayer
Do not discount the power of prayer. Prayer isn’t only a religious act. Prayer is a powerful ritual of connecting with your higher self, your ancestors, and your spirit guides. Your ancestors are deeply connected to prayer and chances are, they prayed very actively as part of their spiritual practice. Pray to your ancestors even if you weren’t aware of who they were. You don’t have to know an ancestor or have met them to lean on them through prayer.
Prayer is the most powerful method to connect with your ancestors. Don’t hesitate to ask your ancestors for help and support through prayer. Just make sure you give back to your ancestors and aren’t only taking from them. Reciprocity is key in this limpia ritual.
Here’s how to perform a prayer limpia ritual. Call in your benevolent (good intending) ancestors. Ask them to receive and respond to your prayers. Ask them for help on what you wish to remove from your life. What obstacles or limitations can they help release for you as you navigate stress or challenges this holiday season? Then make an offering to them. Give them something that is significant to you and/or them. This can be as simple as buying them a brand new white candle and lighting that candle in their honor daily. Light this candle for at least eight days straight and give them different offerings for the same eight days consecutively. Make sure you conclude your prayers in gratitude after you pray for eight days straight.
Ritual: Centering on Keeping Your Energy Sacred with Crystals and Why
The final ritual is focused on keeping your energy sacred with crystals. Why are crystals such a powerful divination tool? Our ancestors used crystals from their immediate environments such as black obsidian, jade, and micah. Crystals are beings of consciousness that carry energy. Therefore they can amplify energy on your behalf.
Carrying crystals on you physically is like armor. Ancestrally, crystals were found not only on altars but also were incorporated in clothing, jewelry, and weapons for their sacred abilities. You too can work with crystals for various intentions, but specifically to keep your energy sacred. Carry crystals in your pockets, bra, or as jewelry to protect your aura. This holiday season you’ll benefit from working with or wearing specifically, black obsidian, black tourmaline, tiger’s eye, or red jasper crystals. Make sure you wear these when you know you’ll be around triggering people or possibly challenging situations. Set an intention with your crystals to guide you and ground you. Crystals are from the Earth and therefore are a powerful grounding tool to center your energy.
What are you waiting for? Go to your local botanica and stock up on crystals so you can show up to the sala decked out in your new brujería and be the talk of the party. It’s time to really give them something to talk about.
