Rule Breaking with Ritual
When I help people identify the food rules that no longer serve them, the next question is often, “Now what?”
Now we break the rules.
For many people, myself included, breaking a practice or habit around food can put into questions one’s identity.
When I broke my rules around exercise, reorienting my relationship with movement toward joy and away from compulsive compensation, it threatened my identity as a disciplined athlete.
When I broke my rules around eating only organic food and moved toward processed being okay, it threatened my identity as a conscious participant in our food system and relationship with farmers.
When I broke my rules around “clean eating” and moved toward All Foods Fit, it impacted my relationship to pleasure in general and my identity as a dietitian.
All this to say, our food rules are often manifestations of how we feel about ourselves, who we want to belong to, and what we feel worthy of. Changing our rules, behaviors, and thoughts around food often impacts deeper parts of our identity and changing deeper parts of our identity can be destabilizing — to say the least.
Ritual can be a helpful tool as we break rules and consciously embrace change.
In modern-day United States, we don’t have a lot of shared rituals outside of births, weddings, and funerals. This is intentional. Rituals are a powerful form of resistance and colonial powers all over the world have violent responses to indigenous ritual practices. Oppressed groups have had to disguise or hide their rituals in effort to keep them alive. Practices like removing indigenous children from their communities and forcing them into boarding schools have left a legacy of terror connected to ritual rather than restoration and empowerment.
Now we are either left with the rituals that are sold to us from appropriated indigenous practice or rituals that were not targeted during colonialism, such as those maintained in organized religion. One can find ritual on a weekly, monthly, and yearly basis in organized religion; as well as once-in-a-lifetime rituals such as marking a rite of passage. Rituals can provide a sense of holding, aid, and hope as we move from who we once were toward the person we hope to be.
In the context of breaking up with diet culture, rituals can look any way we wish (as long as they don’t perpetuate the appropriation of other cultures): breaking a scale with a sledge hammer, giving away clothes that no longer fit, writing down food rules and burning them, writing a letter of gratitude to your body and reading it allowed, making a promise to their body and getting a tattoo, etc. There is no wrong way to do it, it simply needs to be meaningful to you and your story.
Rituals mark a moment in time, a bridge to support your passage from who you were to who you are becoming, but it’s certainly not a one and done deal. Marking that moment can serve as a reference point in times when we lose our way toward who we are becoming. Someone once shared with me that when they catch themselves reaching for something they’ve ritually released, they have said allowed to themselves, “This is the old way.” And like a spell, their grip on it loosens and agency is reclaimed.
Rituals can also help with the fear of belonging that often accompanies rule-breaking.
We don’t come up with these rules — or even values — out of thin air. Often they are given to us by our families, communities, and broader culture. Many of the ways we adopted these rules were, “If I eat/exercise/live like this I’ll belong… I’ll be valued… I’ll be loved.” Depending on the identities you hold, how your body looks or functions, especially in-service to those with power, secures your worth.
This is one reason the general practice of rule-breaking can be an important for disrupting oppressive power structures but it can impact us in different ways. As a mixed-race person, my very existence breaks rules; it breaks laws, that were upheld as late as 1967. For those of us who fall under the umbrella of “diversity,” following societal rules can often be our attempt to minimizes the “divergence from the standard body” that white supremacy mindset instills. Regardless of one’s identity, the choice to break a rule places further distance between ourselves and those who have power within oppressive structures. This can be uncomfortable but it's an important practice and it demands the question, “Do I want to belong to systems that gain power through oppression?”
For me, changing my relationship to exercise brought up fear of not only having power in an ableist society but fear of belonging to my extended family. I inferred that being athletic was valued and in an effort to secure my worth and belonging in the extended family, I would be “athletic.” So I did things that would ensure able-bodied-ness and create the appearance of what I thought an athlete would look like. Breaking my rules around exercise wasn’t just a change in how I spent my time, it was a willingness to jeopardize belonging to my family.
Engaging in rituals on a regular basis supported me move through this fear of belonging. Even if I made up the ritual, it connected me to something greater than myself. Family became the people with whom I would do ritual. Eventually, I felt confident enough to be vulnerable with family members with whom I wanted to ensure that belonging and build an authentic connected that was deeper than a superficial rule. There are some family members who I can’t bring with me and while I grieve that loss, it’s okay. Ritual can help with loss as well.
If you’re feeling inspired by this idea, consider reading for further guidance on how to incorporate ritual into your daily life.
Ritual Rule Breaking: Where do we Begin?
There’s not wrong way to practice ritual, as long as it aligns with your values and you’re open to receiving the support of what you’re doing. The idea that there is a right and a wrong way to build ritual feels rooted in the same gate-keeping oppressive structures we’re trying to disrupt. That said, below are a few options you could consider depending on your interest and familiarity with ritual.
Option 1: Notice what you’re already doing
Simply participating in a self-made ritual can be a revolutionary, rule-breaking act. One way to begin is to notice that rituals in which you may already participate but don’t acknowledge them as such. Things like:
Morning or Evening Routines: coffee or tea, walking the dog, breathing, skin-care, etc. Anything you do in a day where you notice its absence when you don’t do it.
Transition Periods: leaving home and arriving at work, leaving work and arriving at home, getting ready for a night out, going from parent-mode to partner-mode, etc. Anything that helps you shift the role you fulfill from one space to the next.
Seasonal Changes: putting away your winter clothes for your summer ones, changing the decoration in your home, shifting the food from summer salads to autumn soups, etc. Anything that integrates the external, environmental shifts into a personal way.
Option 2: Add a little ritual element
Once you notice the moments that already serve in a ritual way, consider incorporate other elements of a ritual. I personally consider elements of a ritual to include (but aren’t limited to):
Intention: what are you hoping this moment will support? What are you calling-in? Perhaps it’s simply, “Helping me transition from sleep to awake.”
Presence: how much of your attention is in this moment. Embodiment is part of this presence.
Consent: are you a yes to this? Do you have witnesses and are they consenting? What is needed for consent to be involved?
Elements: whether or not one believes in a higher-power, incorporating one of the 4 (or 5 depending on your framework) elements can be helpful in feeling connected-to and held-by something greater.
Example: I make my bed every morning. As I make my bed, I can hold an intention for why I’m making my bed, bring my full presence into the process, and consciously consent to the act of self-care in this way. If I want to get really fancy, I might incorporate the element of air by singing while I make the bed.
Option 3: Create a ritual to support rule-breaking
Identify a rule that is no longer serving you. Maybe it’s a food-rule, a societal rule, or a way you think about yourself.
Consider what you would do, how you would feel, and how you may think without that rule. The ritual could focus on the destruction of the rule, the things you would do without the rule, or both.
Identify the intention of the ritual: is it to have less of the rule or more of something else? Is it to support you in the unknown? What are you calling-in?
Is there a time of day, week, month, or year that would support this intention? Is there a story, person, or element whose presence would feel supportive?
Create a beginning, middle, and end of your ritual where the beginning sets the tone, the middle includes the action, and the ending invites integration. I encourage the action or ending to include the body in some way.
Consider what practices would reinforce this new invitation?
BONUS: a ritual can be powerful when done alone but I think it’s enhanced when done in-community, either with others also participating or witnessing your transformation with love and compassion.
Food example you could do alone (or in community):
Mindset change: eating for function over pleasure — always. Instead believing that my body is worthy of pleasure.
I would eat less kale. I would make more delicious food. I would take my time with food. I would experience more joy in my day through food. Food would be a source of creativity and pleasure as opposed to a chore.
I want more pleasure and creativity in my life and in my body.
My pets are unapologetic about receiving pleasure. When they want something pleasing either get it for themselves or ask for it, including delicious food.
Beginning: hold the intention of the ritual in my heart as I like a candle. Have something delicious to either smell, taste, hear, or feel ready for the end. Middle: write down the beliefs I hold about pleasure and when applicable, how I learned those beliefs. Also include on this piece of paper, all the ways I uphold those beliefs, particularly with regard to food. On a new piece of paper, write down action to disrupt those beliefs and what I can believe instead that’s more aligned with my current values. Consider who or what you honor with these new beliefs End: Burn the piece of paper that had the old beliefs, how you learned them, and how you upheld them. Imbibe in the good-tasting/smelling/feeling thing that you brought ahead of time and say allowed your new beliefs.
Practice receiving pleasure as you participating in the “ways to uphold” your new beliefs. Consider that list a permission slip and actively give yourself permission to receive pleasure.
General example you could do alone or in community:
I wanted to disrupt the idea that only certain bodies are allowed to be seen in the light of day and that my body was simply a tool to gain security in a male-dominated society.
I would feel more permission to be in my body on my own terms. I would be less concerned with other’s experience of me and more concerned with my own experience of myself.
I wanted a ritual that reinforced this permission to center my experience of my own body. I also wanted to feel supported as opposed to competitive with other people who didn’t hold cis-male identities. I wanted to feel my security rooted in nature and something deeper than my desirability.
I deeply resonate with the Myth of Lilith, the Hebrew Goddess associated with feminine power. The New Moon is connected to many deities, one of which is her. The morning after the new moon felt like a time to connect with her story as well as practice the permission to be seen.
Beginning: inviting to other AFAB (assigned female at birth) people to join me. As we gather at a shore during sunrise, I alert any passersby that we will be skinny dipping so they can have informed consent about their exposure to what we’re doing. Middle: we go skinny dipping to incorporate the story, the element of water, and practice body-liberation. End: we set an intention for the waxing moon and witness one another calling-in our heart’s desire.
Practices that reinforce the idea that I can center my experience of my body are dressing for my own expression or comfort, resting when I’m tired, and developing a fashion sense that aligns with my personal style.
What rituals do you practice? How do they support you in transitions or your day to day life? What would you like ritual support around?
