As we near year end, here is a set of 4 rituals to help you powerfully close this year and open to the year ahead. I have personally practiced these for the last decade to create completion of what has been and readiness for the new to emerge. If you are attending the RISE Retreat happening in Chicago on January 13, this is your "digital preparation guide," and doing these rituals will prime you for our exercises to create your plan for 2024.
To enhance your rituals, you can enjoy a mystical musical playlist created by my RISE Retreat co-host Amy Galvin as a way to access deeper into your soul.
Listen HERE:
Embodied Soul Session spotify playlist
Here are the 4 rituals:
1. Creating a Completion Wheel for the Past Year
A practice I learned from my spiritual mentor and renowned transformational teacher and author Christine Arylo is the completion wheel. This is a valuable practice to create closure for anything - a work project, a relationship, and as used here, to complete a year.
The practice is to journal your answers to 4 questions that helps you look holistically at the year:
What were the successes?
What were the surprises?
What were the losses?
What were the lessons?
Although I’ve done this practice for a decade now, it still surprises me how much wisdom and magic comes out of these questions. You get to revisit how much you’ve given. You get to see where you are incomplete with issues you may want to tie up before the year closes. You get to see your challenges with some hindsight, and now you can gracefully look at the lessons. Practically speaking, I’ve enjoyed doing this practice in one sitting for usually about 2 hours, with my calendar out in front of me to truly remember all that occurred in the time span of the past year.
2. Capturing Your Ideas for the New Year
In the final 2-3 months of the year and through January, it is common to receive a variety of ideas dropping into your consciousness that inspire you for the year ahead. It helps to be mindful that this is a time of receiving, and not necessarily deciding. You can allow the information to flow in and at a later time that you dedicate to making your plan for the year, you can begin to see how the pieces fit together and make decisions.
While the inspiration flows in, dedicate a place in your journal or on your phone to capture it. Then when you get to your dedicated planning time, you have all the information stored. The types of information you might gather include:
Business project ideas
Areas of life you want to bring focus on
Healing modalities you want to engage or learn
Energies you want to embody
Spiritual practices or studies you want to try
Creative projects you’re interested in
3. Creating a Burning Ritual for Letting Go + Allowing In
The close of the year is a great time to look at what you’d like to release and leave behind going into the new year ahead. Such intention can be marked with a burning ritual!
To prepare for a burning ritual, here are some inquiries:
What do you want to release?
What thought patterns, beliefs, habits?
What has held you back that you feel ready to let go?
You might spend some time in your journal writing down what comes to you. Ultimately, you want to distill down what you will release to the fire into a word or a phrase. And keep your list short and sweet. Up to 3 items. This helps you create clarity and focus.
Burning rituals are powerful mystical practices. So as you choose what you want to release, know that you don’t have to know how to create the change. All there is to do is listen to your own heart and make your declaration and commitment through the ritual.
Here is a list of steps you can take to do your burning ritual:
Reflect on what you want to let go
Reflect on what you want to embrace (optional)
Write words or phrases on paper to capture
Invite friends to join for the ritual (optional)
Create fire safely outdoors or in
Begin with opening meditation or music
Take a photo of what you wrote
Burn paper #1 in the fire to release and speak the prayer: "I release, I trust"
Burn paper #2 in the fire to embrace and speak the prayer: 'I intend, I empower'
Close with gratitude or music
Look at the photo next year + see the magic
Know also that a burning ritual anytime between the winter solstice (December 21) and year end is powerful. You might also consider New Year's Eve or another date that feels in alignment for you. And if you can do this in a group setting, even better!
4. Attuning to Your Word of the Year
Your Word of the Year is a simple yet powerful tool. Whatever your vision is for the year ahead, your Word calls you to grow and expand into the higher potential required to fulfill your destined direction. In any given moment, you can use your Word as a tool to help you align with higher consciousness and higher wisdom that supports your expansion. In essence, your Word is your prayer or personal mantra to catalyze you. When you speak your Word out loud, it calls you forth.
When you begin tuning into your Word, to sense what is right for you, you want:
A word that when you say it, you feel peace.
A word that calls you forth into who you sense you are becoming.
A word that when you say it, it helps you shift you from fear to faith.
A word that you can speak and it validates your higher purpose.
As you can imagine, you'll be best served by a high vibration word. High vibration words feel divine, mystical, ethereal, light. In contrast, a lower vibration word that is not aligned for you will feel hard, heavy, dense, and you may sense it comes from your ego out of fear. Here are a few examples of high vibration words I have personally used: Allow. Embrace. Imagine. Trust. Limitless. Grace. Communion. Devotion.
To support you in this practice, I've created an audio recording of an attunement practice to connect you with your higher truth and to open to receive your word.
Listen HERE:
on the Insight Timer Meditation App
(Free access anywhere anytime!)
About the Author
Gina Marotta is a career coach + spiritual guide. She coaches and teaches individuals and teams globally about cultivating the power of your inner genius at work. Gina understands the plight of modern professionals having worked early in her career as a criminal defense attorney followed by a managing director position for a national nonprofit organization. Gina is a contributing author to the book Readings in Restorative Justice where she wrote about transforming her legal career from hard work to healing work. She has been featured in media outlets such as: Thrive Global, The Huffington Post, CBS News, WGN Radio, and The American Bar Association Magazine.