Читать книгу The Inner Beauty Bible: Mindful rituals to nourish your soul - Laurey Simmons - Страница 7

Chapter 1

What is Inner Beauty?

It’s the surprise act of kindness from that man driving the bus.

It’s the laughter of a friend who has suffered so much.

It’s a giggling baby on an overcrowded train.

It’s the fragrance of a rose, given freely again.

It’s looking in the mirror and loving my soul.

It’s embracing those changes, as we all grow old.

It’s a long, loving hug that says ‘we’re in this together’.

It’s the dawning truth when someone dies, That life is precious, And love is all that really matters in the end.

Inner Beauty is like a kaleidoscope: a beautiful way of seeing, with as many dimensions as there are eyes to see. The word kaleidoscope is actually derived from the Greek words kalos meaning ‘beautiful’ and eidos meaning ‘that which is seen’. What kind of visions does the idea of Inner Beauty conjure up in your mind?

I’ve been immersed in the world of beauty for most of my career. Originally as a make-up artist in fashion and music, my job was to make people look more beautiful. But then I fell in love with crystals and sacred rituals, and my relationship with beauty deepened. Although I loved helping my clients feel amazing before their big event, I got to a point where I realized there was something missing. At the end of the day we all go home and wash our faces off, back to staring at our stripped-back selves. I realized there was a deeper kind of beauty that I could help myself and my clients connect to. I started to lay out crystals and other sacred objects next to the lipsticks and blushers in my make-up station. This simple act had such a lovely and calming effect on me, and on my clients, during what were often super-long and busy working days. I discovered that beautiful objects and sensory rituals can help us connect to an Inner Beauty that is always there, just waiting for us to remember. Do you have moments in your life where you use objects of beauty to bring you a deep sense of inner peace, love or joy?

When Hollywood star and humanitarian Audrey Hepburn was asked towards the end of her life to reveal her beauty secrets, she said: ‘The beauty of a woman is not in a facial mole but true beauty in a woman is reflected in her soul.’

Can you think of anyone in your life who radiates that unmistakable quality of Inner Beauty? Someone in whose presence you feel instantly at home? What is it about these people, these moments, these encounters, that touch our hearts just so?

Just as I’d try to capture the essence of roses in water as a child, as an adult I’ve been discovering how to capture the essence of Inner Beauty. Trust me, there’ve been plenty of times in my life when I’ve felt far from radiant. But even in those more challenging moments of life, I’ve often felt like there is a voice that whispers to me, pointing me back to the beauty in my heart. Sometimes this whisper would come in the shape of a kind gesture or the scent of a flower; the simplest things that could in seconds wake me up from an irritable mood.

One of the most incredible phenomena of recent times has been the growth in mindfulness. It inspires me to see more and more people slowing down and tuning in to their inner worlds. A big part of mindfulness is bringing our attention away from our manic minds to our more grounded senses. For me, when we bring our attention to our senses, we allow ourselves to connect more deeply with the beauty of the world. When we slow down and connect with the beauty of the world through our senses, it opens up a greater space for the beauty inside ourselves. This is the sweet essence of the mindful rituals I am sharing with you in this book.

Of course, I totally get how it is being a busy bee in modern life, juggling work, home, relationships. Sometimes it’s hard to remember to stop and smell the roses. We’re exposed to such a whirlwind of media with hidden and not-so-hidden messages about how we should look, how we should feel and what we need to make us happy. The beauty industry is ever growing. And life is just becoming faster and faster. We find ourselves with an overwhelming sense of having loads to do and never enough time to do it. I know when I’m overwhelmed, I often feel like climbing into bed, snuggling up and switching off. I can easily get lost in the rabbit hole of mindless reality TV shows, gorging on comfort food, shrinking back into my shell. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with downtime; we definitely need downtime just to restore ourselves. But I’ve also realized it’s life-enriching to find ways in our day-to-day life where we can simply slow down and reconnect to our Inner Beauty. In the middle of the storm of modern life, Inner Beauty is the stable eye. As we cultivate our Inner Beauty, we will be kinder to ourselves, and kinder to each other. We are all on a journey back to a place of beauty that’s already there, a secret garden hidden inside all of us, just waiting to be rediscovered.

‘I realized there was a deeper kind of beauty I could help myself and my clients connect to.’

How to Use This Book

‘Polish the heart, free the six senses and let them function without obstruction, and your entire body will glow.’

Morihei Ueshiba, founder of the Japanese martial art of Aikido

My hope in writing this book is to help you create beautiful sacred spaces and simple rituals that will strengthen your connection to Inner Beauty. Adding these flourishes of beauty to my own life, along with a clear, mindful intention, has repeatedly helped bring me back to a more positive, peaceful and loving space.

The book is divided into sections representing different aspects of your life. You’ll get tips on how to incorporate rituals derived from ancient wisdom traditions into your modern life. You’ll be able to turn to different pages in the book, according to your particular need in any given moment. You might think of this as a recipe book for Inner Beauty. Once you start to build these Inner Beauty rituals into your daily life, you will find that your connection to your Inner Beauty becomes more stable, and you will naturally start to see more beauty in the world around you. Wayne Dyer, a spiritual teacher who speaks directly to my heart, explained this process perfectly when he said: ‘If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.’

In this chapter are some key ideas that I’ve found really helpful as I explore ever more deeply the world of Inner Beauty:

1. INNER AND OUTER BEAUTY ARE TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN

This first idea is really the most important of all. It’s all too easy to become fixated on the external appearance of things, especially ourselves. How many days do we wake up in the morning, look in the mirror and find something about our appearance that we dislike, affecting our confidence for the rest of the day? When we start the day with a self-critical mind, we feel a bit rubbish inside and it doesn’t matter how much make-up we put on, we’ll still be a less beautiful being in the world. On the other hand, if we look after our Inner Beauty by cultivating certain important qualities like self-compassion, patience, forgiveness, we’ll instantly become more attractive in the world. Inner Beauty radiates in such a powerful way that we appear more beautiful in the eyes of others. In the same way, if we treat ourselves like the goddesses we are, looking after our external appearance in a less critical, more sacred, kind and loving way, then we’ll naturally radiate that unmistakable light of Inner Beauty. Inner and outer beauty really do go hand in hand.

2. OBJECTS IN THE WORLD AROUND US AFFECT OUR INNER WORLD THROUGH OUR SENSES

We are gifted with senses. Our senses are windows into a world filled with beauty. Just as we need to give nourishment to our body, we also need to nourish our soul; and the most powerful way for me is through my senses. Sometimes when I slow down to smell the blossom on a tree, it’s like all the day’s worry and fear, all the doubts and insecurities just evaporate from my being. When I stop to gaze at a beautiful old tree, it grounds me and fills me with gratitude for Nature and life itself. My love for crystals is more than anything else grown from my appreciation of their visual beauty. Any time we tune our senses in to perceiving beauty in the world, whether it’s a stunning piece of music, the smell of a rose, a beautiful stone or a piece of art, we are awakening the Inner Beauty of our soul.

Each of our senses can transform us in a totally unique way. Our eyes, as they say, are the windows to our soul, and these windows can function in quite miraculous ways. An amazing study was carried out in the 1970s on patients recovering from gallbladder surgery.¹ Even though gallbladder surgery is very routine, for some reason, certain patients were recovering much faster than others. When researchers looked into this pattern, they discovered that some of the hospital rooms faced on to a brick wall, whilst others faced on to a row of beautiful trees. Guess what … it was the patients looking at the trees who recovered faster every time. This same kind of effect has been demonstrated with colours (pink repeatedly makes people less aggressive), with shapes (rounded edges tend to make people feel more peaceful), and with objects (the presence of a briefcase in a room tends to make people more competitive). Now, many of us can’t look at trees all day, but we can surround ourselves with beautiful objects from the natural world that have the power to restore us. Have a think now – what natural objects might awaken a real feeling of joy inside you?

Our sense of touch can really affect our emotional state. Have you ever worn a cardigan that was a bit itchy and made you feel irritable all day? Did you have one security object when you were younger that you just had to take with you everywhere? Even from a young age, we seem to understand that holding certain objects can make us feel certain ways. We can even see this influence of touch in our language, for example when we say, ‘I am having a rough day.’ For me, something magical happens when I hold and interact with objects such as crystals in a mindful way.

Helen Keller described smell as a ‘potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived’. I really love those words, as smell really does have a magical effect on me, and I’m sure on you. Studies have shown that the smell of baking cookies makes people more likely to help a stranger. Isn’t that amazing! As we get into the rituals in this book, I’ll be suggesting different smells, incenses and oils that act as magical reminders of our Inner Beauty qualities.

The last sense for us to explore is hearing. Now, if you live in an urban environment like me then you’ll probably be exposed to certain sounds that don’t exactly help to make you feel peaceful. The honking of horns, the neighbour’s dog barking all night, whatever it is, sounds in built-up environments can sometimes have a very negative effect on how we feel. This is because our ears are directly linked to our nervous systems in quite a powerful way. The vagus nerve, which is the channel through which the love hormone oxytocin is released in our body, connects our ears to every organ in our body. On the plus side, this means that soothing sounds (like melodies sung to a baby) release oxytocin into our system. The important thing to remember is that we can create sounds, even in small apartments in super-busy cities, that will help to relax our nervous system and can awaken beautiful qualities within us. In many indigenous traditions, sound, sacred singing and drums are all used in ceremonies as medicine to heal. Have a think now: what is the go-to song that you listen to when your heart needs some TLC? How does that song make you feel on the inside?

3. OUR INNER WORLD IS LIKE A GARDEN THAT NEEDS CERTAIN INGREDIENTS FOR BEAUTIFUL THINGS TO GROW

It inspires me to see more and more people really taking time to look after their inner world, with crystals, meditation, rituals. I like to use the metaphor of a garden for our inner world. Just like a garden, if we don’t give enough attention to the plant life, cutting away any dead branches, making sure the plants are getting enough water and sun, then the plants don’t grow in a healthy way. It’s just the same with our Inner Beauty. I know when I find the time to nourish my Inner Beauty, then qualities like kindness, gratitude and forgiveness have more chance of growing. I’ve already talked about using beautiful objects to reflect back beauty. But the truth is, we can’t always surround ourselves with beauty. Sometimes it’s necessary that we carry that sense of beauty into a situation that might be very challenging, where we don’t have all our crystals, our flowers, our nice hot bath ritual to help us reconnect. We’ll look at how to nourish Inner Beauty qualities in more detail as we go through the book. For now, it’s good just to acknowledge that if we regularly give nourishment to our inner world, it can continue to grow and spread its beautiful light, even when the sky is full of dark clouds.

4. INTENTION AND ATTENTION TOGETHER MAKE MAGIC HAPPEN

I grew up in a Jewish family and was surrounded by rituals. But to be honest, at some stage in my life I lost touch a little with the real value of these rituals. Although I could always appreciate the beauty of lighting candles on a Friday night, standing next to my mum as she marked the beginning of the Sabbath with a graceful, welcoming gesture of her hands waving over the candle-flames, after a certain age I feel like I disconnected from the real magic of ritual. It was only in the last few years that I’ve started to appreciate in a different way the two factors that together have the power to make rituals so magical: intention and attention. You see, when we do most routine activities in our day-to-day lives, we tend to have distracted minds. When I brush my teeth, for example, I often find myself planning my route to a meeting, thinking about emails I need to respond to, etc. But when I’m practising mindful rituals, it gives me a chance to slow everything down, quieten my mind, and consciously decide how I want to be that day. Rituals guide us gracefully out of our auto-pilot mode, creating a magical space where something more beautiful can emerge.

Wayne Dyer wrote so much about the power of intention. His philosophy could be summed up really simply in this one quote of his: ‘our intention creates our reality’. Intention to me simply means setting out a crystal-clear plan in my mind of how I want to be and what outcome I hope for in a situation. So often we don’t do this, and our minds and bodies default to our unconscious intentions, those old beliefs we carry from childhood that are often limiting and don’t serve our Highest Self. How often in your average day do you set a crystal-clear intention of how you want to be before engaging in an activity? When we set a clear intention and cultivate positive feelings so that our whole body is signed up to this intention, we can reverse our unconscious habits and influence our reality in quite miraculous ways.

It can be relatively easy to set an intention (just think of New Year’s resolutions), but if our mind gets regularly distracted then the intention will never be able to manifest. There have been so many times when I set an intention in the morning, to be kind, to be more patient, more loving, and then I have a million and one messages, phone calls, emails, to-do-lists and after an hour or so and an encounter with a moody shopkeeper, it’s like I’ve completely and utterly lost track of my intention. This is where attention, the ability to keep bringing our minds back to that one important thing, is so important. In mindfulness meditation, it doesn’t matter how many times your mind wanders off, it’s the practice of bringing your attention back again and again that really has the biggest impact. The same thing applies to intentions and Inner Beauty rituals. It doesn’t matter how many times we might get distracted during the day, if we can notice our distracted mind and bring our attention back time and again to that Inner Beauty quality we want to manifest, then we’re very likely going to start seeing changes quite soon. Attention does require discipline, but it’s worth the effort.

‘Rituals guide us gracefully out of our auto-pilot mode, creating a magical space where something more beautiful can emerge.’

My Story

There’s something magical about the smell of roses. Often when I smell a rose, I’m transported instantly back to myself as a young girl. I remember endless summer days spent picking rose petals from our garden; losing myself in a dreamy world of smell, colour and abundant life. I would ever so mindfully put the roses in bottles of water and try to sell my potions outside our house. Looking back now, I can really appreciate how naturally I was drawn to the beauty of these sensory rituals. Can you remember connecting with the beauty of Nature as a child? Can you remember the things you loved to pick, to hold, to make? Can you remember how simple things like colour, sound and smell made you feel? Building outdoor dens, making daisy-chains, picking buttercups and holding them under a friend’s chin.

How to make a rosewater spritzer:

Rosewater Spritzer

Collect a couple of handfuls of freshly picked rose petals or organic dried rose petals.

If freshly picked, quickly rinse the petals.

Place the petals into a bowl and pour in just enough distilled or filtered hot water to soak the petals.

Place the bowl in the fridge overnight.

In the morning, sieve the water into a jug and discard the petals.

Add a couple of drops of rose essential oil to the rosewater.

Pour the rosewater into a small, glass spritzer bottle.

Add a couple of small Rose Quartz chippings.

Spritz away!

Keep the spritzer somewhere cool or in the fridge. It will only stay fresh a few days.

Like the petals of the rose, my childhood connection to beauty unfolded in so many different directions. I had a real passion for art from a young age. I got really inspired by artists like Georgia O’Keeffe, whose work would speak directly to that place of beauty inside my heart. I channelled this energy into my own art. I could spend months working on one painting, completely focussed on the intricate details, often of flowers, shells or stones. Painting became a real heart-expanding meditation for me. As the saying goes, ‘love is in the detail’. I think this pretty much sums up how I approach most things in life.

Some of my most precious childhood memories are of walking the beaches of Mallorca with my mum, looking for the prettiest pebbles, just feeling a sense of wonder, even at this young age, for the beauty of Mother Nature and her magical powers. We’d bring these pebbles home and place them on my Grandmother’s gravestone. This ritual is an ancient Jewish practice; in the Kabbalah, the soul is said to be carved from the stone of a mountain, and so the placement of stones on a grave is an invitation, welcoming the soul of the departed to come down and rest upon the tombstones during a visit.

But even at times in my life when things definitely weren’t so rosy, there was something inside me, something magnetically drawing me to the beauty of the world, that continued to unfold. I remember buying my first spiritual book, called The Seat of the Soul by Gary Zukav, after watching an interview with him on Oprah Winfrey. I guess this was the first step into my own ‘adult’ spiritual path. I’m laughing now, remembering the first time I tried to meditate. I was about sixteen years old, sitting on my bed, just waiting, waiting, waiting for something to happen … but with one eye open! Looking back I really appreciate the innocent way in which I was searching for something deeper.

The love of beauty and sacred ritual magically wove its way into my adult life. I became a make-up artist, moved to London from Leeds and began assisting celebrity make-up artist Mary Greenwell. I soon created my own career as a make-up artist in the fashion and music industries. Putting on make-up can of course be a kind of ritual in itself. There is something meditative about it, the attention to detail, the repetition, the time for self-care. And so, as I developed more of an interest in crystals, meditation and conscious living, my approach to my make-up work naturally evolved. I started to create little sacred spaces for my clients, using crystals, essential oils and meditation, which seemed to add a deeper, more sacred dimension to the make-up ritual. My clients started to tell me that they experienced a kind of peacefulness and inner joy that had a real, positive impact on them before their shoot or big event. This new sacred dimension I was bringing to the beauty process was especially helpful and grounding to myself and clients when we were on the road. As we’d travel from city to city, and from country to country on music tours, I’d bring a portable sacred space with crystals and oils, and even got some of the band wearing crystal necklaces to bring good energy on stage. All of these rituals really helped us to ground ourselves and re-connect to a space of stillness in the midst of busy tour life.

Inspired by this growing connection to Inner Beauty in my life as a make-up artist, I started to look deeper into beauty rituals and became especially interested in crystals as a tool for Inner Beauty. I discovered to my delight that crushed crystals like Malachite and Lapis Lazuli were used in Ancient Egypt as sacred make-up mineral blends for living goddesses. Just imagine for a moment what kind of a sense of beauty might have existed at this time, if people were consciously adding spiritual materials into their beauty products. People have clearly recognized for a long time that nurturing beauty is not an exercise in vanity, but an essential process to keep you closer to the divine.

As I look back, I can now see the universe has been guiding me along my spiritual path, and this path has been lined with crystals. I first became interested in crystals during a difficult time in my life. I was feeling quite down emotionally, I’d just had a flare-up of Crohn’s (an inflammatory auto-immune condition of the stomach), and I was seeking extra support and self-healing. I started going for crystal healing myself. I remember my first ever healing session, entering the sacred space and feeling the energy of all the beautiful crystals laid out before me. I was immediately transported to that same place of tranquil beauty and inner peace I had felt on the beach as a child collecting pebbles. And so, my love affair with crystals was born.

When I met my husband Louis, my spiritual journey was accelerated. He was running a therapeutic education provision at the time, teaching meditation and providing therapy to troubled teenagers from London. We soon realized a wonderful way for us to combine our passions would be to set up a meditation group, where Louis would lead the meditations and I would bring the shanti vibes with my crystals, oils and singing bowls. The friends who came to these groups really seemed to find a deeper sense of connection and meaning in the sacred space and ritual we were offering.

After we got married, we took a sabbatical travelling around India, starting our journey in Kerala and meandering our way North. Mother India really blew my heart wide open. I remember feelings of awe and joy at the rainbow of colours, the smells of incense on every corner, the exquisite textiles and jewellery. I was touched by the fact that India has proudly held on to this sacred knowledge for thousands of years, using beautiful objects, smells and colours to keep people connected to that place of Inner Beauty. During our adventure, we immersed ourselves with the local culture, staying with Indian families and experiencing first-hand daily rituals, religious festivals and ceremonies, where we learned how spirituality and a sense of the sacred was ingrained in so many aspects of daily life. In Pushkar, we became friends with a beautiful spiritual teacher, Jaggu, who had a very simple ashram built around a Banyan tree on the edge of the holy lake. In this small space, he would simply share his wisdom and love freely as he sat by a sacred fire that was kept going twenty-four hours a day. Around this fire, in this very humble space, there would always be laid out beautiful flowers, oils and incense. To celebrate this spirit of beauty and sacred ritual, I started to collect the most beautiful things I found. This was where the seed of The Colourful Dot came into bloom. My vision for this online shop was to create a space to help nourish that precious and sacred connection between inner and outer beauty, stocking crystals, sacred oils and other inspiring objects to be used in creating sacred spaces and Inner Beauty rituals.

My appreciation for sacred ritual deepened whilst on a mountain pilgrimage with wisdom-keepers around Peru and Bolivia. I had the great honour of travelling with indigenous elders from the Q’ero, Quechua, Ayumara and Chumash tribes. In these indigenous cultures, rituals aren’t something we do just to gain personal benefit, but are above all a way of showing deep gratitude and respect for Pachamama (Mother Earth). The one idea that really stuck in my heart was ayni, the native Andean concept that describes the ‘sacred exchange’ or reciprocity that is so vitally important, because we are all connected to each other by living energy. When we saw the Winter Solstice sun rise from the top of a sacred mountain on the Isla del Sol, the local people spontaneously opened their hearts to us, sharing songs and food, and we returned this spontaneous gifting with our own songs and gifts. This was ayni in action. This period in my life deepened my understanding that everything, from the earth we walk upon, to the pebbles we find on the beach, to the water we bathe in, has a unique spirit that is in constant exchange with the world. Did you know that peace lilies not only give us oxygen but they also remove toxins such as benzene and ammonia from the air? We honour the beauty and generosity of this spirit, in Nature and inside of ourselves (we are after all Nature), through reciprocity and ritual.

As I look to the path ahead, I feel so thankful to be on this journey. The more I learn through my own study and practice, the more I realize how important it is to come back to that Inner Beauty space of kindness, gratitude and love. And coming back to that space is a never-ending practice, one I definitely still struggle with some days. But no matter how far from the path we stray, the next day is always a chance for a fresh start. I really hope you find this book connects with you on some level. Even if you just take away one single idea or practice that inspires you to shine your light more brightly upon the world, then that will be enough.

A Very Short History of Beauty and Ritual

Beauty and ritual belong together. Ritual without a sense of beauty is merely routine.

Imagine for a moment your daily routine of travelling into work. How often do you connect with the beauty around you or within you? I think for most of us, our commute to work is just a means of getting from A to B. We’re mostly focussed on the destination and rarely on the journey. An amazing experiment was carried out by a world-famous violinist called Joshua Bell.² He spent a day in a subway station in Washington DC performing some of the most beautiful pieces of music ever composed. Hardly anyone stopped to tune in, apart from one young girl who slowed down to listen, until her mum hurriedly dragged her along. The conclusion of the study was that when we’re stuck in mindless routine, when we’re purely focussed on the destination, we miss out on the beauty that is available to us in everyday situations.

It’s incredible to think that our earliest ancestors, going back a hundred thousand years, managed to find the time to mark and appreciate beauty despite living with much greater, more real risk then we do today. A Stone Age burial site discovered in France contained two women who had been buried in a ritual way with beautiful snail shell necklaces. The amazing thing about this discovery is that the beauty of the necklaces has endured all this time.

In Ancient Greece, the concept of beauty was central to life, but it was quite clear that beauty referred not just to how you look, but equally to beautiful actions; how we act in the world can be beautiful and contribute to the highest good. The Greek word for beautiful, kalos, means both aesthetically beautiful and virtuous.

Many indigenous cultures have for a long time understood the sacred connection between inner and outer beauty, which they channel into the world through prayer, dance, arts, ritual and ceremony. Navajo Indians have a concept I’m totally in love with, called ‘The Beauty Way’. The Beauty Way is a philosophy for life, the main focus of which is to appreciate and maintain the beauty in the world around us and in the world within us. Most importantly, beauty isn’t just aesthetics; it is also the qualities we cultivate inside ourselves. The Beauty Way blessing is:

Shil hózhó, ‘with me there is beauty’;

Shii’ hózhó, ‘in me there is beauty’;

Shaa hózhó, ‘from me beauty radiates’.

Take a moment to read over these statements and really let them sink in. When I allow my heart to connect to the ancient wisdom contained in these blessings, I’m filled with inspiration and hope. In The Beauty Way tradition, whenever someone feels out of harmony with life or in need of some TLC, they’re given ‘medicine’ in the form of beautiful ceremonies, performed by the tribe just to reconnect that person to their sense of beauty. In these Beauty Way ceremonies, songs would be sung and sandpaintings created, all for the specific purpose of healing the ‘patient’. And the ‘patient’ would participate in all of this, singing the songs, and even actually getting into the sandpainting to bring the healing to an end. This is how Gary Witherspoon, an expert in Native American culture, describes the spirit of this ceremony: ‘The sandpainting is not just to be seen but also to be absorbed, its beauty and harmony heal mind and body.’

Imagine that! Every time you feel out of sorts, your loved ones surround you and sing beautiful songs, make beautiful art for you and say beautiful blessings for you (with me there is beauty), and your only responsibility is to accept the beauty being showered upon you (in me there is beauty), so that you can go back out into the world and shine your light (from me beauty radiates). Without consciously planning it, I was already weaving aspects of the Beauty Way in the meditation groups I held with my husband. By creating a beautiful space for friends to connect and be really open with one another, rather than the usual chit-chat we tend to engage in in our rushed daily lives, we all experienced a sense of great heart-opening and healing, as well as a stronger sense of community, helping each other to focus on what is most important to us, on how we want to be in the world.

One aspect of beauty and ritual that can be seen throughout history is the celebration of the wild beauty of Nature. These traditions often refer to Nature as a maternal figure, giver of life and nourishment: in Native American tradition we have Mother Earth, and Pachamama is the name of Mother Earth in ancient Incan wisdom. As I experienced in Peru, rituals around Mother Nature are a means to give something back to her (food, tobacco, sweets) as a token of appreciation. I love these traditions and how they contrast with the Modern way in which we have tended for some time to just take from Mother Earth without reciprocating.

A deep respect for the feminine beauty and power of nature underpins many such rituals. Nature is wild. She can sometimes appear serene, peaceful, flowing, and at other times she can appear angry and destructive. But there is a beauty in her cycles that I think should be celebrated. The key here is the cycles. Just think of the waxing and waning of the moon, or the ebb and flow of the tides. There is a great peace that can be found in accepting the cycles of our life, and so letting go of the idea that we should be aiming always to be more: more happy, more full of energy, more giving. As the biblical verse (Ecclesiastes 5:7) reminds us: ‘There is a time to plant and a time to uproot … a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them.’

Beyond the cycles of Mother Earth overall, individual plants, trees and animals in the natural world have been seen in many indigenous traditions as having a spirit we can ask for protection from through ritual. In the Celtic tradition (Celts are the indigenous people of Britain), every mountain, river, tree, plant, animal or rock had a spirit which would be worshipped. The spirits of water were particularly respected as givers and sustainers of life, and healing rituals would be performed at natural springs. It is said that the River Thames that runs through London gets its name from the Celtic goddess Tamesis.

Even though we may think today that some of these ancient beliefs seem a bit far-out, conjuring the stereotype of the tree-hugging hippy, we can all instinctively appreciate the healing power of Nature. For those of us who live in cities, we instinctively know that when we’re in need of rejuvenation we take ourselves off to the countryside, to the forests, to the seaside. There’s just something about being in nature, about appreciating the beauty of nature, including the beauty of our own nature, that really lifts our spirits and restores a sense of balance to our hearts and minds. When we’re in Nature, we can stop clock-watching, detox from our devices, clear our minds, slow down and get inspired. The eternal beauty of Nature gets captured most perfectly by the Romantic poet John Keats, whose now famous lines read: ‘To see a world in a grain of sand, and heaven in a wild flower. Hold infinity in the palms of your hand, and eternity in an hour.’

One of the lessons that Nature teaches me is that things can be beautiful, even though they’re not ‘perfect’. And Japanese tradition has developed a stunningly simple way in which we can celebrate the imperfect beauty of our own Nature. The concept is called wabi-sabi. The words refer to ‘the wisdom and beauty of imperfection’ (Taro Gold). One of my favourite examples of wabi-sabi is the Japanese tea ceremony, where utensils are purposefully chosen because they are simple, rustic, asymmetrical, and sometimes even deliberately chipped. But it was the way in which these imperfect objects were used with such great care, mindful grace and appreciation that brought the sense of beauty into the tea ritual.

These days we can get caught up in a drive to make things ever more perfect. I can see how easily the modern woman in particular can get weighed down with expectations to be a super-woman: being a perfect mum, a perfect wife or partner, a perfect friend, a perfect career woman, and the whole time trying to look good too. To nourish the inner garden that is our Inner Beauty, we can learn a lot from our ancestors and how they taught us to slow down, to turn our careful attention to the beautiful, especially in Nature, to look for the beautiful in everything, even or especially in those things that might seem imperfect at first glance. Life is not perfect. We will all at some point in our lives experience chips or cracks in the delicate china of our selves. Rather than brushing these imperfections under the carpet in a race to some perfect end goal, ancient wisdom traditions show us how we can embrace these cracks and see the beauty shining through them.

Defining Your Own Inner Beauty

‘The problem is you’re afraid to acknowledge your own beauty. Well, enough already. I sit before you because I see your beauty, even if you don’t.’

Ram Dass

Before we get into the specific Inner Beauty rituals I’ve collected for you here, I’d just like to kickstart our journey with a little ritual. This exercise will help you to understand what Inner Beauty means to you. Whatever you discover in this exercise will be your guide as you continue to cultivate the beauty within.

First, it can really help if you get a journal that you can dedicate completely to your own Inner Beauty. This can be a source of personal inspiration to you. You can keep quotes that inspire you, images that invoke Inner Beauty qualities for you, beautiful leaves you’ve collected. You can also write in here your answers to some of the questions I will be asking you throughout the book. In this journal, write down on the first page the following title: ‘Inner Beauty to me is …’

Now, put down your pen for just a moment. It can help to close your eyes for this exercise. Take in a deep breath and, with a big sigh, breathe out any stress or tension. Bring to your mind an image of a beautiful flower. Notice what it looks like, what colour it is, what it smells like, what it makes you feel inside. Now you’ve connected to a space of Inner Beauty, allow into your mind’s eye someone in your life who has an abundance of Inner Beauty. This might be someone you know. It might equally be someone you’ve never met. It could be someone you’ve read about. It could even be a fictional character, a hero or heroine, a god or goddess, a spiritual teacher, or an everyday person who just has that luminescent quality. Trust the image that your mind offers you. As this example of Inner Beauty crystallizes in your mind’s eye, take your time to explore what exactly it is about this person that brings for you an association with Inner Beauty. What are the qualities they represent for you? Are they kind, compassionate, grateful, light-hearted, forgiving, generous, serene, graceful, nurturing or something else? What are the specific gestures they made, the actions they took that represent Inner Beauty for you? Now allow yourself to sense what it feels like to be in their presence. What do you feel, and where do you feel it in your body? Perhaps you notice a certain warmth in your heart, a smile in your mind, or just a sense of peace or of being at home. Whatever the feeling is, allow yourself to really get to know this feeling for a moment. This is your feeling of Inner Beauty.

When you feel you have explored this Inner Beauty image in as much detail as you need, write down the qualities that you recognized in this person. Beneath or next to this, write down some words to describe the feelings that this example of Inner Beauty conjured up for you.

Now have a look through this list, and see if there’s anything else you’d add to it that you’d associate with Inner Beauty. If you’re feeling creative, you can draw something that represents Inner Beauty, or decorate the page with beautiful things, like pressed flowers or pretty fabrics.

This page will serve you as your reminder. You can turn to it whenever you’re feeling disconnected from your own Inner Beauty. You can even put it in your sacred space.